HOW CONFLICTS FAIL: NONFLICT

A Diagnostic Series

Firelei Báez, On rest and resistance, Because we love you (to all those stolen from among us)

When we’re starting out in our writing career, or are in early drafts, we almost never hit the Conflict sweetspot on the first pass — by which I mean the perfect amount of Conflict with the perfect amount of Character.  Our Conflicts will either be too trivial / too simplistic / too diffused / too static for the characters and their story at the bottom end — or too overwhelming / too obvious / too frenetic / too complicated at the top.

These are straightforward misattunements that will require straightforward adjustments.  You either add to the Conflict or subtract from it (same way you add to the Character or subtract from it).

Then there are those more systemic malfunctions.  Like when you have the right Conflict but the wrong Characters, or vice versa.   Another straightforward problem, even if sometimes you got to throw out almost the entire story to fix it.  

And then there are the slyer problems — like the one I call Nonflict.