All About Publication

I’ve been judging romance contest entries again. I have found several mistakes that I continue to see over and over. Interested in knowing what they are? Well, I am only going to cover one in this article – conflict. I’m not talking about your garden variety arguing, bickering or fighting. That’s not the kind of conflict I’m talking about. I’m talking about floods, deaths, commitments, fears, love, ambition. The list goes on. Without conflict life might be easier, but it certainly wouldn’t be as interesting.

Obviously, conflict motivates your characters as well. They have to have a plan of action but then something gets in their way. Give your characters strong goals to work on through the book. An author just can’t tell a story about this or that. Let’s face it, we all can’t be Seinfeld. But even on that show the characters are going to do something and then an event happened. The important part to remember is that life doesn’t just happen. Head your characters in a direction and then throw a bucket of water at them.

There are three main types of conflict you can toss at your characters: circumstantial, personal and relationship conflict. Let’s discuss each one:

1. CIRCUMSTANTIAL. What circumstances are your characters going to be involved in? Are you going to fling them into the path of a hurricane? Involve them in a car wreck? Maybe their circumstances are of a personal nature. Maybe a grandfather dies and leaves his granddaughter the family farm but not without conditions. Maybe your character wants to leave town but can’t because someone is trying to stop him. These circumstances must disrupt the lives of your characters. It changes their course. It creates urgency to the situation. It keeps the book moving, and it is usually where the book begins. Something happens to change the life of your character and the conflict just continues.

2. PERSONAL. Who doesn’t have personal problems? Your characters should too. You should know your characters inside and out – their actions, emotions, dreams, past experiences, fears, likes and dislikes. You might not use every detail in the book, but we are, after all, what we’ve experienced in our lives. You need to know what makes all of your characters tick, what motivates them, and what baggage they carry around that makes them who they are. You must figure out what it is that drives your characters. Fear, love, excitement, greed, or hate?

In most of the entries I’ve judged, the characters wander around letting whatever occurs to them be their life. How often does that happen in real life? Your characters have to have goals just like we do. For example: Your character has a big presentation at work. He needs to go to a meeting and persuade his clients to buy Brand X. If they sign with him, he will get a raise and he will be able to buy his parent’s property out from under his conniving, greedy brother.

Great! Your character has goals – the presentation, getting to work on time, making the presentation, getting the raise, buying the house before his brother. It is then the author’s job to put conflict in his way. For example: His boss forgot to tell him the meeting has been moved up to tomorrow morning. He spills milk all over the presentation and then the power goes out before he can reprint it. His annoying neighbor dropped her cell phone in the toilet so she comes over to borrow his, and he can’t get rid of her. He goes out to his car and it has a flat. He steals a car to get to the meeting because nothing or no one is going to stop him from pinching his parent’s property out from under his brother.

Whoa! Now you know just what kind of character you really have. See all that conflict? See all the situations your character will need to make decisions about? The choices they make will be affected by the character’s beliefs, emotional state and past baggage. This is the bread and butter of writing. It is all of this conflict that will lead you down the road to your character’s epiphany. Yes, I said epiphany. Yeah, I didn’t know what it was at first either. When your character works through all the conflict, he will come to some sort of conclusion – an epiphany. In our story, the character will probably come to the conclusion that it was not worth killing his brother over.

The main conflict I see missing in the contest entries I’ve read is the personal conflict. In our example, it’s what made the character so willing to steal in order to keep the property from his brother. It’s that internal conflict you find going on within yourself over certain issues. Your character’s need it too. Use all five, and even sixth, senses to let your character experience life.

3. RELATIONSHIP. Is there a person on this planet that doesn’t have issues with at least one other person? Give your characters that kind of conflict as well. Whether it is a mean villain or the next-door neighbor, there is always going to be human conflict. In a romance there has to be a conflict of relationship between the hero and heroine that keeps them from getting together.

This type of conflict includes: different values, different ambitions, money, egos, mental issues, prejudices, etc. Here are some more specific examples: He’s a cop and she’s been accused of a crime. He’s driven by loyalty to his family but she wants him to give up the family business to live in Paris as an artist. He’s consumed with revenge against the Ewings and she’s a Ewing.

Relationship conflict doesn’t just happen in romances. It separates families, friends, business partners, and even countries.

So there you have it. Conflict. Those are pretty complicated webs your characters are weaving, but what a fantastic story it will be. Remember with each scene you write, you need to include at least one type of conflict that will advance the story along the plot line.


Cindy A. Christiansen is a multi-published author and a member of Romance Writers of America. She teaches on-line workshops on writing romance novels. To find out more, visit her website here.

Enjoy that? You can read more from Cindy at The Cuckleburr Times right here.

I would like to thank TiredOfYourWeight@WhosTheNextIdiot.com for the email you just sent reminding me that I’m overweight. How did you find me? Were you there when I used emergency money to buy girl scout cookies? When I dove between the sofa cushions because I thought I saw a French fry? When I ran past you in my bathing suit at the pool and took out three toddlers? How do you people know that I want to lose weight, need money transferred from Nigerian royalty, and have been looking everywhere for a fake Rolodex? Baffling.

So, Mister TiredOfYourWeight, I appreciate that you took time in the middle of the night to send me this urgent email to share your weight loss secret that is sure to revolutionize the world and to give me the opportunity to buy into it before anyone else. I am flattered that you spend so much time and energy caring about strangers. I wish you would spend the same amount of time learning to spell and removing the strands of gibberish in your heartfelt message which, until I speak in tongues, I am unable to translate. I’m sure you mean well, but I don’t need the revolutionary answer to instant weight loss. You see, I already know the answer, and have known it for years. In fact, it really hasn’t been much of a secret since 4th grade biology. Eat less than you are, exercise more than you are, and you will lose weight. Shocking I know. Knowing what to do isn’t the secret. It’s doing it.

You see, I would rather drink lumpy shakes made out of goat’s urine, strap thirty pounds of spandex to my body, and spend thousands on hairdos, clothes, and accessories guaranteed to make me look a size smaller. I would rather have my colon flushed and take diet pills that cause hair loss, fainting spells, and the unavoidable explosive diarrhea. But don’t make me eat vegetables – that’s just gross. I want those programs where you actually pay more to eat less. I would rather spend hours reading manuals from experts claiming it’s not the quantity but the combinations of foods- just don’t mix the brown Snickers with the tan French fries and you’re fine.

I want to sit around perplexed saying, “But I don’t eat that much” and convince myself that I must have some rare thyroid condition and that everybody’s order contains the word Supersize. I want to buy exercise tapes that I’m too lazy to open and fancy treadmills to hold my plants, rather than park at the back of the parking lot and take the stairs. I am not interested in the kind of exercise where I am involved. I don’t even want to get up to change the TV. I once watched a twenty-four hour Valerie Bertinelli marathon because I couldn’t find the remote. I would rather sit around with a group of other overweight people and have them tell me size doesn’t matter and look at skinny people in disgust and hope they’re miserable.

So I do know the secret to weight loss, Mr. TiredOfYourWeight. Perhaps if you could come up with a revolutionary way to do the things we don’t want to do. Now that I would read. So thanks but no thanks. I would, however, be interested in a way to earn a million in a week without ever having to get dressed or leave my house. Do you have a cousin who does that?


Professional Speaker Kelly Swanson is an award-winning author and comedian who delivers clean side-splitting keynotes and break-out sessions. Her heartwarming messages about staying on the “funny side of life,” will inspire, motivate, and teach you the importance of cultivating healthy personal and professional relationships. Kelly has opened for Loretta Lynn, performed on Holland America Cruise Lines, and was a featured artist at the Best of Our State Festival and the National Storytelling Festival. Our State Magazine calls her “One of North Carolina’s Funniest Women.” Kelly Swanson, Humorist – Powerful Message, Outrageously Funny. Visit Kelly at http://www.kellyswanson.net or email kelly@kellyswanson.net.