Novels and Children’s Books Must Contain Conflict

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a romance novel, a thriller, a sweet innocense story or a children’s book. Every book that gets categorized as fiction must contain conflict among the characters. Just as it is in everyday life, so it is in books—conflict is everywhere.

Books without conflict are boring!

Conflict and a scared girl character

But, if you forget to add it to your story, your book will be boring. A few friends and family members might buy it to support your efforts, but if you want to sell lots of books, you need to find the conflict in your story. If it doesn’t have any, then let’s look at how you can create it.

Help has arrived!

5 Types of Conflict Situations to Spice Up Your Writing

Let’s look at five types of conflict situations that you can add to any of your stories.

Social Conflict

This type of conflict normally occurs between one person and a group of people in a social setting (online or offline). Basically, the social conflict pits one person against a social system or way of life.

Inner Conflict

This one is fairly obvious since as writers, or the characters we’re creating, the character or person can’t get out of their own way, and their inner conflict creates problems. When someone is unsure of themselves or an intended emotion or action, they can be in conflict and make wrong choices.

Relational Conflict

Relational conflict focuses on exclusive goals that are shared by two people; in a novel or children’s book, those people are called the protagonist and the antagonist (for something and against something).

Cosmic Conflict

You might think this sounds like it would apply only to a science fiction type of story, but actually, this involves a conflict between your main character and some sort of supernatural force. For your readers to understand how the conflict unfolds, they must understand through your words that the character is willingly projecting his problem with some sort of invisible force onto another person who, unfortunately, happens to be in the way of the character’s goal.

Situational Conflicts

This conflict category feels more like what would happen in a reality TV show. The main character and the “good guys” have to somehow survive a challenge that results in great conflicts. For example, if your heroine had to scale the side of a mountain in order to escape from the villains, and she hated heights, then that would become a situational conflict for her, since it takes her out of her comfort zone.

Summary

Read through your chapter and add conflict to your scenes. If you haven’t written your chapter yet, then choose a conflict category and write the scene. Believe me, your story will shout, “This is what’s at stake. Will she conquer this conflict?