The Root of Internal Conflict

Self-doubts, insecurities, fears, and faulty beliefs are the root of internal conflict. They are the wounds that every human being carries.

Internal conflicts are deep, unexamined beliefs like:

• If I tell someone I love how I feel, I'll be punished for it.
• Daddy was a police officer killed in the line of duty, if I love a police officer, I'll end up burying him or her and I'll be alone.
• If I make more money than my parents/loved ones, I've betrayed them by surpassing them.

Or the nagging fears and insecurities like:

• Never good enough
• Not strong enough
• Not smart enough

But what's the point of internal conflict? Why do we even care about having it in a story? Because it is the backbone for character development. In order for your story to have an arc, a character must change. That implies a starting point and an very different end point.* Where is your character? What is he/she doing? Why? And don't settle for 'getting a paycheck to pay the bills' that's a surface answer. Maybe your character is working fast food because she's desperate to catch up with her little sister's medical bills? Or he's breaking his back carrying hod because he refuses to let anyone know he's two months behind on rent.

From each of those examples, if you look closely, you can identify the belief underpinning the situation. In the first one, the heroine believes she is responsible for her sister - maybe she is. But the belief goes further - if her sister isn't cured or if she dies, the heroine has no worth or is the worst sort of failure. In the second, the hero believes he can't ask for help or admit any kind of momentary weakness. Any decisions these characters make in the beginning of their stories are going to come from their faulty belief systems. At the beginning of the story, though, a character is going to make a decision based on the faulty belief system and it's going to turn out NOTHING like they thought it would.

This is where external conflict comes in to force these people to shake out their unconscious belief systems and change. External events must force characters to realize (on some level) that their beliefs, fears, doubts, etc are actively stabbing them in the back. That doesn't have to mean tons of navel-gazing and angst. If you're into that, great. I prefer explosions and lots of laser fire. You, as the creator, get to decide. Do you rip that bandage off the character's wound in one swift tear? Or do you pry it up an agonizing piece at a time?

But, like I said last week, no matter what, it's your job to rip those bandages AND scabs right off your characters' wounds. Identify their deepest, darkest fears (internal conflict). Use your external conflict to dump them straight into those fears. This is why it's almost impossible for me to talk about just one kind of conflict. For me, they are inextricably linked.

How does it work for you?


*Unless you're writing literary fiction which in general doesn't believe people can or do change. It's more interested in illuminating some aspect of the human condition.

Fear

You had to know that someone would break out the Bene Gesserit Litany against fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune series. I am just the geek to do that.

                I must not fear

                Fear is the mind-killer

                Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration

                I will face my fear

                I will permit is to pass over me and through me

                And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path

                Where the fear has gone there will be nothing

                Only I will remain

Look at that third line again: Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

 

In the book, the litany comes up when the reverend mother arrives to test Paul. To see, she says, whether or not he’s human. The intimation being that fear reduces human beings to animals. If Paul lets fear conquer him during the test, the Bene Gesserit will kill him. Total obliteration from the little death that is fear.

Some behavioral scientists suggest that fear is the most basic of instincts – wired into the most primitive regions of our brains and bodies. You don’t teach anyone to fear (you can teach specific fears – but fear itself – we’re born knowing it, although there is a rare genetic mutation that erases fear. It’s not a good thing). Fear is the one emotion capable of reducing a perfectly rational, articulate adult into a quivering mass of green Jello. And that’s the point of the litany printed above. No other emotion can so completely erase a personality, verbal skills, control of bodily functions, and reasoning capability the way that strong terror can. It’s as if fear sidesteps millions of years of human evolution and goes straight for the portion of our brains that we share with every living critter with a spine.

It makes me wonder. Is fear the first emotion to visit and the last one to depart a human life? Is fear a byproduct of life? Or the other way around? Without fear, our ancient ancestors would have been little hominid snack packs and none of us would be wondering about fear at all. Did you know it’s one of the universal emotions? Every human being on the planet, except those affected by the mutation I mentioned, recognizes fear in other human faces, regardless of race, color, or culture. Babies recognize fear in pictures of faces at a painfully early age. If you’re a writer or an actor, you get to play on that. Call it the curse of being a social animal if you like, but if you are clear with the body language of fear in your art, you’ll actually evoke a little fear response in everyone reading your work, or seeing your play.

There’s a book out called Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales. Fascinating read. He picks apart stories of survival trying to understand why some people live through something that should have killed them when so many people don’t. Read the book. It’s worth it and there are a lot of factors and subtleties involved, but it ultimately comes back to Frank Herbert and the Bene Gesserit. Can you master fear? Or does fear master you?

Image Source:  http://denisefath.com/fear-vs-faith/

Fear Itself

by Allison Pang

Fear is one of those things that can freeze you up or free you up. It's a natural, instinctive act - given the caveman days, it's what kept us alive and drove us into acts of invention. Fear of the dark led us to create fire, for example. To create weapons to protect ourselves from the predators. To take up animal husbandry or farming against starvation. To form family groups to keep from being alone.

Obviously, the single mitigating factor is fear of death - necessity compels us survive, so ancient man adapted and moved on.

These days most of us aren't afraid of being dragged away from the campfire by a saber-toothed tiger, but the instinct of fear still drives us along...it's just been internalized for the most part. (Often in the form of phobias.)

Sure, there's always going to be things we're afraid of - spiders, car accidents, the dark, being lonely - and part of that still stems from that caveman brain. Instinct is a powerful motivator - but realistically speaking, with so much of modern life making things easy for us, it's hard to really put a finger on WHY one might be afraid of spiders these days. Sometimes it just can't be helped though. I was a complete introvert for quite a while - it was a massive triumph just to be able to pump my own gas at one point. Or buy a gallon of milk at the 7-11. I still hate cold-calling people - so the internet has been both bane and balm to my own growth in this respect.

With our physical bodies no longer being utilized for the harder functions of primary survival, we're left with turning much of our fears toward our inner selves. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Of not being pretty enough. Not being popular enough. Not being rich enough. Or good enough. Or fertile enough. Or whatever bit of irrationality the airbrushed mainstream consumerisms tells us we should be.  (And that so many of us spend so much money and time on things that are either unimportant or really cannot be changed speaks volumes of our society and where our priorities lie.)

In some cases, fear is actually a good thing. It keeps us on our toes. After all - from an author standpoint, getting published is the initial goal...but once you're there, then what? You can't just sit there and rest on that single point of success. You have to keep writing, keep putting yourself out there, keep *growing* as a writer. (The danger point is when authors/artists/creative types start believing their own press, I think. It's easy to rest on your creative laurels if you're being lauded, but that 15 minutes is only going to last so long.)

But like everything else, the level and type of fear changes. It's no longer "What happens if I never get published?" but more along the lines of "What if people hate it? What if I can't do it again? What if my publisher drops me?" Lots of what-ifs there...but I think you have to figure out if what you're afraid of is something you can actually control.

If it's not, you have to let it go. I can't control if people like my writing, for example...what good does it do me to worry about that? But I *can* control my own writing - as long as I know I've done the best I can personally do and I'm happy with it, then that's all I can ask of myself.

'Sup with Askeert?

by KAK  

Another All Hallows Eve gone. The dawn re-stitches the seams between this world and the others. Costumes are cleaned and packed away. Candy is sorted and stored.

I wave buh-bye to the #weeniece.

Sure, my four year-old niece was here a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, she hadn't quite tumbled tip-over-toe into the grips of "I'm scared." Now, there's the "scared" of playing along with the commercialized season, and there's the bat-shit climb-out-of-her-skin stark terrified. I witnessed an unusual amount of the latter this visit.

Color me bemused.

I'm admittedly keen on Halloween, but I don't get my rocks off by scaring little kids -- particularly the ones whose sheets I have to launder. When the #weeniece visits for the autumn, it's a celebration of the season not the spooky. I see more of Ohio farms in a week than I do the rest of the year. Corn maze? Yep. Pony rides? Yep. Pumpkin patches? Everyday. House of Horrors? Not even close.

'Sup with Askeert?

I live not far from Spooky Hollow. No shit. The name of the road is Spooky Hollow. Delivery guys find it hilarious this time of year. Last year, my niece giggled endlessly whenever we were on that bendy twisty road. "Thspooky, Thspooky, Thspooky," she'd chant, begging her daddy to drive us along Spooky Hollow. This year, she became a puddle of snot and tears at the mere mention of the name. What changed in her developing brain that made something fun into something terrifying? Not the street itself. That hasn't changed in forty years. Something the adults said? We couldn't think of anything.

Makes you wonder...

No, not about the sanity of a four year-old. I'm referring to Nature vs Nurture, the development of the brain, the evolution of individual fear. What is it about things, situations, or places who've never inflicted harm to us that would cause us to fear them? Sure there are certain creatures that would logically provoke a flight-response on first encounter -- charging grizzly bears, smoking dragons, twitching roaches. Why dance with a stone gargoyle one year and faint from terror the next year?

Fear -- Not Always Rational

Do you have an irrational fear? Something that makes half of your brain think "not a threat" while the other half freaks the fuck out? I've a long list. It starts with bugs.

Picture: http://www.cartoon-clipart.com

The Big Fear

This time of year, they say the veil is thin.

The intangible boundary that keeps the ghouls, the spirits, the restless dead from interfering with the living grows porous. Gaps form, huge rents are torn in it. The Wild Hunt rides, scooping up the dying and taking them away, to wherever bodiless spirits go.

The Day of the Dead. All Saints Day. All Hallow's Eve.

It's all about death.

Which is what we're fundamentally afraid of, isn't it?

Oh, we can talk about fear of success, of intimacy, of failure, of people not liking us. But those are all the little fears. The things that we struggle to overcome. But, no matter what we do, we all must face that we will die. It's the big Fear. No one knows for sure what happens after. All we know is that our precious mortal flesh eventually wears out and we're forced to leave it behind.

It's almost impossible to grasp, that this must happen to us, to those we love. So, we grapple with aspects of it. We wrestle with aging. We tease ourselves with stories of monsters and serial killers. Over and over, we grab the idea of death in a choke-hold and try to make it be something else.

What else can we do, after all?

We can't defeat death, so we play with it. Dance the skeletons and fly the creatures whose streaming gauze reminds us of tattered flesh. Revel in the gruesomeness of it all. Death might take us, but it doesn't have to crush us.

Embrace the fear and fling it back.

Laugh. Laugh in the face of death.

Dance with the dead, for they are us.

Mining Old Fears

-by Laura Bickle, a.k.a. Alayna Williams


I traded with the lovely Jeffe today. She'll be regaling you with tales of fears on Monday.


But I'll talk about my own today. I've said it before, but I think that writers have a responsibility to challenge both readers and our own fears. What scares us? Why? I feel as if I'm doing my own best work when I dig deep into what scares me. If a story wakes me up breathless in the middle of the night, if it makes me cry, if it gives me nightmares - I've hit a nerve. Something dark that needs to be dragged into light and examined. And, yes, researched. I want to know why I'm fearful, beyond the initial emotional reaction. 


This piece first ran in February on Stella's wonderful Ex Libris blog. It ran the week that ROGUE ORACLE was released, two weeks before the Japan Tohuku earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear crisis. Like so many other people around the world, I watched. Wondered. Waited.


And yes, I was afraid.



Mining Old Fears in Fiction
by Alayna Williams

Every once in awhile, I think it's good to go rooting around in the dirt of my fears for story fodder. We all have things that scare us and tend to linger. Maybe it's a childhood terror, a phobia, a bit of something inexplicable that boils up once in blue moon in a recurring dream. Every so often, I take my shovel to the forgotten stuff in the back of my brain and see what I can unearth.

One of my childhood fears was Chernobyl. I was in middle school when the news reports began to filter in that something terrible had happened in Europe...that a Soviet reactor had melted down, breached containment in fire and invisible poison. The Ukraine seemed a thousand worlds away. And I was less than a bystander, an ordinary kid on an ordinary street in the U.S.

But something about the story captivated and frightened me. Partially, I think it was because I grew up in a very industrial area, in the shadow of many chemical plants. Everyone's father had, at one time or another, returned home in the middle of the night in a plastic moon suit, scrubbed red, without the boots, wallet, and lunchbox he'd left with. It was scary. We couldn't see or smell or taste anything different when we threw our arms around our dads. But our mothers worried about the invisible. About cancer.

I remember seeing some pictures of Chernobyl on the news, of an industrial plant not quite so different than those plants that surrounded us. And seeing fire. And the rumors about plumes of poison moving over Europe, unstoppably.

It made me shudder. My mother turned off the television when we were in the room.

But the story of Chernobyl - of the people who died immediately in the fire, those who died after of horrible cancers, of secrets and something invisible that could kill more effectively than an army - it seemed to seep into the minds of the adults. I remember that my class was shown a film about radiation in the school library. I don't remember what it was called, but I remember that it was pretty graphic. It talked a lot about Hiroshima. Poisoned radioactive organs in jars. A man in a perfectly pristine white T-shirt who was covered in radiation burns. Almost a supernatural horror - more terrifying than the books about the making of classic Dracula and Frankenstein movies that we were reading.

It did give me nightmares. And I think many of the other kids.

But, like most other things in childhood, the memory of that fear faded. We grew up, didn't think about the half-life of cesium or whether potatoes could be cultivated in earth a half a world away. We forgot, went to work in the same plants our fathers did, whether for a summer or years after.

I forgot, too. The vicarious memory of it was buried somewhere in my subconscious, and I had no cause to go anywhere near it. It was not part of my everyday life. I went to work every day and preoccupied myself with more proximate fears, like crime and work, and bills and the well being of the stray cat on my doorstep.

But I think a bit of that fear remained to dig around in. I was working on the ORACLE series, and using Tarot cards as story prompts. I was developing the idea for ROGUE ORACLE, plucking cards at random. I kept picking the Tower over and over...the Tower depicts a tall, dark structure against the night sky. Lightning strikes it and destroys it, sending two figures falling to earth. The symbolism of the card is about the end of things - a paradigm shift, the destruction of all that came before.

Something about that flash of light, the fire in the darkness, and the monolithic structure reminded me of that long-buried fear of Chernobyl. It never impacted the physicality of my life, so far away, but it did lodge in my consciousness. I began to research what had happened since then, to that long-forgotten place.

I saw pictures of beautiful land that had been overtaken by nature, by wolves and grass. Photos of rusted cars and helicopters. Articles about the children in hospitals affected by rare cancers, years and years beyond the event. Birds making nests in open seams in the Sarcophagus, the containment structure over the reactor. That, in my mind, was the Tower. In my bystander's head, it became a deeply powerful supernatural entity - something that had the power to reach through time and continue to affect generations of people.

And, because it scared me, I had to write about it.