What is External Conflict in Storytelling?
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External conflict is one of the most common literary devices. It details the opposing external forces that act upon a story’s protagonist and often sets the plot in motion. External conflict takes many forms, including other people, nature, technology or society. It can even include monsters like werewolves and vampires.
Fiction writers thrive on conflict. What this means is not that fiction writers love starting fights; what we mean by this is that conflicts drive the plots of stories. From novels and short stories to plays and films, conflict plays a heavy role in entertaining us.
Writers can work with two types of conflicts to help tell their stories. Inner conflic t details the struggles a character goes through related to themselves. They wrestle with issues of morality, romance, religion and even the nature of their existence. These are very juicy problems for characters to experience, but they most often occur because of the second type of conflict: external conflict.
External conflict describes anything a character deals with outside themselves, usually caused by another person or entity.?
What Does External Conflict Mean?
External conflict occurs when an opposing force creates an obstacle for the main character to overcome. External forces stand in the way of what a character wants. These forces create tension in the story when the characters try to reach their goals.
5 Types of External Conflict
Some forms of external conflict show up more than others, but there are five key examples of conflict that a person usually finds in a story. They include the following types of conflicts:
Individual vs. Individual
One of the most common kinds of external conflict, individual vs. individual, occurs when an antagonist or group of antagonists stands in the way of the story’s protagonist(s). A compelling conflict of this type depends heavily on careful character development . This helps the reader understand the core of the problems between them, but it also prevents characters from feeling like one-dimensional caricatures.
Individual vs. Nature
Nature is one of humanity’s great antagonists, so it makes sense that writers use it as a source of external conflict. The great outdoors can threaten characters or keep them from their goals. “Nature” takes several forms, but commonly includes:
Because nature is often a “silent” opponent, stories that use it create internal conflict for characters. This usually relates to their mortality, fear or sense of self.
Individual vs. Technology
When a character must fight with some aspect of technology, an external conflict happens. It exists most often in science fiction stories or dystopian literature. People must fight with their inventions for survival. But this conflict can also be pretty banal, such as a malfunctioning GPS or a mobile phone with a weak signal.
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Individual vs. Society
Alienation and feelings of becoming an outcast are common in stories where a person fights with society. These stories commonly traffic in paranoia as the characters work against the conventions of the place they live. Common antagonists in this story can include the government, religious institutions or even their suburban neighbors.
Individual vs. Supernatural
Ghosts, vampires, wizards, werewolves and zombies often show up in stories where the supernatural is the primary source of conflict. These stories often succeed because they put characters at a direct disadvantage or create an unequal playing field. Most stories of supernatural harm tend to be about something else, either another external conflict like nature (“Moby Dick ”) or an internal struggle such as morality (“The Lord of the Rings ”).
Famous Examples of External Conflict
What does external conflict look like in practice? The entire canon of literature, television and film offers various options. Some popular and well-regarded modern examples of external conflict include:
“The Matrix” (Individual vs. Technology and Individual vs. Society)
“The Matrix ” pulls double duty as a story in which a person must overcome the malevolent actions of an empire of machines and the society of people who do not know about the current state of the world. This 1999 film and its sequels showcase a broad number of conflict types.
“Harry Potter” (Individual vs. Supernatural, Individual vs. Individual)
The “Harry Potter ” series focuses quite a bit on the titular character’s internal conflicts, including his simple upbringing versus the heroic figure that wizard society thinks he is. But each book and film in the series details several external conflicts from story to story. Harry and his friends must battle giant trolls, wicked serpents and even a violent tree . But the story’s core conflict deals with Harry’s nemesis Lord Voldemort, the evil wizard who killed his parents and set the events of the series into motion.
“The Old Man and the Sea” (Individual vs. Nature)
Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea ” is a novella detailing the struggle of a simple fisherman against several parts of nature. When the Cuban fisherman Santiago kills a giant Marlin and attempts to bring it back to shore, he must battle the elements to bring the dead fish home safely. But the fish’s blood attracts sharks that trail the boat, and by the time he reaches home all that remains is the fish’s head.
How to Navigate External Conflict Effectively
Including external conflict in a story is key to ensuring it resonates with the reader or viewer. This conflict must “hook” the person engaging with it. But external conflict should not exist for its own sake. It should reveal something about the characters, such as how they approach their situation. In the best cases, it will cause protagonists to undergo some form of internal conflict, too.
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(Reporting by NPD)