Ready, Set, Novel!: Building a Conflict Flowchart

It’s officially #NaNoPrep season! Inspired by the creativity and motivational prompts in Ready, Set, Novel!—written by our own Chris Baty, Lindsay Grant, and Tavia Stewart-Streit—we’re bringing some of our favorite writing exercises to you. Today, we’re asking “What if?”:

Life has conflicts, so it only makes sense that your novel would have conflicts, too. Not all conflicts have to life-changing or dramatic; something as simple as not being able to find an outfit for the day can be stress-inducing and climactic.

Remember, conflicts often lead to new conflicts. Think about your favorite novel, then break down the plot into separate conflicts:

In The Hunger Games, Katniss’ conflict at first is that she wants to protect her younger sister. The two of them really only have each other to rely on, and, for the first time, her sister is eligible for the Hunger Games, a competition in which teenagers fight to the death.

When her sister’s name is called, Katniss “resolves” this initial conflict by volunteering in her sister’s place, leading to a new conflict: learning what it takes to survive the Hunger Games.

The first step? To prove she’s a worthy competitor so that she can receive the sponsor support that is crucially needed to survive these Games. She resolves this conflict with her training scores, but that brings up another conflict: to survive with a target on her back as a front-runner. She resolves this conflict by teaming up with another competitor in the Games, Rue. We’re not even halfway through the book yet (and haven’t included the subplot conflicts with Peeta!), and we’ve got a whole bundle of conflict that flows naturally from the resolution of previous conflict.

Take one of your favorite books, then map out the conflict flow of the main character.

Then, start with the seed of your main character’s conflict? What do they want? From there, draw out the conflict flow—what happens when they get what they want? Is it what they thought it would be? Does it lead to more danger? In novels, even more so than in life, we have to be careful what we wish for…

Top photo by Flickr user caseorganic.