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#writing internal conflict
novlr · 7 months
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How do I make internal conflict subtle, without being so subtle the readers miss it?
Internal conflict is a vital component of any compelling story. It’s the central axis of any good character arc and drives the narrative forward. However, writing internal struggles effectively without resorting to heavy-handed exposition can be challenging. Here are some quick tips on writing subtle internal conflict.
Show, don’t tell
Reveal a character’s emotions through actions, thoughts, and dialogue.
Use body language and gestures to convey inner turmoil, like fidgeting, clenched fists, or avoiding eye contact.
Write sensory details to immerse readers in the character's emotional experience, like describing the taste of bitterness or the prickling of anxiety.
Incorporate changes in a character's routine or habits that hint at inner changes, like a punctual character being late, or changing taste in music.
Use the character's reactions to their environment as a reflection of their emotions. The same setting might appear grey and dark to one, but bright and vibrant to another.
Use subtext
Write subtext into dialogue, where characters say one thing but mean another.
Drop subtle hints at emotions that readers can infer rather than spelling everything out.
Experiment with non-verbal communication like meaningful glances, pauses, or hesitations.
Invoke subtext through characters' internal thoughts and uncertainties, without the character fully acknowledging their deeper feelings.
Use dramatic irony, where the reader knows more than the character does about their own feelings or situation.
Develop complex characters
Give your characters conflicting desires, values, and goals to naturally generate internal conflict.
Create backstories that reveal past traumas or experiences that continue to haunt and influence their decisions.
Consider using character flaws and contradictions to highlight internal struggles.
Use relationships to create conflicting desires and expectations.
Give your characters both internal and external conflicts to build tension between dealing with personal struggles and outside problems.
Employ inner monologues
Incorporate introspective moments where characters wrestle with their inner demons, doubts, and fears.
Use first-person or close third-person perspectives to allow readers direct access to the character's thoughts.
Balance inner monologues with external action to maintain pacing and engagement.
Use an unreliable narrator so readers try to distinguish between what is a misperception and what is the truth.
Create inner thoughts that highlight the difference between a character's public persona and their private world.
Create moral dilemmas
Force characters to make difficult decisions that represent turning points in their arcs.
Explore the consequences of a character’s choices on their sense of self and their relationships.
Have your character confront a personal sacrifice where they must question their own motives and values.
Have a character balance loyalty and personal integrity, having to decide where their personal morality lies.
Force a choice between self-preservation and the greater good where their choice not only has personal stakes, but story-wide ones as well.
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deception-united · 1 month
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Let's talk about internal conflict.
Having clear external conflicts is essential to driving forward your plot, but internal conflicts help add depth and complexity to your characters. They'll make your characters better rounded-out, more believable, and relatable.
Internal conflicts are the struggles, doubts, and desires that exist within a character's mind and heart. They indirectly hinder them from reaching their ultimate goal by influencing their decisions, actions, who they choose to befriend, their fears, or how they react in different situations.
Here are some ways to integrate and determine your characters' internal conflicts:
Explore their desires and fears: Figure out what goals are they striving to achieve and their motivations behind it. From here, delve into their fears and insecurities that could obstruct their progress by causing internal turmoil. This duality adds depth to their personalities and motivations.
Show conflicting emotions: Characters should experience a range of emotions, sometimes simultaneously. They may feel torn between loyalty and self-interest, love and duty, or ambition and morality. Allow these conflicting emotions to drive their decisions and actions, leading to internal tension and growth.
Develop a backstory: Every writer's favourite step. Determine how their past experiences, traumas, and relationships create internal conflict for them. Past events or unresolved issues play a key role in shaping their beliefs, values, and behavior, influencing their present-day struggles.
Use moral dilemmas: Present your characters with ethical dilemmas or moral choices that force them to confront their beliefs and values. These situations can reveal the depth of their character and provoke internal conflict as they wrestle with the consequences of their decisions, as well as providing further insight into their personality and character.
Show internal growth: Allow your characters to evolve and grow throughout the story by facing and eventually overcoming their internal conflicts. Make them struggle. Have them make bad choices out of fear, or love, or jealousy. Force them to deal with the consequences. And turn that—the confrontation of their fears, reconciliation of their desires, the difficult choices—into a transformative journey.
Hope this was helpful! Make your characters suffer ❤
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em-dash-press · 8 months
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7 Types of Internal Conflict for Your Protagonist
External conflict can always make readers more interested in a story. The fist fights, car chases, and fictional battles might make them hold their breath, but so can internal conflict. Check out the primary types of internal conflict your protagonist can experience to add more depth to your stories.
1. Morality Conflicts
Everyone eventually reaches a point where they question their morals. We have to believe in our morals as individuals to prioritize them. It’s not enough to have your parents or other leaders in your life tell you what’s right and wrong. You won’t hold the same morals until you choose them on your own.
Characters also reach these crucial points. It’s part of their character development like it’s part of our personal development. 
Your protagonist may only grapple with one question of morality in your story or they could encounter many. The morals will most likely align with your theme so they make sense within your plot.
Example: Your protagonist is a scientific researcher and leading a trial that could result in a cure for a new illness. They know they shouldn’t take bribes and wouldn’t compromise their career, but someone who nearly qualifies for their trial offers a life-changing amount of money to get included even though they’ve already been ruled out. The protagonist has to choose—do they stick with what they trust is morally correct or do they take the money and use it to help pay for a family member’s legal battle in criminal court? Do they view it as potentially saving two lives at once? Or do they reject the bribe and face whatever consequences could have possibly been avoided?
2. Self-Identity Conflicts
Your identity is something that morphs with time. People rarely settle on one version of themselves forever. Life makes us reconsider things from different perspectives as we go through periods of challenges and peace. Characters also grapple with their identities when faced with similar situations. It makes them take a stand, hold their ground, or chase new goals, which is much more interesting for readers.
Example: Your protagonist considers themselves an optimist because they’re a firefighter who has saved many lives. When they realize their chief has been starting all the fires their station ever fought, your protagonist begins to view people more pessimistically. It affects how quickly they’re willing to risk their life for others, which results in challenges and a character arc they wouldn’t have experienced without this fundamental change in their identity.
3. Religious Belief Conflicts
It’s much easier to stay firm in your religious beliefs if nothing challenges them. If a challenge or major question arises and your beliefs hold firm, that makes your identity stronger. It doesn’t always happen that way though.
When your protagonist faces this type of internal conflict and realizes their opinions or feelings contradict their religious beliefs, it can take them onto a path that shapes a new identity. These choices are hard but real. Readers who are going through the same experience or experienced the same questions before will get absorbed by your story because it’s relatable.
Example: Your protagonist attends a religious gathering every week. The group fundamentally believes their religion exists to help those in need. Prejudices begin to invade that group, so people start choosing their own well-being instead of helping others. Your protagonist watches their religious family pick sides and has to question if they really believe in helping others or if they choose the familiarity and safety that comes with the approval of their longtime religious family.
4. Societal Role Conflicts
Societies have predetermined roles or expectations for people based on factors like their gender, sex, and economic status (just to name a few). Sometimes these roles feel natural to people and other times they don’t. We all have to decide what feels best for us on an ongoing basis. Your protagonist may need to choose their societal role, reject it, or shape a new one to portray your theme in a relatable way.
Example: Your protagonist goes to a university for the first time. They’ve been encouraged by everyone they know to start forming a large friend group. That’s what people are supposed to do in college, their loved ones said. But your protagonist is an introvert and values only a few friendships at a time. They have to choose if they’ll push themselves to become a social butterfly or if they’re happier as the person they’ve always been.
5. Political Opinion Conflicts
Political opinions can create all types of internal conflict. You may believe in a certain candidate or party during one part of your life and support something completely different in another part. Those values change as we experience new things and meet new people. Characters can face the same internal struggles as they recognize changing values or reject opportunities for change.
Example: Your protagonist may have never formed strong political opinions. They meet a new person who becomes their best friend, but their government starts passing laws that make their best friend’s life much harder because they’re part of a marginalized community your protagonist hasn’t empathized with before. Your protagonist now cares for that community, so they have to decide if they’ll make different political choices that could ostracize them from the community they’ve been part of all their life. 
6. Love Conflicts
There are numerous types of love—self-love, your love for your family, and your love of a potential romantic interest or current partner. These come into conflicts in stories all the time because people experience them every day.
The conflicts result in choices—does your protagonist choose to continue loving a specific person or do they fall out of love? Do they fight for that love or realize it never actually existed? These are just a few ways this inner conflict can play out.
Example: Your protagonist has three siblings. They’d give their life for their siblings because they’ve lived in an emotional and physical home environment that’s been unsafe all of their lives. However, your protagonist is also the oldest child who has to leave home when they’re 18. They have to decide how to best love their siblings—do they leave them at home with a parent who is a threat to their safety so your protagonist can achieve an education or job that pays enough to create a new home for them? Do they get the legal system involved? Do they get their siblings and run away together since your protagonist is now old enough to lease an apartment, pay bills, etc?
7. Personal Journey Conflict
Existential crises make characters come to life by breaking their identity apart. These moments are unfortunately a real part of life, so readers want them in their books to help them cope, understand the changes, and generally feel not alone in their hardships.
This internal conflict happens when we question why we’re in this world or what we’re supposed to do with our lives. Sometimes there’s a clear answer after we start searching for it, but other times there isn’t. How your protagonist’s internal journey to a new purpose unfolds depends on your theme and plot.
Example: Your protagonist spent their life dreaming of becoming a politician. They wanted to help people and change the world, but they lost their first three attempts at running for local office. The third loss devastated them. If voters don’t want them as a leader, what’s their purpose? Who are they if they aren’t a leader who changes the world through effective policies? The answer may come through the plot events that follow. If they don’t get an answer, sometimes it means their purpose already exists in their life and they’re overlooking it.
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Reading through the basic types of internal conflict will help you shape your future protagonists. If you align your desired theme with an inner conflict, the external events in your plot will be much easier to choose. Your readers will also connect with your story better because they’ll see real problems reflected in your protagonist’s character arc.
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yunmeng-jiang · 3 months
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that man does NOT think of wei wuxian as his gege
#jiang cheng#wwx#twin prides#i have a whole post about how they both think of themselves as having an older-sibling role#but even if that wasn't true jc still always calls him by his full name and the one time wwx tried to call him shidi jc yelled at him#their relationship is not that simple! it's a huge thing that wwx occupies a weird in-between role in their family!#he's definitely not a servant but also definitely not a full member of their family and that's super important to the story!#even if jc WANTED to think of him as his older brother he would need to get past seven layers of trauma to even realize he wanted that#and then he would have to admit it to himself and then work up the courage to admit it to someone else#and even then he probably still wouldn't say it to wwx's face#sure yanli calls wwx her didi but things are much simpler from her point of view#plus she's one of those people - like lxc - that can hold an opinion deep inside herself and be at peace with it even if it conflicts +#+ with what the world says and what she's been brought up to believe#jc is not like that. he internalizes way more from the outside world and if he feels conflicted he just kind of implodes#he's spent his whole life being told that wwx is not his equal and is someone to compete against#and also secretly believing that wwx is eventually going to abandon him because he doesn't think anyone truly cares for him#plus wwx treats him like a bff who is also a liege lord rather than a beloved younger brother#he would Not form a secure attachment to wwx lmao#it also really annoys me that when people write/conceptualize him as someone who thinks of wwx as his real gege +#+ they tend to completely erase jyl and minimize her importance to jc. he HAS an older sibling who he trusts unconditionally and confides +#+ in and takes comfort from! that person already exists! and they ignore her in favor of the protagonist#it also really bugs me when they have him mourning wwx those whole 13-16 years but don't put in a single word about yanli#this kind of turned into a rant about jyl... i have a lot of feelings about her especially since i'm the oldest sibling in my family#anyway. that man does not think of wwx as his gege#haterade#(kind of)
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secondhandsorrows · 4 months
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The Deal with Character and Plot: Which is More Important?
All stories have characters and plot.
Sometimes as writers, however, we pour all our focus into one of these aspects, overshadowing plot in favor of character, or getting too caught up in plot and leaving character for last. Really, both are the nuts and bolts of story — they work in unison, thriving in tandem. Without the other, the story just falls flat. But, there’s a little something that is the glue between plot and character.
So what is this glue?
That, my friend, is conflict. 
Conflict is the glue that brings together these two aspects, creating balance and making a compelling and engaging story. All good stories have conflict.
It’s helpful to remember that plot is the sequence of external events in a character’s environment  that get the ball rolling, whereas character give a window to the internal, the emotional. Internal conflict is often of the character’s own making: a secret motive, a battle of emotions, the opposing want versus need, the dissatisfaction in their life, the indecisions or hesitations. 
A character tends to get affected by the external events. A messy divorce may lead to one character’s depression before they finally motivate themselves to get a new date, going through multiple failed attempts until they meet their second-soulmate. A character getting a new job may catapult them into —what was supposed to be a fresh start— a waking nightmare as they try to navigate their unfair, demanding workplace. 
With these two examples, we can pinpoint their internal and external conflicts. In the first, we have the character’s external conflict of a heart-breaking divorce and the struggles of moving out and getting the papers settled. As for the internal conflict, this character goes through bouts of depression, wondering if she’ll find anyone for her, before finally getting encouraged to get back out into the dating pool once again, helping her to discover that nothing is too-late or at the end of road.
For the second example, the external conflict is the character navigating their new environment, driven up the wall from tedious work and snobby coworkers, but they can’t leave because of *reasons*. Their internal conflict, in turn, is their dedication as to not quit coupled with their eventual desire to climb the ladder of success. 
We can start to see here that there’s a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the external and internal: one cannot exist without the other. How a character might see the world can impact their relationships and other external factors, such as their environment. Similarly, external events can prompt a character to react or spark inner conflict that they have to deal with in one way or another.
I hope this is helpful. Thanks for reading!
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byoldervine · 2 months
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What Is Your OC’s Internal Conflict?
Internal conflict is key to writing a character-driven story and helping readers emotionally connect to your characters. The external conflict would be, say, the Hex Squad defeating Emperor Belos and the Emperor’s Coven, but the internal conflict would be Amity breaking away from her mother’s influence, or Willow rebuilding her self-worth after years of bullying broke it down. It relates back to their personal journey of self-growth as they conquer their inner demons rather than an external force
If it helps, feel more than free to comment or reblog to share your own characters’ internal conflicts
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nhasablogg · 3 months
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is there anyone in this community who just does not actually want to tell people about you liking tickling? idk I just personally don't have the desire to tell my friends because I don't want to get tickled by them anyway. the only reason I would tell would be to like explain the significance of it to me and my life and my identity (which I did once and yes it was NICE but I don't want him to tickle me really). romantic partner might be different but I have been single for 28 years so what do I know!
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beanghostprincess · 1 month
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I can't fight this feeling anymore
For (late) @sanusoweek || Day 7: Reunion (posting it late but posting it nevertheless!)
Relationship: Sanji/Usopp
Rating: General Audiences
Tags: Post-Enies Lobby Arc / Sanji-centric / Pining Sanji / Fluff / Reunions / Light Angst / Mutual Pining / Not Actually Unrequited Love / Teen Crush (Tagging as such bc this one gives awkward teenagers so much) / Awkward Crush / Internalized Homophobia / Nosebleed / Religious Conflict (Kind of??? Sanji's POV should be studied)
Words: 5,038
Summary:
Sanji needs to get his shit together. He knows he should. He is being childish. Maybe Sanji is just young. And stupid. And he is a teenager. And being nineteen makes him want and want and want things he should not crave or long for. Like guys. Like Usopp. So it will go away. He tells himself it will, with time. The boiling pot will stop burning and the air will come back to his lungs without needing to have Usopp near. He is back, though. And Sanji can breathe. Just not properly. Never properly when he is near enough to cut his breath away. But he can breathe. He has missed Usopp so much that his body reacts instinctively. Because Usopp is easy to love. Easy to miss. Easy to want. Easy to hold. So, so easy to hold, it seems.
Read on Ao3
More of my works!!
This fanfic was inspired by @the-orion-inexpirience's art for day 7!!
I tried to write a time travel thing but my brain just couldn't work??? Like at all?? And then I saw this masterpiece and the inspiration hit me so hard in the face I had to start writing!!!! So thank you Orion for this <333
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meirimerens · 7 months
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i have a whole lot of thoughts about him for someone who draws rubin being like this Most of the time
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jerichogender · 1 year
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joey wilson did not fuck around in the judas contract. he comes face to face with his father for the first time in years, maybe even a decade, and the second they make eye contact, boom. joey uses his powers against him. no hesitation
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and then he knocks him unconscious to save vic
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we know from the end of the issue that this confrontation is extremely difficult for joey, especially since this is the first chance he gets to interact with his father now that he’s grown up. this is the first. time. he’s seen him since his throat got slit. this is going to set the tone for what, if any, relationship they will have going forward. and ultimately, joey chooses to take a stand against slade. there are no words
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Tales of the Teen Titans Annual #3
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hamable · 1 year
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Y’all ain’t talking enough about the cricket conscious. Looking for any spark of humanity in Jack Horner, losing his goddamn mind, his whole perspective in life shattering. We don’t get enough truest chaotically evil villains these days and having this one be an absolute stinker voice by John Mulaney is peak comedy to me.
…I say this and then use the tags to talk about all the other incredible things about the movie and I get it actually there’s so much good to process…
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i-want-to-be-a-poet · 5 months
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i want to be forgiving i really do i want to lead with love and the kindness that accompanies it but others shall not allow for it perhaps i shall offer them love regardless.
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Prompt- An Avox Tiny!!!
Imagine this a world where tiniest are sold a certain tiny was too vicious and kept bad mouthing customers to avoid being sold the shop owner cut his tongue off as an form of punishment.
Sone time later an person buys him. There are a whole lot of angst and miscommunication until tge human is like 'fuck it' and decides to learn and teach sign language to the tiny.
aww poor lil guy (hehe)
I'm such a sucker for language barriers, but I especially love ones that are only one-sided and double especially when they started getting frustrated about it because I can understand you but I don't know how to make you understand me because the things I need/want to say are so much more complex than pantomiming a simple action like eating to convey that I'm hungry
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baconcolacan · 5 months
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The T4T tomtord has me thinking DEEPLY like….
As kids Tord would be just the most UNBEARABLE egg there is out there. He’d be hanging out with Tom and just ask shit like ‘Hey Tammie? Do you…ever feel like you’re someone else??’
SURPRISINGLY he’s the reason Tom gets an early awakening cause he keeps using him as a fucking soundboard for his eggthoughts and Tom’s just ‘Ohhh yeah I get it now’ and knows he’s a boy from a young age and it takes Tord until at LEAST sophomore/year 10 to realise he’s trans.
And yes, he still used Tom as a soundboard for all those years until then. Tom TRIES to give him hints, he never catches them.
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byoldervine · 3 months
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Writing Tip - Prioritise Internal Conflict
While external conflict will be things like the overall plot or antagonists showing up or things like that, internal conflict will be your character struggling with their flaws, emotions, things where the threat or problem is coming from themself and not some outside force
Good characters can carry a bland plot, but a good plot can’t carry bland characters - they’re the emotional hook of the story, so we need to be invested in them. This is why we need strong internal conflict; to feel like the characters matter to the story and aren’t just interchangeable NPCs. Even if the message of the story is that anyone could be the hero and that there doesn’t have to be anything innately special about you in order for you to be the hero, we still need to care about the hero outside of their heroics
If you have to choose between adding to the plot and adding to the characters, choose the characters
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psalmsofpsychosis · 1 year
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so i talked about Din being so ungodly unpredictable, and after digging a bit deeper beneath the surface of The Mandalorian season1 and 2, i think now i know why.
To the surprise of absolutely noone, Din Djarin is a rogue!! He's a rogue character, that's the foundation of his personality, at any point of his characterization he's designed to stray from structure and to undermine it.
But he's also a knight! and this introduces a very intriguing and fascinating conflict at the heart of his character: the duality of honor, and how he orients himself towards that specific value. He's a knight and a knight is bound by honor and servitude; but in order to save his honor he has to choose what and whom he serves at different points of the narrative, and he has to disobey in order to obide by his honor. A rogue character by definition is the least honoring person, a knight is most honorable. So the heart and the lungs of Din Djarin's characterization is his struggle with servitude and where his values lie, and it's never "this" or "that"; he's constantly switching between rogue and knight in the bat of eyelash, just when you think he's bound to code he abandons mission and when he's supposed to stray he stays and binds himself to a child.
I think introducing him in the position of a king is the most outrageous and hilarious plot twist, because narrative wise, all three archetypes of the Rogue, the Knight and the King have in common the conflict of honor, while the King is most bound to obedience and the Rogue is least concerned with it. So i'm actually quite curious now to know where they'll take season 3 Din Djarin, simply because this is such hefty faceted dynamic and it's quite frankly very ambitious to tackle, we haven't had an archetypal story this intricate in star wars since, well, the original trilogy.
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