Though you may love and care about your protagonist, there needs to be a central conflict in your story. You must get them into trouble.
Peace is lovely, contentment divine, but they don’t make for compelling stories. If your protagonist is already in their happily ever after, nothing will inspire them to grow or transform further. For your protagonist to have a quest worth reading, and for the lives of your readers to change in response, there must be conflict.
A central conflict is the main struggle explored in a story, where the desires of the protagonist clash with an internal or external obstacle. In this article, I’ll provide you with some guidelines to craft a rich central conflict, and lastly, I’ll give you a Story Weapon to inspire more confidence in crafting conflicts.
A central conflict is the primary struggle in a story where a protagonist’s deepest desires clash with an inescapable internal or external obstacle. It forces characters out of their comfort zones and exposes their “false solutions” — the wrong ways they try to fix their lives before achieving true transformation. Use the writing exercise inside to discover the deep, personal convictions that will drive your story’s central argument.
Mirror your protagonist
Character suggests plot and, at the same time, the plot defines your characters.
We understand characters by the choices they make, and those choices come together to create a comprehensible plot. When you’re considering your central conflict, it must be deeply related to the wants and needs of your protagonist.
Without a close connection to the central character, the conflict can feel too generic or even avoidable altogether. Just like real-life challenges and triumphs are uniquely suited to each person, the journey your protagonist embarks on must be built just for them.
“Fairy tales begin with conflict because we all begin our lives with conflict. We are all misfits for the world, and somehow we must fit in…”
– Jack Zipes
Let’s look at the example of Robin Hood. This is a story that’s been told in various forms throughout history. In modern iterations, we usually see him go up against the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John. All his exploits, such as winning the archery competition in disguise and charming Maid Marion, are part of his conflict with the oppressive regime of the antagonists.
Through his actions, we see an argument for freedom and evidence of its virtues in his skill. He’s a hero, not by choice, but because the life of an outlaw is naturally opposed to the crown. Because of Robin Hood’s natural desire to be free, he has no choice but to live as a rebel. The conflict mirrors the protagonist. He ends up freeing himself and the kingdom.
Your protagonist’s desires will point you in the right direction for your central conflict. Just as the turmoil in our own lives tests our mettle and teaches us lessons, the conflict in your story hones your protagonist.
If they strive for greatness, make the conflict about the perils of fame and the illusory nature of immortality. If they want power, show us how far they’ll go to get it.
Their desire will also give you clues to the antagonists and obstacles they will clash against. Your antagonists, on a primal level, want the same thing your protagonist does, but they approach it in a different way, usually taking a more destructive or self-centered path. This shared goal raises the stakes in your conflict.
Bring home the war
The central conflict must be specific to your protagonist and inevitably a part of their life.
As Gil Scott Heron wrote about revolution: “You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip out for beer during commercials . . .”
The conflict strikes hardest when your protagonist encounters disruption in their own home and makes the call to adventure impossible to refuse. We all harbor hopes that we’re heroes too, but even the bravest warriors won’t fight unless they have to.
One way to do this is to break the status quo that you’ve introduced at the beginning of your story. Life may be wonderful or even just tolerable at first. The conflict has to make the protagonist’s situation worse until life is unbearable without addressing it.
If the protagonist needs to, say, put on a mask and wrestle like Jack Black in Nacho Libre, plaster the town with the face of the reigning champion he will be going up against. Let your protagonist burn with jealousy and desire. The universe seems to conspire to push Nacho into action as the monastery is struggling to feed the children, and there just so happens to be an advertisement for an amateur wrestling match.
The refusal of the call to adventure is a classic part of a story. By making sure the conflict is actively impacting the life of the protagonist, you give them no choice but to accept destiny. It’s why so many Disney characters and superheroes are orphans. The struggles of the quest are too daunting if comfort is still an option. Like a bird with fledgling chicks, push your characters out of the nest and show them how to fly.
Conflict and the false solution
One of the most useful things to understand about central conflict is that your protagonist will spend most of the story trying to resolve it the wrong way.
This is not a flaw in your story. It is the natural path of a story.
The false solution is the approach your protagonist believes will resolve their central conflict and help them get what they want, but it actually keeps them from achieving their goal.
The character who feels worthless pursues acknowledgement, believing that enough success will finally make them feel adequate. The character who fears abandonment controls everyone around them, believing that if they can just manage the situation tightly enough, no one will ever leave. These strategies are not irrational. They make a certain kind of sense given what the character believes about themselves and the world. That is precisely what makes them so difficult to relinquish.
The central conflict deepens as the false solution fails, and fails, and fails again, each failure costing the protagonist something they cannot get back. The plot is essentially a series of increasingly catastrophic demonstrations that the false solution does not work. By the time the protagonist is ready to try something different, they have usually lost enough to understand what the conflict was actually about. That loss is what earns their transformation. And the transformation is what the reader has been waiting for since page one.
Your story weapon: Find your passion
Start with what you feel strongly about. You may not have much of a story yet, or perhaps you have outlined a great deal but it doesn’t feel alive to you yet. That flatness is often a sign that the work hasn’t yet found its argument. When you get curious about your own convictions, about the things you believe without quite knowing why, you’ll start to find the conflict your story actually wants to inhabit.
Once you know what you believe, turn it over and look at the other side. Not to dismiss it, but to genuinely understand it.
- Why would someone believe otherwise?
- What kind of life would lead a person there?
- What would it feel like to live inside that opposing worldview and be entirely convinced of its rightness?
That gap between what you believe and what you can honestly imagine someone else believing is where your central conflict lives. Not in the safety of your own convictions, but in the uncomfortable space between yours and someone else’s.
To find that space, try this.
✒️ Writing Exercise
Set a timer for five minutes and write without stopping on the prompt: “I feel strongly about . . .”
Do not pause to consider whether what you are writing is interesting or appropriate or useful. Let it come out uncensored and see what arrives on the page.
When you write honestly, you will likely find something that surprises you. An unsettled grievance. A question you have been circling for years without landing on. A belief you hold so deeply that you have never quite examined it directly. These are the seeds of a controlling idea. Plant them in the soil of your imagined world and see what grows.
You will also likely see a connection between what you feel strongly about, and the story you are working on. This is because the desire to write is connected to the desire to evolve by resolving an inner dilemma.
Now, frame what you wrote as a single, arguable statement. For example: “I feel strongly that we should all be treated equally.”
Notice a possible opposing argument to this: “Criminals and murderers don’t deserve to be treated equally.”
Do you see how it is your job to play both sides of this argument with equal integrity? And by doing so, your story will lead you to a deeper truth about this seemingly unsolvable issue.
The strongest stories emerge when conflict is personal, unavoidable, and deeply tied to the transformation of the protagonist. Join one of my next workshops: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day to deepen your understanding of story craft and develop conflicts that truly resonate with your readers.
