Conflict is central to storytelling.
But too often when I tell my coaching clients that one of their scenes needs more conflict, they think I mean”big” conflict.
They think I mean buildings exploding, dragons being slain, and lovers breaking up.
Conflict, drama, and tension, however, do not require life and death stakes to evoke emotional resonance with a reader.
In this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, fresh from vacation, I share examples of real-life everyday conflicts I witnessed at a children’s resort focused on fun and happiness.
Listen to the episode or read the transcript below:
The Writing Coach Episode #134 Show Notes
Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.
The Writing Coach Episode #134 Transcript
Hello, beloved listeners and welcome back to the Writing Coach podcast. It is your host as always writing coach Kevin T Johns here.
Last episode, we talked a bit about vacations, and there was a reason why vacations were on my mind. It was because my family had a vacation planned. We were going to go to Niagara Falls and visit something called the Great Wolf Lodge, which is a resort, I guess you would call it but focused on families in children. So they have a water park inside the resort and their story time and magic shows and video games and laser tag and all, all sorts of things that kids love. And so when I was prepping for that vacation, I also had that vacation episode in mind and now having returned from the vacation. I have another topic that I want to talk about today, and it’s based on experiences at the Great Wolf Lodge last week.
But first, let me tell you about my book, Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors. It’s an awesome book filled with tips, tricks, advice, stories, all about writing craft and the writer’s life. And I want to give it to you for free head on over to my website, www.kevintjohns.com. There’s a tab at the top that says free book. There’s also a popup that should come up and just throw your email address in there. And I will send you a free copy of that book. Now, when I’m working with my clients, something we’re always talking about is conflict and drama. I think it’s Lisa Cron, who has the definition of a story. A story is about a character who wants something, who takes action to get it, encounters obstacles, and is changed as a result. So according to that definition, which I certainly agree with, conflict is key to storytelling.
So often when I’m reviewing clients’ pages, something I’ll say to them is we need more conflict in this scene. There isn’t enough obstacles. There isn’t enough complications. And sometimes clients will come back and say, well, you know, like the bad guy doesn’t really know about the good guy yet, or the bomb, isn’t going to go off for like three more chapters, you know? And when I say conflict, they think about these big, giant operatic conflicts and obstacles. The knight fighting the dragon, the save the princess, these sorts of things. But if you just stop for a moment and think about all the little difficulties, all the little frustrations you had to deal with today, all of those things are conflicts and all of them can be just as rich and just as deep and just as impactful in a story as those big giant fighting the dragon moments.
So let me give you some examples from last week at the Great Wolf lodge. So as I said, this is in Niagara falls, it’s a resort all for kids, it’s all about fun and making kids happy. You would think this would be a fairly conflict-free place, but if you get people together of any age of any kind in any situation, there is going to be conflicts big and small. One of the first ones I can think about is the resort has a water park in it. And so often people are leaving the water park and going back to their resort rooms, and they’re wearing sandals and bath suits and towels. So I was riding the elevator, and a family got in, and the family had a teenage boy and a teenage girl, and the boy walked in and then the girl walked in and suddenly the boy moaned.
He was like, “Oooooh!” <laugh>. And everyone’s like, “What’s up?” And says, “Her! She stepped right on my toe.” And he pointed at who I assume was his sister, and his sister just remains dead quiet. And the parents remain quiet as well. And the whole situation gave me the sense that this is the type of thing that happens all the time in this family. This boy, this teenage boy is dramatic and possibly cruel in some way to his sister. So he’s in the elevator and he’s moaning, “Oh my toenail almost got ripped off.” And the mom looks down at the toe. She goes, “Well, I can’t quite see anything.” And he is like, “She almost broke my toe!” And she goes, “Okay, well, you know, when we get to our room, we’ll get out some Clippers and we’ll, clip the toenail, make sure it doesn’t get torn or anything.”
And the boy says, “God, I’m not using some stranger’s toenails clippers!” and just mixes in as much drama as possible in the, you know, 20 seconds I’m riding the elevator with these folks. We see this little situation where this boy was able to take this small incident of his, his sister stepping on his toe and turn it into this huge drama. And throughout it, as I said, there was this undercurrent of possibly he’s. He abuses his sister verbally or emotionally, you know, she didn’t say anything this whole time he’s moaning. She says nothing. The parents are just trying to placate him. There was so many levels of emotion and conflict in drama in those 30 seconds, 20 seconds. I spent in the elevator with that family. And there’s an example of, you could easily write a short story, or that could be a scene in a book with multiple layers of interpersonal conflict, external conflict in terms of the physical action of a foot being stepped on all this drama coming out of what should have been just a nice little, simple moment.
Another moment of conflict that comes to mind, there was a magic show scheduled at the resort. And before the magic show, they had a balloon artist there folding balloon animals or twisting balloon animals for the kids. And I don’t know if there was more interest in the balloon animals than anticipated or what, but when it was time for the magic show to start, there were still tons of parents and kids in line wanting to get these animal balloons. And so someone, I think the balloon twister said that someone working at the resort, you know, we gotta cut it off. The magic show’s going to begin. So they cut off the line, and a family comes up, and they’re like, “Nope, sorry, you missed it. No more balloon animals today.” And they seem pretty mad and they walk off.
Then a few minutes later that they’re still working their way through the line. And some new people, a new family, maybe two new families get in line. And for whatever reason, I don’t know if the person’s distracted or what, but they don’t tell them not to get in line. Well, what happens that family who got turned away sees that two new families have now been allowed to get in line and the mother goes over and just goes nuts. She says, I have four kids. Every one of them wants a balloon animal. You told me, you turned me away. Now you’re letting new people in line. This same thing happened to me yesterday. This is completely unacceptable in, in the people at the resort. And the balloon guy are like, okay, okay, sorry. We’ll, we’ll do our best. You know, we we’ll try to get this, this balloon animals made for your kids.
We’ll delay the magic show. And this mom is ranting and raving. And again, a fun, little magic show. And some balloon animals manages to turn into this massive conflict in which this woman is really upset and really heated. And, you know, it sounds like the same thing happened to her yesterday. So this for her is a progressive complication. She went through this the day before now, she’s going through it again. She’s got four kids who knows whether they’ve been trouble or not throughout the trip, she’s seem pretty stressed. And then you have these resort workers who are just trying to get the magic show going, just trying to get things you know, wrapped up with the balloon animals a and yet this woman’s yelling at them. And again, I, I don’t know if anyone was really default. I mean, probably the resort I say should have been more clear about, you know, not letting further people in line, but you know, you get hundreds of families with, you know, hundreds of little kids in, in one place.
There’s lots of chaos and, and drama and whatnot. So the point being, I, I, you know, massive conflict out of a nice little tiny what was supposed to be fun thing. And, and so again, you know, this was not the president of the United States being kidnapped. This was not an alien ship arriving, and yet it was full of emotion and conflict and drama, all those things that we need to insert into our stories to ensure that we’re getting the dramatic effect that we want. And then perhaps the most interesting and, and conflict-filled moment of, of the resort trip was a moment that, that almost possibly broke out into physical. <Laugh> fighting in the resort, there’s this little mini bowling alley. And I think there’s what, would’ve there been maybe six lanes, but, you know, therefore kids, so this is not full-sized bowling lanes, maybe they’re you know, three quarters, the size of a normal bowling lane or something.
And so it’s pretty tightly packed in there. It’s in a small room; there’s not a lot of space. And so we are bowling in one end of these six lanes and a few lanes over there’s another family and possibly another family in between. And then a new family shows up and they want to go bowling. I’m kind of hearing, this is kind of retroactive. This is what my wife kind of noticed because I didn’t notice anything until the shouting started. So I’m with my family, we’re bowling. And all of a sudden, I hear these people yelling, you know, you are trash, you’re garbage. And, and I’m like, what’s going on? And we look over and I, I guess one family was using two different lanes and a new family didn’t realize that. And, and somehow this escalated, <laugh> into one of them, one of the mothers, I believe pushing physically pushing the other mother.
And, and the, almost a physical fist fight, fisticuffs breaking out and, and they’re screaming at each other. They’re yelling, “You’re garbage!” “You’re trash!” The husband is trying to kind of pull one wife away. The other lady is saying, “Oh, how dare you touch me? Don’t you dare touch me!” And then the other people are saying, “I didn’t even touch you. I barely touched you!” And eventually, I guess the more heated of the two kind of stormed off, with their family. And, and so again, you know, family, kid resort, bowling, not even real bowling, like a bumper bowling in a mini lane, just silly fun. And yet there was nearly, you know, a brawl <laugh>, you know, two families escalated, not just to the point of, of screaming, insults at each other, but it sounded like maybe someone pushed someone else.
And, and there was nearly a retaliation in terms of, of punches thrown. And, you know, it’s pretty wild. It’s pretty wild. How you know, sad it is that, that people just can’t get along. And, and, you know, I think when we think about conflict in the world, we, these days, you know, we think about the internet. We think about Cancel Culture. We think about trolls. We think about the right versus the left and this polarization in America, and now growing in Canada, we think in these big terms, but life doesn’t really play out in big terms. Life plays out in these little moments and often in a novel, that’s what we’re trying to capture. We’re trying to capture what it feels like to be alive. And sometimes that’s full of joy and triumph and, and success and, and growth, positive growth. But other times it’s about surviving those little conflicts.
It’s about surviving the guy cutting you off in traffic. It’s about surviving the insanely long lineup at the Walmart because even though they have forty cashes, only two of them are open life, unfortunately, life is absolutely filled with conflict. And, you know, as someone trying to go day to day, living a happy life, that could be pretty frustrating. But as an artist, as a writer, as someone looking to get more conflict into each and every scene in our novel, these little obstacles in life, these little challenges, these little moments of conflict are a gold mine in terms of material that you can use in your book. And so if you’re working with me as your writing coach, if your editor or a reader says to you, this seems a little boring, or we need a little more conflict, we need a little more drama. You don’t always have to think big, giant bomb going off moments.
Life is full of little altercations, little conflicts, and little moments of drama that lead to emotional escalation. That’s what life is made up of. And that’s what you want your story to be made of. So that’s it for this week. There are my <laugh> adventures in human conflict at the Great Wolf lodge. The kids had an incredible time at the resort. Don’t get me wrong that this is some sort of bad place. Everyone had lots of fun, but there was also certainly lots of conflict along the way. And that’s why we’re writers. We can take all those difficulties, put them in our notebook and pull them out when we need them. All right. If you haven’t grabbed your copy of Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors yet, head of war two, www.kevintjohns.com. You can pick up a free copy of my book there. You can also check out the show notes for this episode. And every episode from this year of The Writing Coach podcast are there waiting for you also feel free to leave a review of the podcast on iTunes and remember to hit that subscribe button so that I can see you on the next episode of The Writing Coach.
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