In life, we avoid conflict despite that it is inevitable we will face it throughout our lives, where as; in our fiction we welcome it into our story, and even depend on it.  There are two kinds of conflict:  external and internal. External conflicts are those forces that happen to and around us, such as natural disasters, job downsizing, the economy, political warfare, current events and so on.  Usually, we do not start them or control them, but we find a way to navigate through them.  In contrast, internal conflicts live within us. In fact, some claim there are really ONLY internal conflicts because external conflicts are irrelevant without our reactions to them.  When we face self-doubt, grief, guilt, indecision, fear, self-pity, insecurity or competing needs and desires, we are experiencing internal conflict. And this is something over which we do and should have control.

In The Art of Plotting  in the August/September 2022  edition of The Writer ; author Jack Smith writes :  Our desires drive us and so should our characters’ desires. Our desires form the plots of our lives. , meaning the desires living within us drive our thoughts and actions.  To further support this idea he quotes mystery and literary writer, Grant Tracey; Good novels mix the inner and the outer. The former is the protagonist’s emotional and psychological dimension, the latter the actions that make up the plot-line. Tracey advocates for a thrilling plot but also a character that undergoes some kind of change or realization. 

Change can’t happen without inner conflict.  A strong character arc will transform the character as she navigates her way through the turmoil in her inner and outside worlds, through the decisions she makes, the actions she takes and the realizations she arrives at as she reflects on those decisions and actions. Through her pain, mistakes, perceptions of how others view her, and of the lessons she learns, she arrives at a conclusion about herself or the world in which she lives.

To this point, bestselling Author and Writing Coach, Angela Ackerman, discusses the importance of inner conflict in our stories, in her Writers Helping Writers ; How to Uncover Your Character’s Inner Conflict:

 Internal Conflict Is Relatable. It draws readers in because it’s a type of struggle common to us all.Confusion over what to do, feel, and believe, can make us feel exposed. To find a path forward, we must weigh and measure personal beliefs, ideas, and needs. Characters, like us, must do the same, and as they look within themselves for answers, they reveal their vulnerability and humanity to readers.

To illustrate this idea,  we see in L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, how it takes a long journey beyond the rainbow, an end to the wicked witch’s control over others, and an appreciation for friendship, wisdom, courage and heart, for the story’s heroine, Dorothy to realize what she sought, she had all along.  Had she continued to “run in place”, held captive to the ongoing turmoil within, she may never have come to her “end of story resolution” in which change brought her full circle, back to the place she first started; only now, with a sharper awareness and deeper appreciation for what and who was important all along.

When our characters resolve their dilemmas they change.  A question may be answered, a fear may be conquered, a desire may be filled, or they simply change their view. Transformations come in many sizes, shapes and colors, but no matter what they look like, their impact is always life-altering in some way.  It is our injurious decisions and indecision that debilitates us, limits us or holds us back and it is the transformation we consciously and subconsciously seek that makes our inner conflicts so necessary and valuable, both in our fiction and in real life.

 In Eddie Pinero’s “World Within” podcast, he talks about the power we have over our lives if we could understand the control we have over how we handle the outside world and it’s complications when he says;  Our worlds are defined from within and merely validated externally.

Moreover, in Schindler’s List, a story based on author Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark, Keneally tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who at first hides behind his Nazi identity before he gradually transforms into the liberator who saves more than one thousand Polish-Jewish refugees by employing them in his factory during World War II.  Schindler changed completely when he gained control of the inner conflict swelling within as the paralleling external conflict confronted him.

Angela Ackerman further suggests when writing your story to; think about what your character believes on the deepest level—his thoughts about right and wrong, good and evil. Then introduce an event that challenges those ideas. If his inner turmoil surrounding this issue or theme is what the story is really about, if it’s something he could struggle with for the story’s entirety, it may be a good choice for his story-level internal conflict.

By the time the storm within us subsides, and it always does, there will be change. Whether that change is a full circle revelation similar to Dorothy’s when she landed safely back in her own bed surrounded by those she loved, or an identity awareness of purpose in life as Oskar Schindler experienced when he shifted from his identification with monsters to his sympathy for the monsters’ sufferers, that change alters us . And so, instead of avoiding conflict the way we do, I suggest to find a deeper appreciation for and use of the inner conflicts that will inevitably come and go, not just within the fiction we write and read that keeps us turning the pages long after we should have gone to bed, but within the real life stories we author and live every day.