Conflict and Risk
Your primary goal as the storyteller is to arouse in your readers a fundamental change in the way they perceive the world. The most
effective way for a storyteller to learn how to do this is by learning what conflict, risk and resolution are and how to use them effectively.
Before proceeding further, let's define some terms:
Protagonist: the main character of the story, the character with whom the reader identifies.
Antagonist: the character who stands in the way of the protagonist achieving the goal. This "character" is not necessarily a bad guy but
more a representation of the obstacles that stand in the way of the conflict being resolved.
Conflict: Sometimes it is stated as the thing the protagonist wants and cannot have. Sometimes we can look at it as whatever it is that is
going to cause the action of the story to follow a certain path. There are 4 basic kinds of conflict. The protagonist in conflict with him or
herself. The protagonist in conflict with a personal enemy. The protagonist against the state. The protagonist in conflict against some
great ineffable (fate).
Action: This is the development of the story line, the things the protagonist will do in order to resolve the conflict.
Risk: Without risk, there is nothing at stake for the protagonist so the action will not have much meaning. You can heighten the action of a
story by maintaining a level of risk that crystallizes or captures at each stage the import or meaning for the protagonist of the need for
resolution.
Without struggle, life is meaningless. In the same way, characters must struggle against something or someone (those 4 conflicts
above). Your job, as the storyteller, is to shape a believable story in which the actions of the protagonist directed toward the resolution of
the conflict are credible without being predictable, are challenging without seeming arbitrary, and are captivating to the point that your
readers are transported into the world of your story. When they finish the story, they should be changed, one might even say, radically
changed, either emotionally by the intensity of the feelings you were able to express or intellectually by the ways in which you have altered
their perceptions of the world. In an ideal situation, both would occur.
This resolution of the conflict exists between two extremes-death or the happy ending. Whatever it is, the path to getting there, not only in
terms of a journey, though that is the most common way of thinking about it, but it can be less epic in nature, needs to be strewn with a
series of risks, a seemingly greater and greater number of insurmountable risks, all of which, in their meaning encapsulate the essence
of the story. (We must always remind ourselves that everything in the story has to be in service to the story; nothing can be arbitrary or
random, that even the irrational logic of a madman has its own logic; you can use a madman as your protagonist and allow him to
behave to the ends of his madness so long as the internal logic of the story is maintained.)
Our challenge as writers is to sharpen our perceptions of human motivation but not in a clinical sense. This is a surefire way of not
finding what is key to any story's success-- that characters exist in stories not as embodiments of psychological states, but as actors, as
those who act. They must do things, react to things, be moved and frightened and angered and desire and want to take those feelings
and do something. They must want to kill, to run away, to steal, to protect, to rape and pillage, to cause harm, to right wrongs, and they
have to be able to fail and fail and fail at whatever it is they want by taking greater and greater chances to get what they want and maybe
go off in too many wrong directions until, when every dragon you can imagine has been slain, they find what they have been looking for,
or lose what they no longer need. They have found love or died protecting it. They have tried to save themselves and not been able to but
left a legacy. They have killed the king to save the kingdom. They have climbed the mountain, finally made it to the top in order to find the
secret to life. These are among the stories we start with. This is where we begin to learn how to create conflict. We take these basic
conflicts and we practice and practice and practice them until one day, if we have really worked at this, we come to the realization that we
know now how to do this so well that we can create our own stories. We have mastered these old techniques to the point that we need
new challenges. That is when the storyteller begins to create from his or her own understanding of the world. At this point you will search
for the unexpected because then you have mastered your craft and if I may say so will want to find the highest and lowest reaches of your
creative talents.