Welcome to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast. I'm K.M. Weiland, and I am here to take you

deep with story theory, writing techniques, and the incredible wisdom of story. I believe story is the

greatest power on this earth, and that as writers, we carry the torch of wielding that power with responsibility, passion,

and skill. There is no such thing as just a story. Today, it is my honor and my purpose

to help you write your best story, astound the world, and maybe change your life.

Hello and welcome. You are listening to the Helping W change your life.

Hello and welcome.

You are listening to the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

In fiction, every clash between characters comes down to a conflict management style.

And this is true whether you're writing a heated argument or a quiet standoff.

In real life, psychologists group these into five main approaches. We have competing,

collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding. Understanding how each works can help you write richer, more realistic character conflicts. Now, it's a common axiom in the writing world that conflict drives story,

and although the simplicity of this advice is necessarily limited, what it means is that plot

is created from a series of catalysts that

causes characters to respond. So basically, cause and effect. This is what then creates

the chain of story events, aka scenes, that engenders the larger story. At its simplest, story conflict is nothing more or less than

some kind of obstacle interfering with a character's forward progression. That said,

the word conflict itself does tend to most readily connote interpersonal conflict,

whether in the form of a fist fight or a passive

aggressive argument. Indeed, most people find this aspect of conflict to be the most obviously

entertaining and useful for plot, since it tends to inherently combine all three of the story's

major engines, plot, theme, and character. So this means that much of what

...