Feeling tense as you read that novel? Chances are, this is because the writer has created meaningful conflict and is skillfully letting it play out in a scene. William Faulkner said, in his Nobel prize speech, “The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself” and who am I to argue with the great writer? But the human heart is in conflict with a whole lot of other things in fiction: people, society, government, the natural world, the supernatural world, to name a few. As writers we can use conflict not just to cause tension but to create and develop characters and create and develop story and complicate setting—in a good way. If we drill down into sentences, conflict can even be used to enliven language.  If your fiction seems to lose momentum in places or just seems to lack something that you can’t quite put your finger on, the problem might just be that you don’t have enough conflict or the right conflict. We’ll tackle this essential aspect of writing fiction in this class.

TAKE THIS CLASS IF

You’re writing a novel in any genre.
The plot feels like it’s lacking something.
The story isn’t as gripping as you’d like it to be.