I’ve been listening to a series of lessons designed for eighth graders on story structure. Really, it’s quite fascinating. I’ve taken so many courses and workshops on writing, as you can imagine, through Romance Writers of America, classes at the Tulsa Community College, classes at Oklahoma State University, and at conferences at Oklahoma Writers Federation.
I’ve read shelves of books on story structure. Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation and Conflict. Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas, Beginnings, Middles and Ends by Nancy Kress, How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler, How to Write Bestselling Fiction by Dean Koontz, and so many more.
But I have never heard conflict described quite like this:
You have a Central Conflict–that is the main conflict that drives the plot all the way to the end of the novel. Then you have secondary conflicts. Of those conflicts you can have External and Internal Conflict. External Conflict can be divided into three different kinds: Character vs. character, character vs. nature, or character vs. society. Internal conflict is character vs. self, (self being broad–like emotions such as lack of trust, confidence, fearing a lack of good morals, etc. They didn’t delve into the self). I thought it was good since the lessons took another angle. Although I did end up making a Power Point presentation to expand on other areas that I thought were lacking.
What they called the central conflict, I always called the red string–or the main conflict that wasn’t resolved until the resolution. All the minor conflicts and subplots were resolved, the table is cleared, loose ends are tied up–except for that big conflict.
Interesting.
