![]() ![]() In literary fiction, withholding information to evoke tension is not often useful. Conflict is established and readers, especially if they sympathize (not necessarily like) the character, become tense about what will happen. “The church never did anything for me why should I join?”ĭrama is storytelling and in fiction, dramatic elements are necessary to move the reader sentence by sentence, idea by idea. It also allows, when appropriate to situation and character, subtle back story information to be layered into the story writing. Here are some alternatives. In the examples below (overwritten for emphasis), note how the use of conflict helps establish the emotion of the dramatic present and enhance characterization. In order to keep the story moving, lively dialogue with conflict is needed. The information, if necessary, can be provided in a few words of narrative: I decided to join the church. This type of dialogue is so disruptive to flow, it must be revised or omitted. Even snippets of dialogue should have elements that interest a reader.Īlmost never is this type of interchange useful: Here are ways conflict can be embedded in prose.Ĭonflict in dialogue is essential. Inertia is avoided by in-scene and in-the-moment action, by learning to instill conflict in narrative that must press on to resolution or no resolution, and by assuring an overall conflict embedded in all aspects of the prose. This is especially prominent when a story relies on narrative description of past events–description and exposition in place of dramatic action scenes. In fiction, writers succumb to this natural tendency to write stories that seek a state of inertia, a state where nothing happens. We are born, we are active, but we are always moving toward the solitude and inaction of motionless death. Pour water into a glass, it flows and settles and becomes motionless. Throw a rock into the air, it falls to the ground and lies motionless. In life everything seems to move toward inertia. But for lasting success–a story that will carry into the future of great literature as an art form–authors should strive for most of their story ideas to be expressed in creative fiction with drama and conflict, and not as authorial catharsis. ![]() There is the increasing habit of storytelling about me-my thoughts, my life, my accomplishments–often under the guise of fiction. ![]() However, many contemporary authors don’t seem to have the ability or desire to do this for their readers. Readers are carried through a story with a succession of related action scenes. The best storytellers seem to have a knack for engaging the reader, bringing them inside the skin of the story. Conflict is the source of change that engages a reader, and in a story, conflict and action do what description and telling of feelings and situations do not. At the story core, conflict is the momentum of happening and change and is crucial on all levels for delivering information and building characterization. Conflict is the essence of drama, and all literary fiction requires drama to please the reader and to succeed as a story. ![]()
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