It's What's Inside That Counts

Friends, acquaintances, followers, and foes, welcome back to another blog post.

Today, we are going to be learning the ins and outs of internal conflict.

What is internal conflict?

Internal conflict is just as the name says: internal conflict.

It's conflict, or contention, happening within a character's mind.

It can be when a character is denying something, when they're warring with a certain moral viewpoint, desiring something they can't––or shouldn't—have, or when they're simply arguing with themselves about something.

A great example of internal conflict is in The Hobbit.

Bilbo Baggins has a great character development path in this book where he finds his confidence and adventurous side—with this comes internal conflict.

He has his comfort-seeking side warring with his adventurous side throughout the book.

Internal conflict is conflict that's internalized in a character, projected to the reader through their thoughts and internal monologues.

Why is it important?

There are so many reasons why it's important.

For one, it gives your characters depth. It gives them realism.

If your character was to never struggle with anything, never doubt themselves or something they're doing or feeling, never have any problems, they wouldn't feel real, would they?

When you give your characters internal conflict and depth, your readers will feel more emotionally connected to them and can relate to them or sympathise with them better.

The second big reason is that it's often a plot point. Often, writers use internal conflict in their main character(s) to shift the dynamic of the plot or make it move a certain way.

The third reason is that it helps keep your reader engaged. It helps keep your story alive.

Sometimes, even with a good plot, if you don't have internal conflict, it can feel like you're just moving from one event to the next. There's no character growth or development and no time for your reader to take a break from the action and your characters fall flat. No one wants to read about flat characters. That's what we want to avoid in our writing.

The final reason I have for you today is that it's essential for character development. Without internal conflict, you can't have character growth or development, and without those, like I wrote above, your characters fall flat.

Overall, internal conflict is so useful and I could go on and on about why it's so important. But since I don't want to bore you all, I'm going to move on to the next question.

When is it important?

While internal conflict is important in every POV and with every plot idea, there are some specific areas where it's crucial for one to have it.

The first one is for a character driven plot.

The key to writing a character driven plot is internal conflict. This is the whole basis for the plot. You have to have your main character struggle inside, or else the plot won't be as gripping.

The second one is when you're in first person POV.

Don't get me wrong, it is just as important in third person. But in first person, part of what keeps the readers enthralled in your story is your character's internal dialogue. With that, needs to be internal conflict.

It's also extremely important to have internal conflict when dealing with a romance. To show how your character's feeling, even showing denial towards their feelings, you have to have internal conflict.

Maybe you're writing a friends to lovers story. In this situation, your character will probably have a lot of internal conflict over feeling the way they do for their friend.

Internal conflict is also key to writing a book where you're trying to teach a moral lesson, or write about a character who was terrible in the beginning but becomes a better person.

If you're writing a book with a good character development arch, you have to have internal conflict.

While internal conflict is important in all fiction, it is essential to those situations.

How do you create it?

Your character should have arguments with themselves.

That's the best way for me to describe it.

You need to make them unsure, make them struggle with something, make them doubt themselves or a feeling or idea. The key to internal conflict is just that—conflict.

Your character needs to be waging a battle inside of them.

Even if it's a small amount of internal conflict and it's not that important, you have to allow your character to think, to really think, and to, like any other human, debate about their choices and feelings.

They need to have their own desires, but they need to have those desires conflict with one another. They need to really struggle internally.

That's how to create internal conflict.

By making your character struggle, giving them conflicting desires, giving them feelings and emotions that may not coincide with one another.

To have internal conflict is to be human, so make your character human.

If you give them flaws, faults, and desires, internal conflict should come naturally as your story goes along.

I hope you enjoyed today's blog post and found it helpful! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a message in the contact bar below.

Happy writing!

-Jocelyn