by Peggy Bechko
Have you really given thought to conflict? It’s the life blood of your story creation.
I mean think about it. When people have something exciting/terrifying/ dangerous happen to them and they survive to return home to their regular lives what do they talk about? Their regular lives of the out-of-the-ordinary thing that happened? The fact of the matter is, people generally relive those scary/exciting times even when it’s something they might like to put behind them (like a factory explosion, or wartime experiences of a soldier or the collapse of the towers on 9/11). Why are we like this? A psychologist might be able to tell you but I can’t. The obsession people have with thrills is something that’s been around forever. Consider the Romans, the Spartans…us!
But conflict isn’t just one person batting another over the head. There’s all kinds of conflict. And even if you’re the mellow sort who avoids conflict in your life, you can’t avoid it altogether because sometimes it’s brought to you. Additionally it would be silly to try to avoid conflict in your storytelling because you’d end up with no story.