How to Instantly Give Your Characters Internal Conflict

we're sisters best friends and authors on a mission to help you stoke your creative fire and live the life of your dreams we believe that purpose fuels passion and that creativity is your secret weapon for Mass construction there's never been a better time to bless the world with your dream realized you're listening to the Kate and Abby show what's up guys welcome back to another episode of the Kate Nabi show today we are discussing how to create instant internal conflict without any rewriting highly requested do you ever feel like you're reading back through your book or maybe you're Midway through your writing Journey with a novel and you're thinking as you listen to this podcast perhaps as you listen to some of Abby's teaching videos like hmm do I have enough internal conflict in my characters do I am I going to need to do major rewriting to bring internal conflict into the story a lot of these concepts are very multi-layered we really have to delve into them and see how do they apply to our stories specifically today we're going to talk about some ways that you can very easily find the internal conflict that might be hiding right under your nose and bring it to the surface in really simple ways that are a lot easier than you think but before we get into that first we have to thank our sponsors who are you guys you are the ones who support this show and keep it going and we so appreciate your help so if you get value out of this podcast go to patreon.com the Kate and Abby show and help us keep this podcast alive and free of interruptions also every month on our patreon specifically for our Patron our patrons in that Community we do a special monthly live hangout session and that is a live stream that we do every month at the on the last day of each month kind of wrapping up what we've been through that month what we are working on with our creative projects the future of the Kate and Abbey show different upcoming episodes and it just gives us this great opportunity to chat with you guys in a very um close like small organic small group setting it feels like fun if we all got together at a coffee shop and sat down and talked about you know had our own little writing group that's really what it feels like and so it gives us the opportunity to say thank you in a deeper way to those of you who are supporting our podcast so much and and helping us continue to do what we do here in such a tangible way and also gives us a great opportunity to answer some questions you guys have about writing and brainstorming and all the things yeah creative super fun so if you want to be in on that go to patreon.com the Kate and Abby show and you can join at any level you will get access to the monthly live hangout sessions also I wanted to let you guys know my new book is out it's a non-fiction book you've probably heard me talk about it off and on on my YouTube channel it's called the more and the less and it's all about how um wellness and mindfulness practices in your everyday life in so many little ways can actually shape your creative inspiration it can inspire you it can motivate you in your writing projects and just to live a wonderful and vibrant life so if you want to check that book out it's a little bit of everything I talk about on my YouTube channel you can now find that book on my website with the link below it's called the more and the last and I'd love to invite you to check it out if you'd like to I'm really excited that it's finally out so a lot of you guys have been hearing me talk about it for a long time so that is now available it's also beautiful like it's so state of the art gorgeous like a visual Feast to just go through this book it's amazing it was a fun Journey such a great job with like all the photographs cute all the design of the book it's just like it's stunning it's a work of art itself what do you think so yeah because it was the first book that I really designed the entire thing myself not just writing seeing the actual book but also doing all the photographs and doing all the formatting and all the designs so really the whole thing was a labor of love it took well over a year to create and um yeah it was a lot of fun and it was just it was it was like working on an art project yeah it goes beyond a book it's like it's more like an art project it has a ton of my Photography in it as well so check it out with the link below if you're if you're listening you can go to the YouTube version and you can check it out with the link below awesome yeah do that for sure right away perfectly first stick around first let's let's talk about creating instant internal conflict without re-writing yeah so I think so many of us can get intimidated by like oh man you know if I missed some of these points I'm gonna have to go back to page one and rewrite my book and that's a really daunting thought it can be really off-putting to think about having to rewrite your book or large portions of it so yeah it's definitely something that you um don't have to do if if you want to insert more internal conflict into your character's Journey you don't necessarily have to you know start from scratch or like you know rewrite the whole draft or even do heavy revisions um it's it's really a very simple recipe and I think that a lot of a lot of writing advice out there can over complicate it and make you kind of get pulled in so many different directions that it stops being simple but it's really a very simple recipe and it's what I always talk about talk about on my channel desire fear and misbelief and those three things don't necessarily have to be super clear to the protagonist at first because a lot of times we don't even understand fully our own internal conflict but we do understand we do know how it makes us feel and so really the emotional side of it is kind of what you want to put a spotlight on whenever you can throughout your story um and it's funny because I was just doing this earlier today when I was writing I was going back through something I wrote yesterday and realizing that a lot of it was more action oriented and not too much in the character's head and what they're what they were thinking and I realized like how can I put some more internal conflict in here just sprinkle it in here and there without having to you know rewrite this whole thing and it was a fun challenge because it forced me to pause to like you know read a few paragraphs and then pause and look at okay what is this character really feeling right here you know what are some thoughts and scenarios that might be running through their mind and what how can I show that without just coming out and telling the reader how this character is feeling you know and so like finding little ways to do that and it doesn't even have to hit you don't even have to hit pause on the story for like a long time to you know okay now we have to go into the character's head and go through all these thoughts and all this internal conflict it can be very sparse and that almost feels more natural when it is when it's like a thought here a little piece of internal dialogue um a worry that they might have about something or a doubt something that's making them hesitate to take action on something and all those little things they're like little Windows into the internal conflict you know yeah yeah exactly finding small ways it doesn't have to be these big pivotal moments it can be asking yourself what is my character's desire what is Their Fear what is their misbelief and what are the little moments that in subtle ways I can draw that to the surface a lot of times with material that's already there we're not even talking about like oh let's rewrite the book and find it invent a new internal conflict and put it there most likely your character already has internal conflict and it doesn't have to be about something big it can be something really small say you're writing a contemporary and the internal conflict is that your main character is wants to ask their boss for a raise but is afraid to do so because they feel like maybe they're not worthy of having that raise right really small every day um conflict that we might face in our everyday life right really common nothing like you know I'm afraid to go slay the dragon it doesn't have to be this big fantastic conflict it can be something really small and that's enough to propel your whole story forward if we're really tapping into that emotion because that's something so many people can connect with we're dealing with themes that go beyond just the character now we're tapping into oh doubting your worthiness a lot of us can connect with that so so we're tapping into like in subtle ways really truths that people face in their everyday life yeah for sure and also I think like as far as the characters um internal dialogue and internal thoughts go so much of our hesitations and doubts are centered around imagining scenarios whether they are worst case scenarios or best case scenarios and this is something that can be really fun to play with with your specific character and their voice and see how it unfolds but when your character is going into a scene and they're gonna make some decision or take some action towards something instead of just watching them do that and go through those motions can we pause and see a little bit of what's going on in their head as they think of either the worst case scenario or the best case scenario possible outcomes of what's going to happen next in this scene and I think you'll be surprised by just practicing this exercise with any scene where your character is about to take action on something maybe they don't follow through with it because self-doubt gets the better of them or maybe they do follow through with it what is the decision-making process that's happening in their brain before the action is taken and how can you leverage your character's unique voice through that decision-making process to show us what's going on inside them that's really all internal conflict is right and I think you'll be surprised by how much flavor and life and conflict and Intrigue that creates in the story just that one little moment of thinking through the different possible outcomes of what will happen next you know and making the reader realize what the character is thinking makes them an active participant in the scene yeah because you think you know you're thinking with the character like um is that really what's going to happen what their word is gonna happen and then something may be completely opposite happens and then you're surprised but you also feel like you're engaging in the moment because you're watching this character's decision making process and so it can really be that simple and and that's what I always try to um advise writers to do when they ask me um how do you show and not tell internal conflict because obviously when we're writing our character profiles and we're outlining we might know exactly what their internal conflict is exactly what their fatal flaw is the lie that they tell themselves um and what's holding them back but most chances are the character is not going to know that about themselves um because they would probably need a therapist to tell them that about themselves so where the internal conflict can really be shown is through their decision-making process even if it's small decisions and seeing how they arrive at those decisions is what showcases their conflict right exactly it's really um it's something that you can go back and add in to those scenes because you already have your character making these decisions taking actions taking steps forward you know if they're an active character they're not just being punched around by the plot then they're making decisions okay why why do they choose that or why did they choose not to do that and can we see a little bit more behind the scenes of what that process looked like in their head right and we kind of touched on that too in our episode we did a couple months back that was showing versus telling and we we showed examples of how you can show more conflict I think we're time out more in terms of dialogue but actually it was it was just you know writing prose in general um how you can show the conflict more than telling how you can make that shift from finding a balance between showing and telling because sometimes it can be like well how can I I'm telling the whole story you know what I mean I could I could serve you up sometimes and don't sweat it too much have fun with it you can always read back through it you can edit it that's what the editing process is for but it can help you find a balance of like how can I show more of this conflict because that's like Abby's saying that's really what is what is going to help your book sing really and sometimes you show and tell and then through the editing process you can take out the telling parts and that's okay like it's okay to have that in there in the first draft that was something that I was talked about my last video my uh bookish pet peeves video one of the things that annoys me in a book is like when the writer shows me something and then tells me and the next line that's like showing and then telling like oh no you just showed me perfectly you don't have to tell me um and that's something that should be caught in the editing process so don't sweat it if you're doing that in the first draft because like I do that all the time in the first strap and it's okay as long as you're going through editing it and before you publish it obviously you are finding those areas where it's like oh well I showed that perfectly I can take out that next line where I then go on to tell the reader what I just showed them um but really going really emphasizing the conflict that's happening inside your characters um it never hurts it never hurts to emphasize it and go um pretty heavy on the internal conflict because you can always dial it back later yeah you know you don't have to make it as on the nose as you did in the first draft and having more to work with is always better than having less to work with yeah totally pretty much everything that you create yeah because those are your building materials you know and then you can you can always through the process and the practice fine tune and step back and look at it from different angles but give yourself plenty to work with and don't let these um Concepts and ideas trip you up by needing to stop and analyze too much I do that all the time when I'm writing Abby and I are working on a co-write right now a new series which many of you have heard us talk about you can sign up for our newsletter about it below with the link but as I've been writing that there have been times when I've been like oh you know I'm I'm telling too much here especially within dialogue I always do this like oh I'm telling too much about Expressions because I get really hung up on Expressions I'm like I want it and sometimes if I'm too focused on make sure you don't do that make sure you don't do that it slows my writing down probably three times three folds slowing it down so what I've learned to do is just let myself do whatever I want just do whatever you want make it as messy as you want to it's fine and then when we read back through it several hours later or one day later then we take out anything that's like no that's a little too much oh that's a little too much we'll take that out but don't be hard on yourself and don't do anything that's going to jam up your flow your flow is the most important part of your creative process just let yourself explore however you need to and then when you read back through you can look at it with a little bit of a different perspective that's part of the fun yeah exactly and that's like the childlike creativity that you want to cultivate is not not pausing every moment to like hesitate and doubt like oh I shouldn't be doing that I shouldn't be doing this I need to do it like this like that like you said it jams up your creativity because your creativity should be like a natural flow that is not interrupted by any criticism or self-doubt I mean that's why five-year-olds are the most highly genius creative yeah out of any people group because they're not analytical they're doubting themselves exactly they're not analyzing themselves doubting themselves and comparing themselves to other people in comparison to being on or comparing your yourself to how you were before right um like oh I wrote way better last week a lot of yeah we can get hung up on not comparing ourselves with other writers very important but we can also get hung up on comparing current work to what work was at this point in time or what if this book isn't as good as this book but we need to learn how to look at our writing as a larger body of work yeah right so when we look at like Van Gogh's paintings we're not like that painting's better than that painting he did it's like all this like this beautiful flow it's like wow that's amazing to watch this transformation and we we look at it for the larger body of work it is just small little nugget of Truth there look at your work as a larger body of work I know that's a bit of a bunny trail but still it for what it's worth there you go but as you read through your manuscript find places in action and dialogue find little moments where you can bring that internal conflict to the surface a lot of times how someone reacts to something that someone said to them or as Abby was saying earlier how they make a decision maybe something that they're doing someone they're avoiding talking to or someone that they get defensive with is showing us all little glimpses into that person's internal conflict what they're dealing with inside their fears their misconceptions about life yeah those are all little moments where we can see small Windows into that person's heart into their conflict yeah for sure another great way to sprinkle this in is through backstory and flashbacks which you guys probably know I'm I I love flashbacks and backstory when it's well done and it can be really really powerful for emphasizing your character's internal conflict um and I've made a few videos on flashbacks and backstory we did a podcast one time a while ago on that story mining episode um but basically with flashbacks you have this unique opportunity to and they don't have to be super long flashbacks either when I say flashback I'm not talking about necessarily like hitting pause in the story for page after page after page it can even be like a very small glimpse of something that your character is reminded of because of something that's happening currently like you're in your upcoming book utilizes that really really good yeah I did that a lot with the with the Lighthouse book um and you guys will see that when you read it but a lot of little moments of like just for a second we go back in time with the character to a moment in time that shaped some part of their conflict or their beliefs about the world or relationships that's another thing that can be I try to utilize these like mini flashbacks a lot with relationship building because it shows us so much more about a relationship if we have a character who you know we we introduce like a best friend character to the protagonist and the protagonist in their narration like for one or two sentences throws us back to like some really great bonding moment in their past that's so much more powerful than just saying like oh my best friend Jerry walks into the room you know how do we know that they're that Jerry is this character's best friend right yeah like if I see if I am thrown back for just one or two lines into the past to some really great moment in the past where these two characters became best friends right or proved their friendship to each other and it doesn't have to be a big long detailed flashback it can be very short and to the point um but moments like that are not just good for character building or relationship building they're also really great for bringing internal conflict um and showing how the characters have reached this point of believing what they believe about themselves and making the decisions that they make today because of something that happened in the past right and that can give you great opportunities to just add little pieces like Abby was saying it doesn't have to be a big huge flashback that takes pages and pages so as you're going back and perhaps you're in the revising stage where you're just hey I'm reading casually through my first draft this isn't major rewrites we're just adding little pieces like you know what I could add a little paragraph here two paragraphs and that really enhances the relationship between those two characters as Abby was just pointing out or this really helps you see how the protagonist has a complex relationship with their parents or with their siblings or with someone in their life so we can add flashbacks we can add even pieces of narration or internal dialogue also can can help you don't want to necessarily get heavy heavy into explaining a lot because then you know are we riding the the fence here with telling too much sometimes but can it can also be really helpful to have internal thought it can add to the internal conflict I think your book 100 days of sunlight does a great job with that there's a lot of internal dialogue that the character is having with themself but it does add to helping us see their struggle so these are all things that we can balance and add that only take a few minutes really to add to your manuscript and we can see that hey it doesn't have to be a daunting rewrite we can just add bits and pieces and you'd be surprised when you finish adding all that in when you go back and read it again you might think wow this added a whole new layer to my manuscript into my story a little goes a long way for sure yes and a little bit here and there like you said it it builds up to be so many good layers to the story it creates like this whole new dimension that you're kind of seeing the story through um and that can be that can you can create that with very small changes and I think it's important to celebrate those changes that you make and to even if you just add a few lines here and there to you know the previous chapter you wrote um and it enhances the conflict just a little bit that's still something to be proud of and something to be happy about to feel like you accomplished something there um even if you didn't you know write thousands of words that day and you just went back into something you wrote and you added a little bit of internal conflict that's something that it's unquantifiable the benefit to your story that that made so I think it's important to um be proud of yourself for doing those edits and those changes um and and being conscious and aware of these places where you can enhance your story and create more internal conflict um yeah it's it's good stuff it is and it's something to just be aware of aware of as you go back through it you can instantly up the internal conflict by making small little additions just looking for places where can I enhance the conflict in the dialogue or in the internal dialogue that our character is having with themselves where can I take you know a moment to put a flashback all like Abby's saying a little goes a long way and if you're unsure where to begin like okay well what is the internal conflict like Abby always says ask yourself what is your character's desire what is Their Fear what is their misbelief yeah and then write those things down it really doesn't have to be complicated these are very simple steps and by taking note and literally just writing it down on a piece of paper and putting it near your laptop while you're writing you can find areas and opportunities to bring that internal conflict that's already there to the surface and make your story even better make it make it make it wonderful yeah make it matter make your story matter um and and if you have trouble like coming up with internal conflicts that are unique desires and fears and misbeliefs and you just feel kind of lost and aren't sure where to start I would highly recommend using the Enneagram as a great tool to come up with unique conflicts because it's like a unlimited resource of conflicts that are kind of like ready made yeah you know it can be a great starting point and also great springboard like you can use it as a springboard for hey okay that's cool component maybe I'm going to take that I'm going to change it a little bit and then make it like this and make that the consistent Benchmark exactly but it's a good it's a good starting point you don't have to like use it as like okay this is the you know stay within the confines of this personality type or whatever um it is good to take into account what your character's personality is and keep that personality consistent with what you've developed it to be but the Enneagram can be a great tool for figuring out okay for a person who for a character who has this type of Personality what might some of their desires or some of their fears be what might be one of the misbeliefs that's holding them back um and then also studying other stories and other characters that you love that have similar conflicts what is it about that character that made you fall in love with them and made you relate to them and just studying that and stories that you love can really really help to um make you a better writer make you better Storyteller and just give you better insight into even just human nature yeah it just it helps to just build that knowledge bank that you can pull from as you weave your own stories Good inspiration yeah for sure so hopefully you guys got a lot out of this discussion um desire fear and misbelief that's the the basic recipe of internal conflict and making your characters active characters in the story not passive punching bags for the plot so keeping that in mind asking yourself what are they trying to accomplish and what is standing in their way how is their fatal flaw connected to what's making them not able to accomplish this goal or not able to find happiness or fulfillment um and digging into that but not pressuring yourself too much just kind of finding places where you can sprinkle this in to your story and even if it's not any big moment just small ways that you can reveal that internal conflict just a little bit more through flashbacks through dialogue through decision making processes and just finding those places where you can connect your reader to the character a little bit more so tell us what you thought of this episode we would love to hear from you guys join the discussion comment below this video if you're not on the video version of the podcast you can find that on Kate's YouTube channel which is youtube.com kamins we'd love to hear from you guys we always love to hear your thoughts on these discussions um thank you so much for listening and watching we love you guys so much and thank you to our amazing patrons who make this show possible if you get value out of this podcast go to patreon.com the Kate and Abby show and help us keep it alive and free of interruptions until next time stay stoked

Channel: K.A. Emmons

Views: 32,886

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Id: Penmfe5tXDY

Length: 28min 38sec (1718 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 10 2023