How to Create Conflict in a Story – 6 Best Steps to Hook Readers

Conflict is a necessary precursor to change and as a result, has existed since the dawn of humankind. Stories all revolve around a central conflict and this central conflict takes center stage when the job of creating a story is to be undertaken. Creating interesting conflict is the most important skill a writer can learn and as a result, many writers need to learn how to do it before they begin writing their story. Working on creating good conflict involves understanding the characters within your story. What compels them, what their motivations look like as well, and how they perceive the world around them. In this blog, we will learn how to create conflict in a story.

The Central conflict and it’s importance

The central conflict is the most important aspect of writing a good story and its utility in making the story engaging and interesting cannot be understated. Writing a good story involves dealing with different factors and variables such as different characters with deep and complex motivations. How they interact with the world around them, as well as what their lives have led up to till the point of conflict. The central conflict of the story is where most of your work as a writer lies.

Why is conflict necessary?

It’s necessary since conflict is the driving force behind the story, what compelled the villain to antagonize the hero? What caused the change within the status quo in the story that lead to the conflict occurring in the first place? These are all questions that need to be answered and without a central conflict a story can seem aimless which is something you must avoid as a writer, a writer must always write with a purpose and have a clear and concise view of what they want to achieve with the story.

6 Steps to How to Create Conflict in a Story

1. Create meaningful conflict

To create meaningful conflict in the story you must have the basics of the world within the story down to a T. The world in the story must be constructed with a deep understanding of its intricacies and complexities and as a result, the conflict must be constructed in such a way as to propel the plot to move forward. Making conflict engaging is something that is only possible when the writer understands the world and its characters.

And to successfully do this the writer must have a goal in mind for the whole story. A plan so to speak. Examples of good conflicts in stories would be the central conflict in Lord of the Rings where the writer J.R.R Tolkien wrote the world first and developed the characters and then decided to write the stories keeping in mind how the characters would behave within it. you can also hire a ghostwriter to create a meaningful conflict for your story. here are the Top 10 platforms to get affordable ghostwriting services

2. Avoiding mischaracterizations

Mischaracterizations are when a character behaves unlike how their personality up till that point would allow them to do so. When this happens the impact of actions undertaken by them loses their impact and as a result ruin the feel and tone of the story. This makes it harder for the audience to suspend their disbelief. We will discuss this in more detail shortly. Work on making your characters act according to how people are expecting. Thus you will be making the experience better. Unexpected changes in characters last minute near the middle are what ruin a story. Thus cheapening it resulting in less engagement with the whole book.

3. How to successfully allow for suspension of disbelief

Successfully suspending audience disbelief is by creating a believable world. Then work on creating a set of rules that apply to the world. You cannot be breaking these rules. To do this you must make a conscious effort in terms of writing and later book editing service to ensure that there are no plot inconsistencies or plot holes contained within the story.

4. Avoiding plot holes

These are narrative threads that you develop early only to abandon at the last moment, a common problem in many TV shows that have budgetary constraints, as a writer you must focus on writing the most perfect story with the best flow and the conflict needs to flow smoothly by avoiding any plot holes or cliffhangers. It’s not ideal to leave a story beat missing just because you did not have the time to finish it.

5. Avoiding generic plots

Top ghostwriting agency suggest avoiding having clichés or generic plot ideas when constructing your central conflict this is because you want your story to have a degree of originality contained within it, cliché’ are uninteresting and make the story seem like many others that have come before it. Many audiences put books away when they seem too much like what came before. People pay good money for having something original and not something uninspired and dull.

6. The introduction should be the prelude

The opening of the book should set the stage for what is to come later in the story.  The opening stages are when the story is picking up its pace and getting into gear for the main central conflict of the story. The Opening stages are necessary to define characters and their motivations as well as whatever is going to happen between them. The opening stages will be defining what will happen in the conflict and later in the concluding chapters. They will be setting the tone.

Conclusion

Some of the ideas behind crafting a good story are ubiquitous. They are simply having a good opener, a good conflict, and expanding upon it as much as possible while making it engage. We hope that the ideas explained are helpful in your progress as a writer.