There, I’ve said it. I know, I know, it’s something that’s terribly difficult to get right and is the bugbear of many a wannabe writer, me included, but I. Love. It. Which is partly why writing for M&B is something I particularly want to do because their stories are driven by internal conflict. Not car chases and guns. Not bombs. Not even star-crossed lovers kept apart by their families. Just two people who are perfect for each other but have to change themsevles in order to get their HEA. And what could be more emotional than that? What could be more difficult than changing yourself?

Anyway, I fully admit that for all my love of internal conflict, I have yet to get this sucker right. Now the main problem (for me) is that the conflict required for M&B needs to be simple and yet deep. Kate Walker has lots of really good advice about this so get along to her site to read about it but I have to confess it’s this simplicity that has been eluding me for a while now.

Why? Well, my history of writing romance is twenty years of writing for my own pleasure. The last romance I wrote that wasn’t for M&B was 300k. Yes, you heard that right, 300k. I didn’t plot, I pantsed the whole thing, just chucking in whatever was going to make my characters suffer the most. Especially the hero because a tortured hero is my favourite thing in the world. So of course there wasn’t just one simple conflict, there were many, many conflicts. It was awesome. But nowhere, on this planet, would this book have been published, least of all by M&B. However, it was ALL internally conflict driven which was great training, but was it simple? Give you three guesses…;-)

I do not do simplicity. I tend to chuck in lots of conflict strands to up the tension and the angst. So, say my hero’s internal conflict is that his parents had a messy divorce and he was used as a pawn by both of them to hurt each other. As a consequence he might feel like he’s not good enough for love, guilt at letting himself be used, betrayed by people who are supposed to love him, etc, etc. All good stuff but I find myself trying to explore ALL of those emotions at once. Which complicates it. Because guilt might make you act in a certain way, anger might make you act in another, betrayal a third. Now, because you only have 50k in an M&B romance, you just can’t explore ALL of them and the consequences (hear that Jackie??). You have to choose ONE.

*gets out the flow chart*

He feels guilty for letting himself be used —-> which leads to him vow that no one will ever use him like that again —-> which makes him decide that he needs to stay in control of his life and himself —-> He MUST have control in order to feel good about himself.

There you go. Pretty clear what kind of thing his character needs to learn eh? Now, say this is a Jackie ms.

He feels guilty for letting himself be used. Also that’s he’s unworthy. And also betrayed. —> which leads him to vow that he won’t be used again (adds girl who used his bad boy image to annoy her parents), no one will make him feel unworthy again (adds teacher who told him he was useless), and people who are supposed to love you suck (add divorce) —> which makes him decide he needs to stay in control, he IS the best, and he won’t fall in love —> He MUST have control, he MUST be successful and love is for suckers.

Not so clear right? He has to learn not just to give up his control, but also that success isn’t everything and people who love you won’t betray you. All okay but not in 50k (there are also layers in which case anger might be a layer but I won’t mention that since it’s complicated enough as it is!).

So, how do I keep it simple? I make sure I decide my conflict first and then settle on ONE way that conflict might make my character feel, how that ONE way impacts on the way he lives his life and what he needs to do in order to resolve it. And I write that at the top of each ms to help me keep on track and to stop myself adding any more conflict strands.

Easy, peasy, lemon-squeezy.

BTW, there is a movie that is great for considering the layers of conflict – Inception. It’s kind of like internal conflict made external. Awesome.

Anyway, how do you feel about internal conflict? Hard? Easy? Put it up against the wall and shoot it?

Right so, digging deep. What does it mean in terms of your characters? It really means examining their emotional reactions and not just the surface emotion. It’s all about what’s going on underneath the surface. Like an iceberg you may see the tip of it sticking out of the water but there’s a giant continent sized lump of ice going on beneath the water that you may not have noticed.
For example, let’s say our hero makes our heroine some toast but he burns it. Let’s do some digging into his reaction to this. How does he feel about burning the toast? Maybe he’s a perfectionist and feels angry that he burned it. Dig a little deeper – why is he a perfectionist? He’s a perfectionist because his father was careless, broke things, lost money, didn’t seem to care etc. So the hero has decided he’s never going to be his Dad and he’s going to make sure he does things right. But he’s burned the toast which means he’s been careless like his Dad, something he’s sworn never to be, hence he’s angry. Do some more digging – maybe he also feels guilty that by burning the toast he let the heroine down and that is also a part of his anger. Dig some more – why does he feel guilty about letting the heroine down? Perhaps because his father was so careless he let the hero down often and so the hero knows what it feels like to be let down and he doesn’t want the heroine to experience that too. Deeper – why does he not want to be careless like his father? How did having a careless father make him feel? Well, it made him feel bad and he doesn’t want to feel bad. We can go deeper – why did it make him feel bad? Perhaps he felt bad because he’s secretly afraid that his father was careless and let him down because he just didn’t care enough about the hero. And if that’s true, then how does that make the hero feel about himself? Is the truth, the hero’s deepest, most secret fear, really that because his father didn’t seem to care about him, he’s not worth loving?

Okay, so that’s pretty much as deep as it gets: how does the character view themselves? Now obviously this hero doesn’t going around thinking he’s unlovable. That’s what he’s afraid of. So he’ll do anything and everything to avoid having to test that fear, to make himself feel good about himself. And – in this example – he does that by being a perfectionist. In his mind, if he does everything right, takes care with everything he does, no one will ever have cause to think he’s unlovable. Until he burns the toast of course.

Right, so the toast example may be a little silly. I have another example from one of my WIPs. One I just had a brainwave on due to the whole digging deep thing. I have a heroine who is in love with her best friend and has been for years. So far, her black moment has consisted of her realising he will never love her back so she tells him to get lost because it’s easier than being rejected. But I’m missing one vital thing that will make this black moment even more emotional. Why does she think he’ll reject her? Okay, so he doesn’t want a relationship and has made that very clear. But still, what stops her from saying it? Why is rejection so hard? The answer is really very simple. She scared of being rejected because if he rejects her, it’ll confirm what’s she’s always been afraid of facing – that she’s not good enough for him. And that’s at the heart of her conflict: she’s afraid she’s not worthy of love.
Now doesn’t that pack way more of an emotional punch than simply being scared of rejection?

So, next time you’re puzzling out about digging deep, think about your conflict and go right to the heart of the character first. Ask yourself how they view themselves. Not the ‘hey, I’m a hugely successful billionaire, there’s nothing wrong with me’ surface. That’s the tip of the iceberg. What’s going on beneath that surface? What are they secretly afraid of finding out about themselves? And if they’re not scared, then either you haven’t gone deep enough or you need to give them some more conflict.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this? I’m still figuring this stuff out so if anyone has anymore lightbulbs, do share!

BTW, sometimes burnt toast is just burnt toast.

Anyway, to avoid the horrible 60 million jigsaw piece scenario, I figured out the hero first, starting with his internal conflict. The way I like to think about good old IC is to think about a person’s most basic fear. And then what the character does in order to fight that fear. My hero is afraid of being abandoned because it makes him feel unloved. So what does he do in order to fight that fear? He makes sure that no one leaves him. How does he do that? By being in control in his relationships. Remaining in control is his main motivation throughout the story and it’s this need that will lie at the heart of all the actions and decisions he makes. It will also be part of the lesson he needs to learn – in order to have a healthy relationship with the heroine, he needs to learn to give up that control and get over his fear of abandonment.

Now I’ve figured out his fear and his motivation, I can build up the backstory. Such as why he has a fear of abandonment. How the need for control has worked throughout his life. How it has affected his previous relationships. Working out this conflict and how it has shaped my hero can also give me clues as to what qualities he admires in other people (heroine alert!). Qualities like loyalty (people who are loyal don’t leave), dependability (people who are dependable are less likely to leave), tenaciousness (again, makes people less likely to give up or leave!). And also qualities that he may not like in other people (again, heroine alert!).

Of course, I’d like to say that his IC was all worked out first and then I got the idea for making him a French aristocrat but I can’t kick my old habits and the whole French thing kind of developed alongside the rest of it. I think the important thing though is that the fact that he is descended from French aristocrats and is the head of a huge luxury goods company adds colour and maybe a few traits but it doesn’t really have any bearing on his most basic conflict. So why did I make him French and head of a huge company? Well, I’ve never written a non-English character so I thought I’d make him French since I like the accent. Plus if he’s wealthy then I can add French Chateaus etc for the fantasy factor. The aristocracy bit and the head of the company will add to his alphaness naturally. Of course now he’s sounding less Modern Heat and more Modern! Argh!

Anyway, I now have one piece of the jigsaw sorted. The next thing I have to do is build my old arch-nemesis: the heroine. I can hear her evil laugh already…

Oh, that’s right, I was going to ask about nationalities. What’s your favourite when it comes to heroes?

Anyway, trying to do the first two with the third has been a bit of a mission. Especially since all I wanted to do was sit at my desk and write my ms – apparently not a good thing with a twisted ankle that should be kept elevated.

However, I have been making respectable progress. I will be finishing it this week which will be great. The only problem with writing a novel in about a week and a half is that no doubt I’ll need to spend a month editing the thing! I’m almost afraid to read what I’ve written – it’ll be dreck I’m sure of it.

And it hasn’t been all all plain sailing with the writing either. I have a big problem in that I tend to make my h&h too self aware too early. In fact I didn’t even realise this was, in fact, what I was doing until Dr Jax rolled his eyes and pointed it out to me. The issue with making them self aware – ie being in love – is that if you do it too early, you run into the problem where it’s not the conflict keeping them apart so much as the being in love and not wanting to be. So the focus changes from the conflict – eg, my heroine not wanting to be protected – to her not wanting to be in love. Same with the hero. He fell in love too early and so his angst stems from not wanting to be in love rather than wanting to hold on to someone who doesn’t want to be held.

Tricky eh? It’s my own fault really. I love angst which is why I make them self aware – the anguish of loving someone but not wanting to! O the pain! But if you have two people loving each other and yet not wanting to be in love, how does this resolve the conflict? All there is angst with nothing really progressing. Which is why I felt I was writing the same thing over and over, having my heroine constantly go over the reasons why she doesn’t want to fall in love and yet nothing really happening with her real conflict.

But then, how do I include the angst and tension? You’re supposed to have it right? Which is when Dr Jax pointed out that the conflict provides the tension not the ‘I’m so in love and yet I can’t be’ kind of thing. Another Aha moment for me. So I’ve pulled back on the awareness, let the conflict provide the tension, and my characters will not be falling in love until right near the end. That’ll teach ’em.

Re the whole conflict thing, when I said that conflict doesn’t need to be bad, I did mean that. But only because I always thought it had to be some terrible tragedy. So it was kind of interesting to figure out that it didn’t need to be. That I didn’t have to pile on dead fiances/wives/family/kids. However, that doesn’t mean that tragedy can’t be good conflict because obviously it can. It can be very, very strong. Now, the hero I talked about in the last post, whom I gave a dead fiance to, the only reason that was him living in the past was because there wasn’t anything about the heroine that tapped into my hero’s conflict. Perhaps if my heroine had sworn never to play second fiddle to anyone again, that would have been better. Or if she’d decided that her next relationship would mean marriage or nothing.
Even this current WIP, my hero has had tragedy in his life. He lost his parents in an accident and so had to look after his much younger sister, but his conflict isn’t to do with grief about his parents (though obviously it’s in there). It’s to do with responsbility and trying to do what’s best for people, even though they may not agree. So his conflict becomes a culmination of his experience – looking after his sister, taking over his father’s company, etc, etc, rather than a single moment of loss. And it’s conflict because my heroine does NOT want someone looking after her.

But again, that’s not to say that those moments of loss aren’t hugely terrible and don’t make good conflict. It’s just you can’t take them in isolation from the rest of a person’s life. My last sub was an excellent example of doing just that – my heroine lost her father in an accident (yes, I have a terrible tendency to kill off my character’s parents!) and that defined her character completely. It was like she’d had no life since her father died, which is not the case in real life because people move on after a tragedy (just ignore the fact that some people don’t!). They don’t forget, obviously, and it marks them, but it was like my heroine was stuck in some kind of time warp. And it didn’t help that I’d exaggerated her living safe ways. Not good for an aspirational heroine who was supposed to be a lawyer!

So, anyway, that’s my thoughts on this irritating conflict business. Really, talking about…say shoes for example is far less annoying. Or favourite books. And speaking of which, I bought Natalie Anderson’s Hot Boss, Boardroom Mistress on ebook a couple of days ago and if you’re looking for a sizzling reunion story then baby, you’ve found it!

Oh and for those of you worried about having too much sex without emotion in their stories (Jackie raises hand) here’s is a great post by Sam Hunter, a Blaze author, about sexual motivation. Certainly made me think.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about a comment Janet left on my blog about conflict and how it happens in the present. I think I mentioned in the last post but I thought I’d expand a bit here. I never really got this to be honest, I mean, come on, of course conflict happens in the present. And in the past too right?

Well yes. And no. The conflict that we deal with in our stories may have been seeded in the past, but it happens only in the present. For example, the hero of my current wip has been looking after his sister for the past 12 years (this is the seed of his conflict). He’s the protective sort and has been doing this quite happily with no problems. He’s not conflicted about his need to protect at all.
Until he meets my heroine. Why? Because she does NOT want to be protected. So here he is, calmly going about his protective business which, he assumes, the heroine will naturally see eye to eye with since no one else has called him on this behaviour before (apart fom his sister but that’s different ’cause she’s his sister right?). But lo and behold, the heroine says ‘I don’t need protecting buddy so back off.’ So instantly we have conflict. And it’s happening in the present. Yes, the basis for it is the fact that he’s been looking after his sister for years, but it’s never been a problem for him until now.
Same with my heroine. She’s escaping over-protective parents and wants to do things for herself. Not a problem, no conflict – until she meets my protective hero. And then it’s conflict all the way baby!

Now, you could compare this to an earlier incarnation of this story where I (overdosing on internal conflict!) gave my hero a dead fiance. This was fine but when he met the heroine, there wasn’t anything other than a dead fiance to hold him back from a relationship with her. There was nothing about the heroine in particular that made him feel conflicted – other than the fact that she was a woman and he was wary of loving again! Thus, when they met, there wasn’t much in the way of conflict happening – all his conflict was in the past. Does that make sense?

Anyway, that’s my understanding of it and no doubt there’s heaps more still learn about this angle. Anyone got any other thoughts? Might as well think about that rather than thinking about our subs/competition entries huh? ;-

Conflict doesn’t necessarily need to be based on bad things happening in the past!

Cool eh? Now, you guys may already know this and be thinking, ‘yeah, duh!’ but up till this point I have been giving my characters all manner of dead families/fiancees/babies or whatever tragedy is popular right now, purely so they would not want a relationship. The thing I suddenly got was that the point is not that the h&h don’t want a relationship at all, they just don’t want a relationship with a particular person! Why don’t they? Because that person threatens everything they believe up till that point in time. And it’s only when they come into contact with that person, that there is conflict. Conflict, as Michelle is always telling me, happens in the present not the past.

Clear as mud? For example, I’ve finally figured out the essential conflict of my Kate and Alex story: for Alex, home is where the heart is. For Kate heart is where the home is. Neither of them have any problem with this UNTIL they meet. And as soon as they meet, there is conflict because each challenges the other. In order to resolve this, Alex must learn that having roots isn’t a bad thing and Kate must learn that home isn’t necessarily embodied in one place.
Now, I had Alex having lost a fiancee etc, but really, in order for him to believe that home is where the heart is, I don’t need any of that. Maybe just the fact that he moved around a lot as a kid is enough. And maybe he was quite happy with this state of affairs. But it’s only when he comes into contact with Kate that he feels threatened about it. And voila, instant conflict.

So all in all I feel rather pleased with myself about this. Especially as I have now got real and believable conflicts for all my WIPs. Now all I have to do is plan the stories using action/reaction/consequence, completely rewrite all of them, and Robert’s your father’s brother.

Oh yeah, and I signed up for NaNo too. Need to write my next sub, rather imaginatively titled Cat and Sean. Anyone else?

The reason is that they were still passive. They were not taking action. And the reason for that is I have been thinking about my stories in terms of scenes. I think, okay, need a love scene, put one in here. What about a ‘save the cat’ moment here. And black moment here. And when I think about the scenes I want, I try and move my characters towards the scenes, which is NOT letting them act.

It’s like a play. The play opens with the characters on stage. They do the scene, the scene ends, the stage goes dark. Then the next scene opens. How have the characters got there? Where are they going? The scene ends, the stage goes dark. What happens next? We don’t know and neither do I!

I have been treating my stories like this play, opening with a scene, then jumping to the next scene etc, etc. Episodic in other words. Great for a play, not so great for a story.

So I’ve cut it right back. Concentrating on the most essential conflict – my hero wants to control and so has to learn to let people go, my heroine needs freedom but has to learn it’s okay to lean on someone. So what happens when a guy like this meets a woman like this? Forget flirtation scenes, think about action. The external conflict puts him in the situation of having to look after her so what does he do? He’s all about control so says she has to come with him. Her reaction? She’s all about freedom so get lost buster. What is the consequence? Does he force her to go? And if so, what action does she take in response? And right there is where the conflict is driving the story through the actions of the characters. No need for exaggeration because their reactions are based on their essential conflict. Who knows when they’ll need a love scene – I’m not sure – but it will be because one of them makes a decision and the consequence of that is making love.

Dunno if this makes sense to everyone or if everyone is goin ‘well, duh, I already knew that!’. But this is certainly why I have been having so many problems with conflict. I have already got a plan for the new story based entirely on action, reaction and consequence. Hopefully it’ll make a good synopsis but if not, it’s certainly been a HUGE learning curve to take!

Nup.

Witness my Kate’n’Alex story. I was writing happily away (the aftermath of a love scene, hot), my conflict sorted, getting into his introspection about how he cannot possibly want a relationship and then I come up, slap bang against the dreaded ‘why’. Okay, says I, he doesn’t want a relationship because he doesn’t like being tied down. Why? Because his family moved around a lot and he learned never to commit to anything or anyone because he knew he’d have to leave again. Yes, but that’s what he did as a kid – why does he continue this behaviour as an adult? Um…because he just wants to??

Grrrr. See what I mean? It’s all very well having angsty childhood stuff happening, but there has to be a reason for the character to keep acting that way as an adult. Which brings me to finally understanding why a parent cannot be the reason for someone’s internal conflict (yes, I’m slow). A parent can add to it, deepen it, but as an adult, would the character really continue to act the way they had as a child? Especially an alpha male?

So, for Alex, I have to have some reason why he continues to believe the lessons he learned in his childhood. Did he ever try thinking differently? What happened when he did?
I have another hero too who I thought had his conflict sorted. But no. He had a difficult childhood and had issues with responsibility, but again, the difficult childhood seems to be the excuse to for him to continue acting the same way as an adult. Again, I have to ask myself, did he ever try to rise above it? Did he succeed or fail? Why did he fail and how did he feel about his failure?

Argh! Seems you can never stop learning in this business…

In the meantime, after a depressed weekend where my writing and everything about it sucked, I succumbed and bought some NTAI shoes. Wedges as you can see since I cannot wear heels without seriously damaging my feet.
Yes, they were ridiculously expensive. Yes, they are totally impractical. Yes, they made me stop thinking about my sub for, oh, about five minutes.

So, anyone else got a handle on internal conflict? What about shoes?

I wasn’t going to look at this story just yet because it felt too sad, but I’ve decided I’m going to make a push to rewrite it sooner. It seems a pity to waste the parts of the story they really liked, not to mention a hero that is ‘perfect for Modern Heat’. However, it does mean a heroine overhaul. Which means a plot overhaul. Part of the reason for the rejection was that I was trying to make my heroine, Christie, do things she wouldn’t do, inventing all kinds of reasons for her to act in a certain way that would fit the situation I’d given her. She was a geek with no self confidence and no experience of men who has to set up a date via the internet. And then the date turns out be this incredibly handsome, incredibly confident guy who makes her stammer and stutter, and then she has to choose to have a one night stand with this guy… Argh! You see my problem? Anyway, I loved the setup. I wanted it to work. I gave her a boss who would have fired if she didn’t set up the date (it was research for a computer magazine), a friend who pushed her into it, and an ex boyfriend who had found someone new as a catalyst. And still it didn’t work – it just wasn’t something her character would do and ending up being completely unconvincing.

However, that being said, M&B thought she was a lovely heroine. She was unconfident but she had this little streak of stubborness and fire (she accused the hero of cowardice at one point which again was something they really liked because it struck directly at his internal conflict). So how to keep these nice parts of her and yet give her some decent conflict and a set up that works? Interestingly, in the first draft she had a mother that ran her down all the time and the advice I was given by M&B was to think about this angle when redoing her conflict. Unfortunately I went about it in the wrong way, making her mother’s opinion define her when in fact an adult woman (so I was told) would no longer let her mother’s opinion dictate what she did (let’s just forget about the people in real life who DO actually let this happen for the moment shall we?).

My solution is this: her mother will contribute to her conflict but won’t define her character. Her mother wanted a pretty princess and instead got a tall, lanky tomboy who hated dresses. After a childhood trying to be what her mother wanted, Christie decided that she’d never be that person (see? this is her choosing not to be defined by it), and so followed her interests in computers, becoming a hotshot female game developer. This involves her being around guys all the time since that’s the industry, but she will see herself as one of them, ie neglecting the fact that she is female. Now her real conflict is that she doesn’t realise how much her mother’s disappointment in her as a girl has affected her own sense of self worth. No matter that she’s successful in her work, she’s constantly compared to her older brother who is married with kids and her mother is always telling her she’ll be on the shelf because no one will be interested in such an unfeminine woman. But my heroine doesn’t want to accept that – she’s been accepted in her job the way she is after all. However, her job isn’t the same as romance and what she begins to discover is a fear that her mother is right, she will not be loved for who she is but who she’s expected to be.

This is not to say that this will work. I actually have no idea yet and probably need to develop this a bit more. But I think, if I can pull it off, it will be a much better conflict than the two scenarios I previously tried to use. And better, I won’t be constrained by fitting the conflict around an already written set up. In fact, I’m giving them a whole new setup that won’t be complicated by things forcing the heroine into meeting the hero.
Weelll, now that I think about it, there may be a teeny, tiny complication but we’ll see how we go.