How to Stay Focused on Your Story’s Central Conflict
How to Stay Focused on Your Story’s Central Conflict
Conflict in every scene. We’ve all heard this advice, and for good reason. Your protagonist has a goal—hopefully, an audacious and high-stakes goal that is difficult to achieve. “Difficult” is…
Read more…Keep Tensions High by NOT Resolving Your Character’s Relationship Conflict
Keep Tensions High by NOT Resolving Your Character’s Relationship Conflict
When it comes to story conflict, there are so many options to choose from. Power struggles, physical threats, moral dilemmas, failures, ticking clocks—they’re all great for ratcheting up tension, building…
Read more…Does Your Story Need a Hit of Organic Conflict? Look to Your Setting.
Does Your Story Need a Hit of Organic Conflict? Look to Your Setting.
Every writer’s mission is to pen a story that draws readers in, offering familiarity when it comes to certain genre expectations while also delivering something fresh so to be distinctive…
Read more…How to Uncover Your Character’s Inner Conflict
How to Uncover Your Character’s Inner Conflict
Conflict is a powerful element within the story and can be loosely categorized as either Outer (external) Conflict or Inner (internal) Conflict. The difference is that outer conflict is something…
Read more…Use Conflict to Target a Character’s Soft Spots
Use Conflict to Target a Character’s Soft Spots
Conflict is a key story ingredient, one we need a lot of, but this doesn’t mean quantity is better than quality. Fiction isn’t a video game; waves of bad guys…
Read more…THE CONFLICT THESAURUS, Volume 2: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles
THE CONFLICT THESAURUS, Volume 2: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles
A story where the character gets exactly what they want doesn’t make for good reading. But add villainous clashes, lost advantages, power struggles, and menacing threats…well, now we have the…
Read more…Need Conflict? Just Let Your Characters Talk
Need Conflict? Just Let Your Characters Talk
Story conflict has many purposes. It provides opportunities for failure and growth, elevates what’s at stake, and escalates emotion for the character and readers. We also know that our stories…
Read more…Activate the Power of Conflict in Your Story
Activate the Power of Conflict in Your Story
Good news – we’ve doubled the Conflict Thesaurus at One Stop for Writers, which means double the options when it comes to pumping our scenes with tension and plotting a…
Read more…Scenes vs. Sequels: What’s a Good Balance?
Scenes vs. Sequels: What’s a Good Balance?
We use the terms scene and sequel for so many definitions when it comes to writing that it can be difficult (not to mention confusing) to discuss Dwight Swain’s ideas…
Read more…Stoking Your Story’s Fire: Three Considerations for Revising Scene by Scene
Stoking Your Story’s Fire: Three Considerations for Revising Scene by Scene
By David G. Brown The Two Pillars of Storytelling After my first couple years as a fiction editor, I realized that all of my developmental feedback for clients fit into…
Read more…Need Compelling Conflict? Choose A Variety of Kinds
Need Compelling Conflict? Choose A Variety of Kinds
All right, hands up: What’s the one thing we can’t get enough of in fiction but we avoid like a screaming toddler in real life? Conflict. It’s ironic that something…
Read more…Does Your Story Need More Conflict? Tap this Powerful Source
Does Your Story Need More Conflict? Tap this Powerful Source
Conflict is such a versatile storytelling element. Not only will obstacles, adversaries, and stressors keep tension high and readers focused, they also provide characters with valuable opportunities to prove themselves,…
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