This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the Helping Writers

Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode,

Conflict in Fiction,

What it really is, and why it's important to plot.

Conflict is one of these central engines of story. We've all heard

it, no conflict, no story. On the surface that makes total sense, but I find there can be a lot of confusion around the word conflict.

What is conflict in fiction really?

What is its purpose?

What does it look like in a scene?

And how can you use it in all types of stories.

Years ago I remember reading an interview with a famous author in which he explained that one of his

secrets to writing a successful story

was to double check that he had included conflict on every page. I dutifully

underlined the sentence but it always confused me a little bit.

What about pages that described the character's travels?

Or what about pages where the dialogue was mostly relational.

What about love scenes?

For that matter, what about whole stories

in which, practically speaking, not much happens?

To high altitude examples off the top of my head, David Guttersons east of the mountains,

and Charles Fraser's Cold Mountain. These two acclaimed novels are both literary style stories that are mostly existential in nature.

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