Hi, this is Mr. Sato.
Let's talk about conflict.
OK, you want to hear the most boring story in the world?
It goes like this.
"Jimbo had a normal day.
He went to school, hung out with his friends, came home,
ate dinner, did some homework and went to bed.
The end."
The reason that's so boring is because there's no conflict.
You must have some kind of problem or conflict to have a story.
The way I see it, there are 6 main kinds of narrative conflict.
Character vs. Character Character vs. Self
Character vs. Nature Character vs. Machine
Character vs. Society Character vs. Destiny
You can classify these into two categories: internal and external.
Character vs Self is internal because they take place within the character's
head or heart.
The rest are external because it's the characters in conflict with someone or
something outside of themselves.
In this video, I'm going to use a lot of movie examples because there's a better
chance that more of my viewers will know the reference.
The most basic kind of conflict is Character vs. Character.
That can be protagonist vs. antagonist, or good guy against bad guy.
Rey vs. Kylo Ren.
Optimus Prime vs. Megatron, or Harry Potter vs. Voldemort.
But they don't necessarily have to be physically in conflict,
they can be competing against one another;
the movie, Rush, comes to mind
where there are rival race car drivers.
It can be one character vs. a group of people, like in Mean Girls,
or one group vs. another group, like Pitch Perfect.
Also, it's best if your two characters are in a situation where they
can't easily just get away from each other.
This is what author James Frey calls the crucible.
They should be obliged in some way to continue being in conflict
until is is resolved somehow.
They could share a jail cell or life raft or spaceship.
They could be in a marriage, or trapped in a house,
be in the same class at school, the same team,
the same family, or be partners in some kind of business.
But the key is that they can't easily just walk away from each other.
Character vs. Self, now, is in some ways the most interesting kind of conflict.
That's when the conflict takes place
within the character's head and heart.
It can be a character struggling with a decision,
like between two options,
stay or go, obey or disobey,
this person or that one, right or wrong,
or just trying to figure out what
the right thing to do is, like in Hamlet.
It can also be a struggle for control of the self, like someone
fighting to stay sober despite his or her addiction,
or some irresistible temptation.
In the case of a girlfriend or boyfriend being unfaithful to the other,
you might think that's character vs. character,
but it's probably actually character vs. self, because the real
conflict is in the main character's response to the act of betrayal --
and it could be either one,
the betrayer or the person who was betrayed.
Both sides of that conflict are potentially fascinating.
Next, Character vs. Nature.
This is when a character or characters are in conflict with
something in the natural world,
like a natural disaster-- like a flood
or an earthquake.
They could be in opposition with a living animal,
like in Jaws or Jurassic Park.
Think survival stories, like Cast Away or Hatchet.
Or it could even be a story about a character's fight against
a disease, like cancer, a killer bacteria or virus,
like in The Hot Zone, where scientists are trying to contain
an outbreak of the killer virus, ebola.
That's nature, too.
Character vs. Machine is relatively new.
Examples of this include a character fighting against robots,
fighting against or simply in conflict with a computer.
But it doesn't have to be real high tech.
Think of the hero from American folklore, John Henry,
who competed against a steam drill.
There was also a very good movie I saw in which a man
was on a sinking boat in the middle of an ocean with no radio.
Much of the movie is him trying and failing to keep the boat afloat.
So, character vs. machine can be a conflict between a person
and any kind of technology.
Stalled car.
No cell signal in an emergency situation.
This can be seen as a kind of character vs. character, with
the machine in the role of the antagonist.
For character vs. society, think of dystopias,
like The Hunger Games, The Handmaid's Tale, or Fahrenheit 451.
This is where a character is in conflict with his or her society.
Maybe it's an unjust system, like an example of prejudice
or political oppression. Your character is going to be
a nonconformist in some way, trying to beat the system.
Sometimes these have happy endings and sometimes they don't.
OK, this one is going to get a little cosmic, but Character vs. Destiny is where
a character is in conflict with some vast,
invisible, and superhuman force, like the Hand of Fate
or Destiny in Romeo and Juliet, or even God.
Odysseus was in conflict with Poseidon.
In Elie Weisel's Holocaust memoir, Night, the main character, surrounded by
by unimaginable horrors, curses God.
In the fantasy genre, it could be a person in conflict with a curse,
or the spirit world.
A character might be in conflict with time itself, or a streak of bad luck.
Some might call this karma.
I also think about characters in the Star Wars series struggling against
the pull of the Dark Side.
So these are what I consider the 6 main kinds of conflict in stories.
All stories contain some kind of conflict, but good stories usually contain
more than one kind.
A lot of the time, there's an external conflict and an internal one
at the same time.
Here are some time indexes
so you can listen again to the parts you need re-explained.
So, there you are, 6 kinds of narrative conflict.