Pictured: Zazzle coping with the terrible conflict of being on the wrong side of the fence and unable to capture the bird she very much wishes to hunt.
In an earlier post, I discussed that your character(s) needed a destination. (And I’m not talking about a final one, although your vibe may very well result in them doing the equivalent of driving behind a log truck…) Today, your assignment is to identify the primary conflicts that are preventing your main characters from getting to where they want to be.
For a completely conjured example, I have a character named Marie. Marie is a librarian. Marie wants to go home and read books, but people keep bothering her.
The people bothering her are the conflict. They are barring her from reading books.
There are various conflict types, but they all boil down to several categories. In a very distilled fashion, here are the basic conflict types:
Note: this usage is man as in mankind, not man as in male.
Man vs Man (See: War, a fight between friends, anything where people are conflicting against other people.)
Man vs Nature/Environment (See: Earthquake or Volcano or tiger or crocodile or mosquito.)
Man vs Society (This is a result of man vs man conflicts HOWEVER, in this conflict type, it’s often someone trying to change elements of society, so while an offbranch of man vs man, it is deserving of its own category.)
Man vs Self (because humans.)
When you are playing with your conflict types, remember that there are a bazillion types of conflicts underneath these branches, but as a general rule, you will be working within one of them.
Example of various conflict types in action.
Stephen King’s THE STAND: Man vs Environment, Man vs Man, Man vs Self: Man vs Environment/Nature: Plague wipes out Earth, and while Man is responsible for the Plague, it runs wild and does its thing. Man vs Man: The survivors end up battling themselves. Man vs Self: each character must decide if they are on the side of good or evil.
THE STAND removes the society element because nature wiped society out.
Michael Crichton’s JURASSIC PARK: Man vs Environment, Man vs Man: (Also Woman vs Dinosaur because Dinosaur eats Man, Woman takes over the Earth.) Dinosaurs do as dinosaurs do and eat people because people were dumb and brought dinosaurs back from the dead.
Delicious tasty human!
And just for an example from one of my books: Susan Copperfield’s THE PRINCE OF NEW YORK: Man vs Man, Man vs Self, Man vs Society: While nature/environment solve problems, nature/environment are helping the main character rather than trying to hamper him. Man vs Man: conflict with his parents. Man vs Self: his battles with mental illness, trauma, etc, Man vs Society: that whole one arc that hurt feelings and resulted in the characters trying to change the world around them for the better.
You want to know the type of conflict and why this conflict is preventing the character(s) from accomplishing their end goal. Ideally, you will layer in conflicts so that characters have a hill to climb before conquering the final summit towards the end of the book. The resolution is how the characters get down from the peaks at the end, and is usually a much smoother trip than the way up.
Tomorrow, we’ll be discussing how to start writing the book, and in the assignment after, we’ll start diving into the actual writing portion!
For Rise of the Rift King, all conflict types are used, because I have no chill when it comes to epic fantasy.
I hope you are having a wonderful day, and that this post gives you another piece of the puzzle needed to start writing your novel!
About Man vs Self: inner dialogue and process to grow, learn, understand and accept has to be subtle, working between and underneath the main story. A simple example: when the main characters meet eachother and/or others, you describe some of the emotions that they experience and have to deal with, depending on the situations. But, this has to be subtle and nót overwhelming the real story. Pages and pages (50, 100, 200) of inner dialogue is really boring and the characters (‘real’ people) are (re-) acting first with their emotions in a certain situation and act on that, depending on their (maybe problematic) history, and until that situation is more or less solved, (for now) they can analyse their inner conflicts or considerations if and how to change their mindset. A very simplistic example: he/she meet him/her with maybe other people around and from that moment the inner dialogue is totally focused on: he/she feels something (attraction or the opposite) and no, that is not possible or good, but the feelings don’t lie, but the situation makes it too difficult to act on it and she/him doesn’t seems to feel the same or act opposite if there ís any positive feeling. In dangerous situations, people don’t spend (pages) on inner reflections, but act how, when and with what is possible. What I’m trying to say – as a reader – is, if the main story is mostly based on a Man vs Self- dialogue, you loose the opportunity to make a good basic story from which you build the characters and their personalities.
Yvonne
Honestly, that is not at all true. Man vs Self is not about self-dialogue in the slightest.
An excellent example of a wonderful man vs self story is Les Miserables.
I think you need to expand your reading horizons and start looking for what goes beyond you preconceived notion of what man vs self is.
Any novel that involves a character battling mental illness, any character that is struggling to become a better person, any novel containing a character that has a character fighting with themselves over choices are man vs self novels.
It isn’t just about self-dialogue in the slightest. Self-Dialogue is NOT what sets the conflict type.