🥑 are you feeling conflicted?

✅ Premise

✅ Story challenges

✅ Designing principle

✅ Best character

To round out the series, let’s talk about conflict.

“Who fights whom over what?”

Who: your best character. If the conflict doesn’t involve them, they’re not your best character.

If your best character is a baker who’s chilling in a city under siege, the conflict isn’t “the city fights another army over control of the city.” The conflict could be “a baker fights the city’s constabulary over the morale of the citizens.”

fights whom: The best character’s opponent. Importantly, this person should want the same thing as the best character, whether that’s to find the Ark of the Covenant (Raiders of the Lost Ark) or to find victory in a hunt aboard a stranded spaceship (Alien).

The opponent directly opposes the best character. If they don’t, they’re not the opponent.

over what: This is the meat of the conflict, the idea that our story pursues until its resolution. If this idea is resolved halfway through the story, it’s not the main conflict. Indiana Jones finds the Ark of the Covenant before the end of the movie, sure, but he doesn’t have it until the climactic scene with those special effects that still gross me out. The conflict continues until it ends, and then the story wraps itself up.

Who fights whom over what?

Answer this, and you’ll have the foundation of your story.

There’s so much more we could talk about, of course. But these elements will tell you if your idea has legs. So dream big, explore the possibilities, and lay those foundations for a killer story.

Looking for feedback on your prose? Reply to this email with an excerpt from one of your scenes and I may use it in a future Bite.

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^{Avocado Bites is a publication of Avocado Tree Press, LLC, that helps you revise your stories one bite at a time. We love working with indie and traditionally published authors on fiction manuscripts—and if that’s you, welcome to our target audience.}

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