Over the course of the story cycle, Sam gains courage as they progress towards Mordor. They encounter hostile creatures such as orcs and wargs, impassable terrain, alongside their own fears and weaknesses.įrodo’s friend and sidekick Sam is initially fearful of their quest. In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings cycle Frodo and his co-travelers must face external conflicts as well as internal ones. So how do you use external and internal conflict to develop characters? 1: Make both types of conflict obstaclesĪccomplished authors use both external and internal conflict to give their characters serious obstacles to reaching their goals. Character development: Conflict allows for dramatic incidents and confrontations that test characters and cause them to learn and adapt.Stakes: Conflict suggests worst-case outcomes and makes resolution urgent (the hero must overcome the antagonist/environment or themselves ‘or else…’).Tension: Because of conflict’s uncertainty, we want to know how it resolves and keep turning pages to find out.For example, a bleak and hostile environment in a post-apocalyptic novel.īoth types of conflict, internal and external, are useful because they create: It can also be between a character and more abstract forces. This type of conflict can be between one character and another or a group (or between groups of characters). Internal conflict is important for characterization, since flaws and internal struggles make characters more lifelike and sympathetic.Įxternal conflict, on the other hand, refers to the conflicts between a character and external forces. In fiction, ‘internal conflict’ refers to a character’s internal struggle.Ī character might struggle with an emotional problem such as fear of intimacy or abandonment, for example. Read definitions of these types of story conflict, then how to use them to develop your story: Internal conflict vs external conflict: Definitions ‘Internal conflict’ and ‘external conflict’ are two terms you’ll often hear when people discuss character creation. Conflict is a key ingredient of an engrossing story.

Inner conflict quotes