I’ve been stuck on the same scene for four days. It’s been driving me mad. This morning Gordon looked at me and said, “You’re a bundle of nerves.” Which is usually code for “Dear God, woman, you’re biting everyone’s head off and what is wrong with you?”
So we sat there and talked it out. I ended the emotional arc of the character in chapter 23. Five chapters before the finale.
Each story has two sources of tension: circumstance conflict and emotional conflict. Circumstance conflict, often called plot conflict, is driven by the external needs of the character. Soldier escaping from concentration camp, a lawyer struggling to win a case, a debutante trying to make a good match to save her family from financial ruin, all of those are conflicts of circumstance. They are forced onto the protagonist by environment and they put protagonist in danger of failure. The price of failure might be something as small as the loss of promotion or something as big as the loss of life, depending on the story.
Emotional conflict takes place inside the character. It arises from the wants and needs of the characters themselves. I prefer the stories where the emotional conflict directly opposes the conflict of circumstance. A young debutante who must find a husband to pull her family out of bankruptcy falls for a poor man. Oh noes! Angst!
These two conflicts, the internal and the external, need to coincide in finale to deliver the maximum emotional gratification for the reader. (John McClane saves his wife and they are back together. Also the evil reporter is punched in the nose.) Yours truly for some odd reason ended the emotional conflict in chapter 23 and the narrative ground to a halt.
For me the conflict progression is completely ingrained into writing – I don’t think of it unless I’m forced. In this case I was forced to analyze it and I shall now make some sort of sweets for my family to atone for days of grumpiness.
It took me four days to figure it out. Don’t be me.
“It took me four days to figure it out. Don’t be me.”
Too late. I don’t think in terms of the external/internal conflicts unless somebody bodily threatens me, or, like you, it goes off the rails in some way. I’m where you are, big time. Desperately trying to layer in the heroine’s emotions while only half understanding them. I got the hero dead to rights but the heroine — ack!!! She’s 17. I’m way older. I write kick butt heroines. She’s not one. I’m still not there yet and that deadline loometh on my first NY book. Freaking much? No. Worried. Okay, ya got me there. I know I’ll pull it out of the hat, but still it feels too white knuckle for my comfort.
Hope everything works out for your dilemma. Glad you could talk it out with Gordon. I’m doing the same with the Spouse. Sometimes he has incredibly cogent insights. If not, I’m turning to the single malt.
P.S. You ever need to run ideas past someone, give me a shout. I’m bloody brilliant with other folks’ stories. It’s just mine that torture me to death.
We should trade drafts when we’re done.
Sounds like a plan. I’m currently revising based on the comments of a primary teen-centric beta reader. Manuscript is due Nov 1 and I’ll be sending it out to two other betas before that. That might not work for your schedule. If it does, I’d love your input. Another set of author eyes is always needed.
Ship yours over when you feel you’re ready. I think you have my e-mail. As usual, I’ll disavow any knowledge of what I’ve read, even for chocolate.
I want to read it
tell us the name of the book once is out so we can check it out 
Hi
Thank you for sharing Ilona.
There is great wisdom contained in this excellent blog post.
(I cut & pasted it to my Writing folder under Conflict advice by Ilona Andrews).
All the best,
@RKCharron
xoxo
Is that the apartment scene?
hmm. Anyways, I have complete faith that you can do another totally awesome scene. At least you figured it all out in less than a week. Really, that’s not bad
Interesting post. Well done for figuring it out, even if it took longer than you anticipated. One hurdle down!
…I think you just identified why one of my particular WiPs “feels” the strongest, right now. That emotional conflict most diametrically opposes the circumstantial conflict.
Thanks for giving me something to chew on!
And here I thought it was the apartment that was broken.
So…who’s nose is Kate gonna punch? Saiman’s? Ted’s? Nick’s?
Curran’s?
(That was a great scene in Die Hard. Priceless.)
Please, please let it be Saiman. Curran would be good punch-bag material too, but then he would have had to do something bad. And that would be… well, bad.
It’s funny, Ilona. I write reviews for webcomics (I always try to be respectful; I know how much effort goes into webcomicking; in many ways it is akin to writing, especially with the story-form comics), and I go through that very problem myself. I’ll try to write up a review on something, find myself rewriting the same paragraph over and over and over, and finally give up and try to review something else. I’ve Word files filled with the corpses of partly-written reviews.
For that matter, I’ve a finished novel in the process of a rewrite that I’ve not touched in over six months. I’ve gotten half of the prologue rewritten (and know what I need to do with the antagonist in question – I’ve even planned out an entire story-aspect that didn’t exist in the original story and which integrates this antagonist with the primary antagonist for the story) and… couldn’t do anything. The Muse refused to cooperate.
I’m actually running into that with another story I’m writing now (an illustrated e-novel I’m posting on my website), but that’s more trying to figure out what happens in the scene and how to describe specific events without going into an information dump.
Anyway, good luck with your future writing. I’ve rather enjoyed your novels (I was halfway through the fourth Magic book, put it down, and went to the bookstore and bought the rest of the Kate Daniels series so I could learn the rest of the storyline; not that I had difficulty following it, but because you ignited a need to read the rest of the series first) and look forward to the next one.
Rob H., Tangents Reviews
That alright. We all have times like this but it will just pass.