Conflict By Kate Walker #Giveaways

Let's welcome UK based author Kate Walker as she talks about Conflict. She came with a kindle copy giveaway of Kate Walker's 12 Point Guide To Writing Romance. 

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 Over to Kate now...

CONFLICT

When I’m teaching the romance writing courses I run, one of the elements of  the books that seems to cause people a lot of problems is  that word CONFLICT.  People seem to get tangled up in just  what it is; whether it’s external or internal; what makes a conflict t strong enough.

Conflict is not just your characters arguing and opposing each other. Conflict in a romantic novel is something that keeps coming between your characters, driving them away from each other when really they want to be together for the rest of their lives.

Without conflict, you won’t have a story. Your characters would meet, fall into each others’ arms  and live happily ever after from then onwards. There is no emotional tension in such a story. No emotional punch, because that comes from the overcoming of odds against the relationship. It is the moments of conflict and their resolution that bring about the emotion that we're trying to get into a book

Conflict  can be of two types:

External conflict

This is when something or someone outside of the central characters causes the problem that keeps them apart.

 Internal conflict

Internal conflict arises from the characters' personalities and  beliefs, and affects their reactions to the other person. They are usually emotional in origin and are resolved by the characters learning more about each other or themselves.

In a romance, this second sort of conflict, the internal one , is much more important than what is going on outside of your characters. 

But conflict has to be worthwhile - it has to be something that would really matter, something worth taking the risk of losing the love of your life for.  So your conflict needs to be  believable, one that your hero and heroine really care about enough to keep fighting over it, keep hurting over it. Something that really means the ruin of their love if they can't resolve it.

Very few reasons for conflict, however powerful, can actually last through the whole of a book without changing, adapting, developing, or just varying in tone and emphasis. The best   sorts of conflicts are those that have layers of involvement, and as each one is dealt with and peeled away, it reveals another complication, another aspect of the same problem, or a different development of it, going deeper and deeper until finally the central core of the problem is exposed, ready for you characters to tackle it.

Not every conflict needs to be a major one and not ever problem is one that lasts through the book. You can vary the pace and the intensity of your story by using long-term problems and short-term problems. Short-term problems are usually what catapult the hero and heroine together, putting them in a situation in which they have to work out their emotional (long-term) problems.

This pacing and staging of the revelations that make up the conflict adds to the suspense and the tension that keeps the reader turning the page. It also has the bonus of increasing and building on the sexual tension between the hero and heroine as they want to be together but feel more and more that it will be a mistake.

You need to make the conflict between your characters one that is strong, understandable and believable.   But it also needs to be sympathetic, specially if you’re writing about some really strong conflict . You risk really alienating readers from your hero or heroine if you don’t justify that conflict and make it believable. To be justified, it needs to be specific and directly connected to the people  your character is in conflict with.  

So what you need to do is to understand your hero and heroine so well that you know that this is exactly what they would do and WHY. If you have that clear in your head – your characters’ personal reasons for doing anything then it will convince even someone who thinks, ‘Oh come on, no one would ever do that!’ – But if  they think, well I would never do that but I see exactly why Mary – or Joe – or whoever would then it you’ve justified it.

Perhaps you’ve had a criticism on you story where an editor says that there should be more at stake.  They mean more at stake for that particular individual. So it doesn’t mean  that – say she should owe him more money than you’ve said is at stake, (though any scenario where a heroine is forced into something for some measly amount of money would be unbelievable in a time when the banks would offer a loan etc) but it means that this would cause more distress/ have a more devastating effect on her life. So  it might affect not just her but her father’s health, her mother’s reputation, her brother’s liberty, her sister’s chance of carrying a child to term – or just her own desperate need to please her parents once in her life because . . . . anything that adds emotional pressure –  that ups the emotional stakes.  And emotions always deepen the conflict because emotions aren’t rational – that’s why they’re emotions!

So then if you have 2 characters who are in a position where the reader believes that for them this is the only way they would go, then your story and the conflict in  it will convince fully. So, whatever the conflict you’ve  come up with, if you want to make it believable, sustainable and packing the right emotional punch,  look at your characters and see WHY they would do whatever they do – it’s their story after all.

Kate Walker also has a new release out:

Olivero's Outrageous Proposal

One problem… 

For Dario Olivero, Alyse Gregory was supposed to be a way to reap revenge against his estranged half brother. But Alyse carries the key to the family acceptance he's always craved and, realizing just how much trouble she's in, he can't turn away.

One solution! 

A marriage proposal is not what Alyse was expecting. But this deliciously sexy Italian will resolve her family's debts if she becomes his convenient wife… Her head says no but her body begs her to say yes.

With an intensity rivaling the Tuscan sun, their mutual desire soon escalates to something inconvenient, creating a whole new dilemma!

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