Conflict
By Vitora
I’ve been
in so many role plays that I can’t even name them all—or even all the
characters I’ve used (on average, I use one new character per role play). Most of them were started at Starfire’s
Redwall Forum, and all—yes, all—of them
didn’t go anywhere. They fizzled out
after three pages or so.
What was
missing? I can answer that in one word: conflict. The characters didn’t do much, and what they
did do was in perfect accord with what the other characters were doing.
Bo-ring!
Here’s a
little example (actually, I made this up, and it wasn’t easy—I can’t figure out
how we managed it so effortlessly) of what a typical Starfire’s—in other words,
“host-of-newbies”—role play looked like:
Violet: Violet
walked down the path (NOTE: There was so much walking on paths, it wasn’t even
funny) and came to a tree. She sat down
and opened her pack.
“Mmmm!” the squirrel said, taking
out a piece of bread. “Good Redwall
food!”
MarlfoxTaggerung: A
tall otter strode out of the trees.
“Hello, miss,” he said, tipping his tail to his head.
Violet: Violet
smiled kindly at the newcomer. “Sit
down, please, sir! Have some food.”
MarlfoxTaggerung: “I
think I’ll do just that. Thankee, miss,”
said the otter. “My name is Jared. What’s yours?”
Violet: “I’m
Violet.” The squirrel looked up calmly
as the sound of crashing echoed all around them. “Hmm, I wonder what that is?”
MarlfoxTaggerung: Jared
shrugged. “Probably just some vermin.”
Ferlor: OOC: Can I join? IC: Two weasels spotted the otter and
squirrel.
Violet: OOC:
Sure! IC: Violet stood up and said to
Jared, “Hey, maybe they’ll try to kill us.”
MarlfoxTaggerung: Again,
Jared shrugged. “Let’s get our weapons,
just in case. They’re probably not
hostile, though.”
Ferlor: One of the weasels came up to them. “I’d fight with you, but I’m too nice…”
Okay,
okay. Enough with that sickening
mess. (Heh, exaggerating is fuuun!) Now you’re all yawning right now and
wondering when I’m going to get to the point of this article, right? Right.
So here’s
the deal: if you want good stories, you’ll have to slather a generous amount of
conflict over the whole thing. Don’t get
me wrong—I don’t mean that you need to have every other sentence be the slaying
of a dragon, or an epic battle, or even the execution of a minor
character. Dialogue serves quite well as
minor conflict. Take, for example,
this. It’s a modified version of the
above “role play”.
Violet seated herself against a tree. The squirrel glanced up sharply as a tall
otter strode out of the trees.
“What do you want?” Violet snapped,
teeth bared in a vicious snarl.
The otter took a step backwards, his
eyes wide. “N-n-nothin’, marm. Just—”
“Well, get off my territory!” the
squirrel growled. The otter suddenly
seemed to gather some measure of confidence.
“Don’t you think you can push me
around, missy,” he retorted, poking at his own chest with a hefty paw. “Jared’s not one to be shoved around
by…girls.”
“Girls?!” Violet shrieked, leaping
to her paws and yanking her sword free of its sheath…
A bit over
the top, but still—you should see now that dialogue is an excellent tool for
adding conflict to the recipe. There
are, of course, other methods for adding conflict, but before I go there, I
want to let you in on a little secret.
Every work
of fiction has its slow moments (save short stories, I suppose, which, if
written properly, should be full of action the entire way through). As an author—who creates a work—and a
reader—who knows how nasty those slow parts can be…and how one just might skim
through those parts, perhaps missing some valuable information (*is
guilty*)—you are under obligation to eliminate as many of the jading sections
of your story as possible. If that means
reordering something so that important facts are dropped by a different
character or in a different section of narrative, then so be it. I have read so many works (mostly
fan-fiction) in which the writer had completely irrelevant scenes that I
completely glossed over that now I double, sometimes even triple, check to make
sure that I don’t have any of those.
Another
thing to think about is this: “Dialogue in a story is the juiciest parts of the
conversation, and those parts alone.” (My writing tutor said that.) It’s so true—I mean, dialogue that sounds
like the first example is just plain dumb.
Unless you’re planning on dropping a clue that absolutely has
to have those exact
words as build-up, then delete it. Yep,
highlight it and press delete. Keep your
dialogue trimmed down to the significant sentences.
All right, back to conflict.
While dialogue is, of course, an
excellent tool for adding conflict, it is certainly not the only one. Actions, too, can clash; for instance, a
motion by one character can make another character mad. The first example that comes to mind for that
is gestures made by someone from a foreign country that mean something quite
different in the other person’s culture (did you know that in one African
country, sticking your tongue out means you’re declaring war?). Another way that action can cause conflict
is—to establish a cartoon picture in your head—when two characters try to run
the same way at the same time. Ouch.
And then you can blow that up onto a
larger scale. As mentioned earlier,
battles, executions, dragon slayings, and an almost infinite host of other big
events grab a reader’s attention—but, if sustained for an extended amount of
time, they can also make the reader throw down the book or close the Internet
page and sit there yawning.
So when you’re writing a story,
working on your novel, or posting in a role play, don’t forget one of the most
important elements of fiction: conflict.
Otherwise…
*snores*