This is K.M. Wyland and you're listening to the 250th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

I'm currently in that very pleasant cycle of being consistently busy with several long-term projects, promo, research, and editing, which means there's

not much new to report for which some of you may now be heaving a sigh of relief.

I'm just enjoying some comparatively stressed less days of

rewarding work before diving into the hecticness of the annotated Jane Eyre's launch

at the end of the month.

The latest post in this series on my blog is how to tell if your protagonist needs a better

story goal.

It talks about why it's so important for your

protagonists to have a story goal and why you may have inadvertently neglected to give

him one. To find the post visit my site at helping writers become

authors.com. And now I hope you enjoy this week's podcast entitled Most Common

Writing Mistakes Part 31, one-dimensional conflict.

Conflict is one of the most essential ingredients of fiction.

When a character with a goal meets an obstacle to that

goal, conflict ensues. Story ensues. But one-dimensional conflict isn't enough to plumb the depths of a story's

potential. So just what is one-dimensional conflict. When conflict is coming at the

protagonist from just one direction, the story runs a very real risk of

becoming flat. Everything in the story will be focused on this one goal slash obstacle.

And while that may be fine in a short story, it's going to create a couple nasty little

problems in longer works.

When all your story's conflict is arising from just one source, for example,

...