Conflict Thesaurus Entry: Physical Exhaustion

Conflict is very often the magic sauce for generating tension and turning a ho-hum story into one that rivets readers. As such, every scene should contain a struggle of some kind. Maybe it’s an internal tug-of-war having to do with difficult decisions, morals, or temptations. Or it possibly could come from an external source—other characters, unfortunate circumstances, or the force of nature itself.

It’s our hope that this thesaurus will help you come up with meaningful and fitting conflict options for your stories. Think about what your character wants and how best to block them, then choose a source of conflict that will ramp up the tension in each scene. For the full entry of this and 200+ additional conflict scenarios, check into our best-selling resources: The Conflict Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles, Volumes 1 and 2.

Physical Exhaustion

Category: Increased pressure and ticking clocks, failures and mistakes, duty and responsibilities, losing an advantage, no-win situations, miscellaneous challenges

Examples:
The character’s body being pushed past it’s limits due to exertion
Being depleted due to poor nutrition or starvation
An illness that ravages the character’s strength…

Minor Complications:
Clumsiness
Sustaining an injury due to slow reaction time (a cut, a burn, etc.)
Dropping something of value and damaging it…

Potentially Disastrous Results:
Injuring another person due to inattention, losing a grip on something, or their strength giving out
Suffering a serious fall or injury
Forcing others to endanger themselves to perform a rescue…

Possible Internal Struggles (Inner Conflict):
Putting their own welfare above others vs. adhering to responsibility
Insecurity over being perceived as weak or unworthy by those who matter
Self-loathing and shame at their own weakness if this situation is because they didn’t take care of their health, or they are out of shape, etc.)…

People Who Could Be Negatively Affected: The character themselves, people who are reliant on the character (family, teammates, people who are caught in a difficult predicament who must work together to survive it, etc.)

Resulting Emotions: anger, anguish, defeat, defiant, despair, desperation, determination, dread…

Personality Flaws that May Make the Situation Worse: abrasive, cocky, grumpy, haughty, hostile, irrational, melodramatic…

Positive Outcomes: 
Characters sometimes need to be brought down a peg and realize that everyone struggles. This can allow them to have greater empathy for others, and a better appreciation for those in a similar situation.
A character who refuses help out of a belief they are beyond such a need or because of a past hurt will find themselves challenged on the validity of such a belief, either learning the power in community and teamwork, or giving them an opportunity to move past trust issues by being forced to accept help and thereby seeing not everyone is bad…

If you’re interested in other conflict options, you can find them here. And for more ideas on how to describe physical exhaustion through your character’s behaviors, actions, and visceral sensations, take a look at our guide, The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression.

Use Conflict to Transform Your Story

Readers have a lot of choices when it comes to selecting books, so make it easy for them to choose yours. Conflict will help you deliver a fresh story premise every time, drawing readers in through meaningful challenges that reveal a character’s innermost needs, fears, weaknesses, and strengths.

To assist you, we’ve created a two-volume resource with 225 possible conflict events. Each volume contains expert advice on how to use conflict to improve your story along with a plethora of scenarios to challenge your characters.

For more information, read up on these GOLD and SILVER editions. You can also view the books at Goodreads to see what other authors are saying about them.