On Conflict

Knot by Vidi

I worked hard on my Unholy Sacrifice story, and along the way I produced two other pieces of flash fiction.  The focus on shortening my wordcounts highlighted the need to produce tighter conflicts.  This revealed yet another weakness in my writing skills.

One thing I did was to write about conflict, and what I did was to render all conflict as dialogue.  Then I reduced the complexity of this dialogue to the simplest kind of back-and-forth I could devise.  These simple arguments covered a short range of positions and moves that seem to be the basic building blocks of conflict.

The basic exchange between two characters can be reduced to: "Gimme!" and "No!"  (Apologies to any parents who are now suffering flashbacks.)  The protagonist wants something, and the antagonist refuses to give it up.  This attempt to succeed that meets with resistance can take on variations in tone -- "Please, gimme?" and "No, sorry," -- but the dramatic shape is more or less the same.

The protagonist can become more aggressive and insistent.  The most basic rendition of this is, "Gimme, or else!"  The "else" is the important shift.  This isn't mere tonal variation; it is dramatic escalation.  The antagonist has a new situation to cope with.

The antagonist can also escalate.  The first step up is an opposing attempt to get something from the protagonist.  The simplest counter offer I can devise is, "No, now go away!"  As with the protagonist's insistence, this isn't a change in tone.  The protagonist is faced with a fresh situation.

Either side can capitulate at any time in this back-and-forth.  The antagonist can give up whatever the protagonist wants, and the protagonist can walk away.  Tonal variations abound: "Fine, I didn't want it anyway," "That's right, keep walking," "You didn't have to shout," and etc.

The final escalation available is retribution.  Parents may well shudder to hear the basic rendition: "I'm telling on you!"  Both protagonist and antagonist have this measure available to them.  I notice that capitulation is implicit in retribution: a character might hold out hope of getting whatever it was that he or she desired, but that's no longer the primary goal.  The primary goal is to punish the other character for daring to attempt, resist, insist, or oppose.

When a conflict plays out in narrative, the scale and scope of action doesn't need to match up with notions of dramatic escalation.  What I mean is, the protag can start off with a polite, "Gimme, please," and meet with armed opposition: "Die!" (Blam!)  That is not retribution on the part of the antagonist, it's merely insane levels of opposition.  Obviously, the personalities and capabilities of the two sides will change how each approaches a given conflict.

If the protagonist walks up to the antagonist and takes whatever it is, meeting no resistance or opposition, retribution is still possible.  "Gimme.  Hey, thanks!  That was easy."  (Alarm sounds, and armed security rushes in.)  "Oh, crap!"  In this case, the protag made an attempt that met with capitulation, followed quickly by a retributive strike.

So I worked out these patterns, then laid them out for my story.  I went through the story and rendered the dialogue exchanges back into action.  Some of it remained dialogue, other bits became fighting or maneuvering.  There are two other components to how I worked this all out, but those will wait for another post.