Category Archives: Action in Fiction

For Beginning Writers – Conflict Creates Story

03 Wednesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Action in Fiction, Beginning, Contract with the Reader, Creative Process/Craft, Starting a Novel, Technicalities

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Without conflict, there isn’t story. Conflict is when your characters are established and then bad things happen to them. The more bad things the better. Conflict drives action. Conflict molds characters. Simply having a character go about their routine isn’t action, isn’t story, and won’t generate conflict.

Write conflict into your story as early as you can. Write conflict into the first line if at all possible. Your reader will not be able to help but read the second sentence if there’s compelling conflict in the first.

Go re-read your favorite short stories or novels. Conflict is the engine. Sometimes it’s psychological and has physical results. Sometimes it’s physical and has psychological results. Regardless, the conflict is what drives the plot forward and alters the characters. And if the plot sags, conflict is what injects energy once again.

PPP

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Action in Fiction, Character in Fiction, Ralph Ellison

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In 1954, Ralph Ellison told the Paris Review* that a character’s development must proceed through three states: from purpose, through passion, to perception^.

The beauty of this construct is that it demands action. And action is the stuff of story. No action = no story. A character will, by their very creation, exist; however action will give the character purpose, a reason for existing. Through further action the character will declare their passion – their want – the target of their desire. Finally, out of this character’s action, and reaction to conflict, will come a perception, maybe even an epiphany. The character will be reinvented, forever changed. The character will be unable to return to that early state of simple purpose even if he wished, for purpose and passion are permanently altered due to the new found perception.
An example would be good here, but you don’t need me for that. Think of your favorite novel or short story. Think of Huck Finn or Goldilocks, think of your favorite TV show or movie. From purpose, through passion, to perception – it is right there.
It’s why you love that story.

*I am slowly reading all of the interviews in the Paris Review backlog. They are all available online. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews. I am glad I got an MFA. Reading these I feel like I’m earning my doctorate.

^Ellison says in the interview that he is quoting Kenneth Burke.