Get ready for some more writing advice. Today’s post is an important one — for me at least! — and I hope it will be interesting for you.
When you are writing a novel, what is the important thing to consider? Of course there are many important things. I wrote the wrong words. To correct it, I’ll write it again: What is ONE of the most important things to consider when you are writing a novel?
And the answer is… Conflict. Yes. Without conflict there is no excitement. Nothing gets the reader to continue from where he left off. More likely he/she’ll close the book snap. Not a very good prospect to consider, is it? You don’t want them to do that! You want them to read all the way to the last word, sigh deliciously, and say “What a great book that was. I wish I could have written it.” That’s a far, far better reaction.
But for the reader to do that we need to have some conflict in the book! Conflict adds flavour to a story. There are two main types of conflict: Internal Conflict and External conflict. And in any type of novel, you have to include them both. They cannot exist without each other.
There is an excellent page on adding conflict in a novel here. The author is a full-time pro novelist (although I haven’t read any of her books).
Conflict is what drives the story, other than characters. Writing a conflict between two characters is most amusing. Conflict means, in a simple way, disagreement, argument, etc. And if you have all the characters in your book friends with each other with no problems at all, you aren’t going to find a lot of readers. The dreaded reaction of the reader will take place.
So what should we do to prevent that? Well add conflict as I said! And I don’t think I will cover that aspect of the topic too much: it has been adequately covered elsewhere and the one thing I don’t want to do is to duplicate a well-written article. If you are in need of a good article on the subject, visit the link above.