But what if you’re writing a romance? And your story revolves around the Hero and the Heroine and there is not a bad guy (or gal) in sight for miles around? Even so, you need conflict. Not the kill-the-bad-guy/gal kind but conflict that keeps the reader engaged and turning the pages.
Conflict is at the heart of any story and romance is no exception. In fact, a love story without it would be one heck of a boring read. Who would want to read a story about a guy and a girl who meet, date, fall in love and settle into happily-ever-after bliss without a fight, misunderstanding, a few tears and some heart-wrenching drama?
Conflict can work at two levels—plot and characters.
Designing characters with different points of view, life experiences, and motivations help in building conflict. While the Hero and Heroine may have some things in common (after all, there has to be a basis for attraction!) they may also have a couple of things in their character makeup that creates conflict.
To give an example from my own book—The Indian Tycoon’s Marriage Deal—the Heroine, Maya, is motivated by her need for revenge. This motivation causes her to actively seek out her enemy and attend the party where she meets his son. This is the plot-level conflict. But internal or emotional conflict happens when she falls in love with her enemy’s son, Krish.
Scene locations can also add to your story’s conflict. One of the most cliché situations is that of a woman being jilted by her fiancé at the wedding altar. However, the potential for conflict is immense. Perhaps that’s one reason why it continues to be one of the most popular romance tropes.
Use of sub-text in dialogue is another way of adding conflict. Sub-text is what your characters don’t blurt out but remains just under the surface. It provides emotional heft to a scene, the dialogue sizzles with hidden meaning and instantly amps up the conflict potential of the scene.
To give another example from my book, I have a scene where Maya has been too quick to judge Krish – slotting him as a selfish, rich playboy – and she realizes that she has been wrong. Krish, on the other hand, knows that there is something about Maya that he can’t figure out. He suspects she is hiding something from him. They keep these thoughts to themselves, creating a situation where emotions sizzle just beneath the surface. The scene is set on top of a mountainside with the play of sun and rain adding more visual drama to the internal conflict.
All these are hinted at through the following lines:-
Just as suddenly he strode away from her to the car and opened the door. “We should be heading back. In the hills, you never know when a drizzle can turn into a downpour. Besides, this is landslide country. You don’t want to get caught in one.”
To sum up, embedding conflict into your story is all about designing the right characters, giving them opposing motivations and highlighting your scenes with interesting locations and sub-text in dialogue.
Would love to hear your thoughts…How do you create conflict in your stories?
Have a Happy Conflict-Creating Writing Day! :)
About the Author :
Adite Banerjie has been been writing professionally ever since she graduated from college. After an exciting and fulfilling career as a business journalist she turned to freelance writing. She also writes screenplays. Her debut romance novel was published by Harlequin Mills & Boon in September 2013. Her second book will be out in mid-2014. She lives in a suburb of New Delhi with her husband. She would love to hear from readers and writers at:
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