With the recent release of the 2nd Volume of The Conflict Thesaurus, Angela and I have been here, there, and everywhere, sharing everything we’ve learned about what conflict can do for your stories and characters. Because we don’t want you to miss a thing, we’ve collected them here, into one bursting-at-the-seams post full of conflict advice.
Posts, Podcasts, and PDFs
The Difference Between Conflict and Tension
Layering the 4 Levels of Story Conflict into Your Story
5 Commonalities Between Heroes and Villains
Directory of Trouble-Makers: 15 Possible Adversaries for Your Protagonist
Use Conflict to Raise Intrigue-Building Questions for Readers
Keep Tensions High by NOT Resolving Romantic Conflict
Make Sure Your Protagonist Has Agency
Character Arc Help: Why Your Character Needs to Fail (and How Conflict Can Help)
How Does Internal Conflict Fit into Character Arc?
5 Ways to Add Internal Conflict to a Story
Showing Internal Conflict to Readers
Vary Your Conflict Scenarios by Choosing from a Variety of Categories
Need Conflict? Just Let Your Characters Talk
Use Difficult Decisions to Test and Challenge Your Character
Optimize Your Conflict by Raising the Stakes
Find Conflict Organically Via the Setting
Tips for Crafting Conflict in Your Novel (podcast)
We’ve also uploaded some of the appendix tools from the book to our Tools page so you can access them. There, you can find a Character Conflict Response Flowchart that shows how to plot a character’s route to success of failure, along with an Internal Conflict Brainstorming Resource to aid in figuring out their main source of inner conflict.
Other Mother Lode Posts
If you found this collection of resources helpful, you might be interested in some of our other compilation posts.
How to Write about Character Occupations
How to Show (Not Tell) Character Emotions
How to Create Phenomenal First Pages
How to Write about a Character’s Emotional Wounds
How to Write about Your Character’s Pain
How to Choose & Employ Your Character’s Talents and Skills
How to Use Amplifiers to Stress Characters & Elevate Emotion
Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.