Thursday 10 December 2015

Man/woman against .... (complete as applicable)

I blog quite a lot about the importance of conflict in fiction but what type of conflict you use varies from genre to genre.
Romance novels, for instance, require the primary conflict to involve two people struggling with a romantic relationship, mysteries require a conflict where a crime or disappearance must be solved and what makes a thriller is a high stakes conflict, the risk of harm or death to the protagonist and/or those he/she cares about.
The conflict in science fiction can include issues like the morality of creating artificial life or cloning whereas fantasy is about good versus evil. Then there is dystopian fiction where the conflict is with the nightmarish world around the characters.
More ‘literary’ stories (although quite what that means I am not sure, all stories are literary) revolve around the internal conflict and how the character deals with it.
Whatever your genre, it’s conflict that brings your stories to life.

John Dean

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