External vs Internal Conflict | Does your story need both?

[@mikedojack8619]

I have a Word doc with over 100 links to your videos! every day I shall sit and roll a random number and watch/take notes on whatever videos I roll on. trying to write a book! if I ever get to the stage where I release it I'll be sure to put you in my acknowledgements! DREAM BIG! Thanks for the content!

[@cjpreach]

SHAELIN. Another good video. Thanks. Screenwriter Tyler Mowery emphasizes INTERNAL, EXTERNAL & PHILOSOPHICAL conflict. An excellent KZbin video.

[@clintoreilly]

Thanks Shaelin. Great video.

[@deontae9354]

Thank you for this video, Shaelin! My book deals with internal conflict and this helps a lot with planning it out

[@terrybarone706]

I always look forward to your videos. I have learned so much! Thank you ✍️

[@NeilABrown]

You have a lot of great information. I also wish I could do videos like you. Keep up the impressive work.

[@wondersled5948]

Just discovered your channel, it’s amazing

[@heavensophia9382]

Great, now I have yet another conflicting story arc demanding that I write that version of the story instead. There are now several different versions in my head and I don't think writing all of them is an option. This was prompted by the idea you inadvertently introduced to me, "What if I try to write a story with no conflict?" No, that hypothetical isn't the new variant because I immediately found interesting conflicts to include but it did form the basis, because apparently I didn't have enough balls to juggle already. And despite the fact that I just now resolved the above conflict because it can be incorporated into one of the two extant branches, I'm still asking myself "Which one?" At least, which of the two general directions do I write in? I can't settle and they are diametrically opposed. One arc can be taken seriously but is all too revealing of my subtext and discard so many high concepts. The other allows me to use more high concepts, however, not the most appealing one. The second is also more entertaining and scifi for the audience. Less is more or more is more? Oh, brain, stop fighting yourself.

[@heavensophia9382]

I figured it out, by the way. Follow my ... no one's going to read it anyway.

[@johnhaggerty4396]

Both conflicts run all the way through *The Trial*. When I read it I imagine I am on the verge of solving its mystery but never do, of course. Mystery need not wear an enigmatic mask like Kafka. The genial narrator of The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford unfolds his own mystery. Please read Javier Cercas's essay *The Blind Spot* Shaelin. He likes 'open novels' which never solve the mystery. The ultimate tension.

[@johnhaggerty4396]

Tensions which are never resolved: Anita Brookner's *Latecomers* and Graham Greene's *The Captain and the Enemy*. We close both novels with a sense of something profound occurring within the characters (and us) but we are never sure what. Leon Edel called Henry James the Shakespeare of the novel. *The Portrait of a Lady* has to be read again before we see the tensions.

[@johnhaggerty4396]

Online ... Paul Fulchar, Author at The Mookse and the Gripes reviews *The Blind Spot - An Essay on the Novel* by Javier Cercas. Until you get a hold of Cercas's 176 page book, with its striking cover image of Melville's White Whale, this piece is most useful.

[@sriranjit3684]

The trial - one of the disturbing surreal fiction I've read

[@johnhaggerty4396]

@@sriranjit3684 Yes, indeed Sri Ranjit, but also cathartic. Read Kafka's Journals if you have never done so and his short fiction. Leave The Castle and Amerika until last. Incidentally, Hitler's private train was christened Amerika.

[@rhymedesigns-thepoetrystud9147]

Thanks for that extra knowledge

[@MartinMMeiss-mj6li]

Preventing a character from getting what he wants does NOT raise the stakes. It frustrates the character, and perhaps motivates him to greater striving, but the amount which is at stake is not increased. I would be like saying if a poker play gets replacement cards that are worse than what he handed in, then the amount in the pot has increased.

[@rodrigodelamo6171]

Is the travelers gift internal or external?*please answer quickly*

[@MichaelJaymesAuthor]

Don't you need both so they contradict? I wonder if there is a story without any external conflicts...how would the writer show the internal conflicts that cause mayhem without pushing them into obstacles that causes them to deal with the things within them as well? (if anyone knows of a story with no external conflict, I'd be interested in seeing how someone did this.)

[@shaunzhang733]

Here is the thing. Without external conflict, your characters don't change. Without internal conflict, your plot is meaningless, and your characters are simply punching bags for the plot.

[@MichaelJaymesAuthor]

@@shaunzhang733 Exactly. That's why I was asking if anyone knows of a story with only one or the other. I want to know how that works (if it does actually work).

[@shaunzhang733]

@@MichaelJaymesAuthor A lot of stories are plot driven, external conflict based stories, but they lack internal conflict. I don't think there are any books that would have only internal conflict, because once an inciting incident occurs, it shoves the protagonist outside their comfort zone, without an inciting incident, the reader would not want to read on, they would just see a bunch of internal conflicts without external conflicts, it would cause them to lose their interests.

[@hamadaabbas6555]

You need my help

[@u_t_d_s_h-1_a]

External conflict tops---I tell you, its what obtains in romance novels when there are usually outside forces interfering with one or both characters, that's why romance novels do far better than many other genres ---if not all.