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"Conflict builds character. Crisis defines it."
Steven V. Thulon
"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
Thomas Paine.
Hello, this is Joy , this week’s Drama editor. Our topic is inner conflict as it applies to character development in fiction.
“The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”
William Faulkner |
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
In my last newsletter, the subject was physical fights. This week we are going to discuss internal fights or fights within a character, sometimes called the inner conflict.
Good conflict results from two equally strong opposites. The same is true for the emotional fights inside a character; therefore, two equally strong opposites need to exist within the character you, the writer, will create. These opposites can be a mixture of clashing feelings like anger, hatred, and love, and incompatible goals, desires, uncertainty, pressure, uneasiness and so on. An inner conflict may also be between what a character wants and what he thinks he wants.
Most inner conflicts are the outcomes of a character’s misunderstanding of his self. When people cannot get what they want or they cannot get their needs met, they will adjust to the present circumstances by developing mask-like, shadow parts in their personalities. Psychologists call these adjustments or mask-like parts sub-personalities. In time, these sub-personalities, especially when they are formed in childhood, become glued to the person, and they fool their creator-character as being his true personality. Just think and ask, within yourselves, how many parts of you are who you really are, and if those parts are set in your personality by your parents or other circumstances at one time or another in your life.
These sub-personalities cause the weaknesses, imperfections, quirks, vices, and sometimes strengths inside a person. On the plus side, they push the plot forward, and they humanize the character, so that your readers can empathize with him. At the same time, these sub-personalities cause the tension to stay high and keep the conflict going.
As to the resolution of the inner conflict in a story, the first step is recognition. Recognition begins when the character notices his mask-like parts, even though he may be unnerved and intimidated when he first faces them. Sometimes, you might incite your protagonist or secondary character to detect and recognize his sub-personality or a variation of it in another character, since seeing the faults of others is easier on most human beings.
Once the mask-like part is recognized, observing it in action is the next step. A character sometimes may observe himself first and then recognize what he is doing and why. This is usually followed by the character’s transcending his sub-personality and thus resolving the inner conflict.
This is important: If a conflict is introduced in a story, it has to be resolved. Readers expect that from the writers, and if any conflict--internal or external--is not resolved, readers will feel cheated.
Inner conflict is the most difficult type of conflict to express, because no writer can truly capture an entire person. The story is even more difficult to write if a character’s inner conflict is also the story’s central conflict. Willy Loman's character, in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, offers such a conflict. Willy struggles between his dreams and his reality and between his true personality and circumstances. His personality wavers between being the exhausted, broken, old man and his livelier, optimistic, boastful earlier self with grandiose daydreams. These two clashing sides of him result in failure and drive him to a violent death.
If you are a novice writer, making the inner conflict the central conflict of the story can be a daunting task, unless you have a vast knowledge of human psychology. Another pitfall for a novice writer can be to limit the expression of inner conflict to the internal dialogue. Internal dialogue can be important; however, when it is the only means to show inner conflict, it can be inadequate and quite dull. The best way to show inner conflict is to attach it to the external and interpersonal conflicts and circumstances and by letting the character take action based on his inner urges.
Cyrano de Bergerac tries to overcome the shame of ugliness or rather his being unacceptable by becoming unique through brashness and exaggerated heroisms. An example to this is when he crosses the enemy lines to deliver his poetically written love letters.
The movie American Beauty first shows Lester as the perfect husband who has a perfect family in a perfect neighborhood, but this perfection is only on the outside. The happy family and the perfect neighborhood is a snake pit of sorrows, and Lester suffers from a misdirected longing for youth, which he interprets as lacking responsibilities and being carefree. His inner conflict is put into action when he finally snaps and falls for his young daughter’s friend. Here, Lester is not the only one with inner conflict, but everyone around him have their own crosses to carry. As seen from this example, giving importance to the inner conflicts of secondary characters and weaving them with that of the protagonist’s result in a successful psychological drama.
Whether an inner conflict is subtle, breathtaking, or heartbreaking, it must be psychologically convincing to your readers. If you take a minor misfortune without tying it to a strong emotion or a powerful past experience, your story will sound trite. If a young woman is upset over her latest haircut, the failed haircut may not be convincing enough for the readers, unless a backstory, a solid reason, or a personality quirk lies behind it.
To sum it up, inner conflict is contradiction within the self. The war inside your character makes him act in a complex manner. As a result, he creates the drama for your story.
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Drama: October 22, 2008 Issue [#2670]
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