All stories need conflict! Let’s talk about why and what you can do to actively add more to your story.
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TRANSCRIPT STARTS HERE:
Kat
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pencils and Lipstick. I’m Kat Caldwell. Today is the 183rd episode, and it is still May as I record this, May 24th. I’m ahead of the times. It’s May 24th as I record this. I want to talk to you guys about conflict today. It is not an interview show, but we are going to talk about conflict and how to add it and why to add it into your story. But as you guys know, I hosted the Write With Us online writing retreat with Marci Renée just about 10 days ago, and I wanted to fill you guys in on how that went. Now, if you don’t know already, as a writer, marketing and selling is like half of your job, right? If you don’t know, the answer is yes, right, correct. That is half of your job. I didn’t really realize this consciously, in the beginning. I did realize it pretty quickly, but I still grappled with the idea of what is marketing and what is it for a book? So if you don’t know my story for it, I published my first book in the fall of 2017. I finally hit go. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but it was as perfect as I could get it at the time, and I was sick of working on it. So I hit publish. And I knew in my head that it wasn’t just going to become viral. There was no TikTok back then, by the way. I don’t think. There was Snapchat or whatever, but whatever. But I knew that people weren’t just going to find it and buy it. There were already a lot of books on Amazon. There were lots of books coming out traditionally. Anyway, what I did realize soon enough was I hadn’t any clue how to market the book. And so 2018, I spent all year reading two business books a month and realizing very quickly that business online and business specifically for the arts is very different. So business books, a lot of times were geared towards working with people and teaching people how to sell. It’s not that I didn’t get anything out of that. I did, for sure. But it wasn’t geared towards art. How do you sell art? It’s a different product. Everyone needs shirts and shoes. And of course, you have to compete with the other people selling shoes. But not everyone needs books and your audience is not as broad. And not everyone who likes books will like your book. So I realized that I was not really getting to where I needed to go. I promise you this has a point. So speed up, I’ve been putting out books and starting the podcast and speaking with other people. And quite frankly, I started the podcast to have a reason to talk to other creatives on how they were doing things, how do you get your book in front of people? How are you marketing this book and selling this book? And besides doing that and writing another book, all the things, I wanted a reason to talk to other people and not just be a pest, but to be able to give them something else in exchange, like, I’ll put you on the podcast if you answer my questions. So that’s honestly why I started the podcast. And I had no idea that I would like it this much, and so we continue. And I still have more to learn, so there you go. So when I started these workshops, last year I got certified as a fiction book coach, and this year I’m almost done with my nonfiction certification. I went through the process of book coaching, what I wanted that business to look like, what I wanted to use that certificate for, and came to the conclusion that I just really wanted to go gung ho for the workshops and the online writing retreats and the in person writing retreats because I really, really enjoy the person-to-person. I love traveling, I love culture, I love showing people cultures. I really want to bring people to Spain and show them my beloved second country and write at the same time. I want to facilitate this place that you can just write and you don’t have to worry about anything else. I am worrying about the food for you, you get to just write. So I went all for that. Now comes the connection, learning to market still. So I am learning from some really great people how to sell things online. And it’s really not, I would say, it doesn’t come naturally to me, but I am thankful for the people. Russell Nohelty has been amazing. His courses are amazing and teaching that to me, like just landing pages in how to make things clearer and more concise and visually better and how the psychology works with people. And honestly, even David Gochran, he’s a Scottish writer who it’s davidgochran.com, I’ll put the link in the show notes. But he talks about selling your book and finding the right market. And I’m just applying those same ideas to finding the right writers who might come to the retreat. So the retreat was a blast. The online retreat was May 16th and 17th. I had such a great time. Really good time. All the feedback that we got was good. Somebody said that they wanted even more workshops, but that’s about the only criticism we got. There were seven workshops, so I felt like there were a lot of workshops. But hey, we are going to take that suggestion and see where we can take it. Maybe we can get one or two more workshops there. There is that problem with the time zone. No one in Australia, they were sleeping the whole time that we had the workshop, and I’m not sure how to fix that. Anyway, we had a great time. All of the guests had a good time. We had a lot of live participation, which surprised me. That’s what I was most nervous about is, is anyone going to show up live? I don’t know because you just never know. You can’t promise anything, right? But people got to workshop their ideas with Beth Barany or Lewis Jorstad, which I thought was amazing. What a great opportunity to be able to workshop an idea or your book or your plot or whatever it was that they were talking about. We didn’t have any technical issues. Thank goodness, knock on wood for next time. So what are the mistakes that I made? Let’s go with that. What are the mistakes that I made? Now, I was told not to market it until three days before the event, and that made me really nervous. And so I marketed it for two weeks before the event. And I can now see why people say don’t market it until three days before the event. The idea still makes me nervous, but I’m going to try to be a little bit better about waiting until the last minute because weirdly enough, psychology is like a science and it works and people know what they’re talking about. And we humans just, I don’t think that we value online, looking towards the future, as much as we value in person. That’s just my idea. So the next time that I have one, you will probably hear me talking about it, but there will probably be no sale until like, let’s go with five days. I’ll try five days. Oh, my gosh. See, I’m already like making mistakes. But talking about the next one, that’s another mistake that I made. I didn’t have the next one set up. Honestly, it was like trying to get the in-person retreat in the background, getting that together and doing the online. It occurred to me to set up the next online writing retreat, but it didn’t get done. It was like a fleeting idea. And so it wasn’t set up. And so I was talking to a marketing coach afterwards, and they said, well, you didn’t have any next step for people to grab onto.Give them 20 % off if they buy the ticket now, for the next one. And all these great ideas. So I didn’t have that. And I still don’t. I still don’t have that set up. Although we are looking at something fun, Stacey Juba, Emma Dhesi, and I. So anyway, be prepared for the fall. There might be something coming. And Troy from Plotter and I are working on a pretty long workshop for October. So all these little things, but you know what? I could have had that ready for people. Just looking backwards. This is the problem with creative businesses. It’s usually who know, like one person doing all of this stuff. And that’s me. Marci is doing a lot of the editing once I put it up there, and she works full-time. So anyway, fail on my part. But we still had a good time. It was a lot of fun. If you don’t know, we had five guest authors come in and teach new workshops. And I learned a lot. I always learned a lot. And I just had, they were lovely to work with. I would love to work with them again. And hopefully they would want to work with me again. But the next one, just so that you know, will probably be in the fall. And then between now and then, I will be trying to figure out a time to have really static times that we will be having these retreats. And these retreats are called retreats because they are groups of workshops. And I will be having workshops throughout the year other than just the retreats. But as I said, I will be trying to create specific times throughout the year so that we can be prepared for it. I can be prepared for it. Anyway, marketing is just one of those things. Just finding the right people, the people who are interested in that. And now we are moving on to the writing retreat in person. And that’s a whole new group of people that I have to find. And it’s fun, if anyone’s a marketing genius, let me know and let me know all your ideas. Although, then I’ll just change them and make mistakes anyway, but it’s fine. So the online one was great. I had a lot of fun. Definitely want to do it again. And the in person one we are still working on. Again, if you guys are interested, you don’t have to buy it right away. But if you’re interested, head on over to katcaldwell.com. The links are in the show notes and you can find out more information about Toledo, about Spain, about what’s included, FYI, everything’s included in ours, except for plane fare and train fare. But everything else is included. But you can find out all of that. Just click the link below.
Kat
Before we go, we don’t have interview today. I am going to be talking to you about conflict because conflict is one of those things that lots of the manuscripts I look at lack, honestly. So we’re going to talk about why you need it, because sometimes when I talk to writers, they don’t really understand what I mean. And I think a lot of times readers will tell the writers, your beta readers will tell you, I feel like something’s missing, like a scene’s missing. And one of my clients told me that she had added in this scene this date scene. So the couple are on a date, and it had been suggested to her by a reader, a beta reader. And while the scene was fine, I think really what the beta reader meant to say was that it’s not necessarily a dating scene that’s missing, it’s conflict. And so sometimes that is one of the problems with using beta readers, if they haven’t been trained in storytelling or story arcs or what stories need and the psychology behind them. So your editors, your book coaches, all of them who have been trained and gone through certification or read a ton of books, will be able to tell you that it’s not just a date scene that’s missing, it’s conflict. So we’re going to go through conflict.
Kat
If you guys are enjoying the podcast, please share it out with everyone that you know who is a writer who might be interested. If you don’t know, we’re on YouTube now, so you can see me waving my hands at you, trying not to knock the mic off. So subscribe there if you prefer to use YouTube as your platform of listening, if you want to see things, if you want to see me, if you want to see my guests, you can listen and watch over there. Otherwise, if you are on a podcast app, please subscribe on that app as well and give us a review, even if it’s just a star review. It’s like this constant thing that we have to keep moving the podcast forward and telling the algorithm, yes, people are listening. So whenever you review and there’s a new review, it just helps that algorithm say, oh, look, people are paying attention. So yeah, if you listen every week, you can also let me know. I would love to know if you’re listening on Facebook. I’m there, Kat Caldwell, Pencils&Lipstick, on Twitter @PencilsLipstick, and Instagram, @PencilsandLipstick, all spelled out, or @katcaldwell.author on Instagram. Am I missing anything? I don’t know. Anyway, we’re also going to be putting up clips on TikTok. Oh, man, so many places. Speaking of conflict and how I resist getting on TikTok all the time.
Kat
All right, so conflict. The thing about conflict is, in real life, we avoid it like the plague. We don’t want conflict. I don’t know about you, but I am anti-conflict. I have lots of opinions that I will tell my husband. That’s all that I will do. I am conflict averse. I will do everything. I will ignore a situation in my face. Not a dangerous one, but I will just avoid conflict. I have lots of stuff in the family, have always done that divorce, all the things as a kid. And I will avoid the conflict like the plague. I will not bring up topics. I can go a long time not speaking on politics or anything else or world events because I don’t want any conflict with anyone. So yeah, we avoid conflict. I mean, some people crave it, but for the most part, we avoid conflict. And even if you like debating with people, conflict in the sense of issues happening in your life. So when we’re talking about our story, weather can bring up conflict, plot can bring up conflict, people from the past bringing up conflict, secrets getting out, bringing up conflict. So we’re talking about conflict that just permeates our life. We’re always, especially in the Western world, we’re trying to make our life comfy, not complicated. We want hot water in the morning. We want a place to make our breakfast. We want enough clothes to wear and some shoes or whatever. We want our car to start in the morning. We want the air conditioning to work because otherwise it’s conflict and it’s stress and we don’t like that. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But the interesting thing is that while we avoid conflict in person, we actually look for it in the stories that we read and in the movies that we watch. So conflict needs to be in your story. You need to create conflict with your characters, whether it’s people coming at them, plot coming at them, whatever it is. They need to have something happening. So one manuscript that I read, there was this little girl in it, and I kept thinking as a reader, there must be something that’s going to happen with this little girl because she played a really big role. She was on the page a lot. And it was a romance book, but this little girl was on the page a lot. And granted, you can’t ignore a child if they are part of the story. But she was in there so much that I really thought something was going to happen. And in the end, almost nothing happened with her. She was there, but not really. There was almost an incident, but then it got resolved really quickly. And that is actually a problem because as a reader, if the reader is thinking that something’s about to happen with this person, they’re holding space for that person in their brain. You need to make sure that something happens with that. It can’t just be that they spend the whole book thinking something’s going to happen with this character and then nothing happened. The other problem that I see often with conflict is that the problem is that your characters are too good. They’re too good. So when a stressful situation comes up, let’s say somebody purposely crashes the car and there’s a couple inside, all of their past issues, if they’re having issues in their relationship should probably come up, all of a sudden. Let’s say, let’s get an even more stressful situation. Let’s say that their plane gets hijacked and now they’re in the wrong country. And for this story, they need to have conflict. They need to be upset with each other. They need to want to blame each other. And they need to have past conflict come up and impede their movement smoothly forward. Does that make sense? They cannot just get along all the time because that’s so just regular. That’s not why we come to story. And the truth is, in stressful situations, humans bring out their worst side with their most beloved person because they feel safe enough to let their stress go. Especially if it’s a new relationship, stress should probably challenge that relationship. I’m thinking as I say this, in any relationship, whether it’s new or not. But usually, romance books are about new relationships, so we’re just going to go with that. It should challenge their relationship in the sense that bad things should happen. And someone should make a decision that creates even more conflict within their relationship. So let’s say they lose a child on the playground. Maybe it’s a nanny love story and single dad. The nanny is out at the park with the kids, and he comes to see the kids, surprise, surprise. And it’s exactly in the moment when she’s not sure where the kids are and she’s about to panic. Whether or not you need them to be kidnapped, or maybe it’s just, oh, we find the kid and everything’s fine, the dad should actually make a decision. Those are his children. He should have a very visceral reaction to this incident. It doesn’t mean that he needs to be violent. He needs to stay within his personality, but he should make decisions, make comments that will really put pressure on their relationship. Let’s say they’re like age gap, right? And so maybe he’ll say things like, you’re too immature to take care of my kids. I should have known. Or something like that’s hurtful, right? He could say that calmly, and that would still be hurtful. And that’s going to put pressure on their booming relationship. I hope that makes sense to everyone. So really, the point is that only flawed characters will create conflict in the story. And so your characters need to have those flaws. And I know that we talk about flaws a lot, but I hope that you’re starting to see that it really impacts the story, whatever their flaw is. And so in the moment that conflict comes up in the beginning, the first half of the story, your main character is going to be making decisions based on that stress happening within their world view and making the wrong decisions, slowly making maybe a few more better decisions. But stress is going to bring out their old worldview much more than their new worldview until the end. And that’s how we see the change.
Kat
So let’s talk about how can we find this conflict that we need? You might have the characters in your head and the plot happening, and now you’re thinking, where am I going to come up with this conflict? And I would say that it’s pretty easy. I’m going to give you three ideas on where you can find conflict to add to your story, how you can take something and let your imagination go wild with it. So we are heading into Memorial Day weekend, right? Yes. I’m trying to think. No, I think we just ended Memorial Day weekend. So you are probably with some families, some barbecues. You probably overheard some fun stories. I want you to challenge yourself this summer to listen a lot. A lot. Whether it’s with friends or family, whether you’re by yourself watching the kids on the playground and you’re listening to other people. People tell stories about their life all the time. And if you ask them questions, they want people to listen. And I’m not saying to ruin confidences, but listen to what happens in real life, what brings up actual conflict. This is especially true if you’re writing romance or writing family drama or sibling drama. Look at what is causing conflict and then try to figure out what might have started that. So what started the mistrust between the sisters? What started this issue between the mother and the daughter that you’re observing? And people might not tell you the truth, but this is where your imagination comes in. So trying to piece together, why does the mom always say something about the outfit of her daughter? And then her daughter get angry, and then it brings up this same story all the time at the barbecue. Most of the families try not to listen, but this time you’re listening and you’re realizing that it stems from way back in high school or whatever, I guarantee you, you will start understanding human psychology more and where we find these conflicts, where these fires in our lives start and how they smolder and why they smolder. If you just take time to listen, just listen to people talk, how they talk, how they respond to each other, and where it might have started. And then you know you have to go to your story and think, Okay, how can I add this to my story? So you also need to look at your characters. Once you have been listening, look at your characters and really decide where they are being a little bit too good, where they are being a little bit too clinical psychologist. A lot of times our characters are very much clinical psychologists. I don’t know about you guys, but I love observing people, just like the first challenge. And I always have since I was a kid. And I love analyzing why people might do stuff. I love psychology. I love listening to lectures on it. But the truth is, when we’re in a moment of conflict or in our own story or in our own head, we are not responding after having psychoanalyzed the person in front of us. So let’s say you and your partner are having a fight. You are just in it to win it. You just want to win the fight. You want to prove that you are right, that they were wrong. You are not psychoanalyzing them. That’s for the therapist to figure out. In the moment, you are just bringing up all the old stuff. Maybe it’s obvious that you’re not right anymore, so you bring up the old things. This is human. To air is human. This is how we fight. But we’re not psychoanalyzing in the moment. We will later with the therapist when they’re like, Hey, sit down and think about maybe where your spouse was coming from or where your teenager was coming from. And they’re like, okay, I guess so. But in the moment they’re not. And so a lot of times with our characters, we make them like psycho analysts. And so then they choose the right reaction. They’re a little too understanding. They’re a little bit too calm. They’re a little bit too nice. And that’s where this idea comes if you Google the biggest mistakes of writing a character, a lot of times it’s going to say, Your characters are too nice. That’s where that comes from. It’s how their reactions are just the Polly Anna, goody goody two shoes, they never make a mistake, ever. So really look back at your characters and how you’ve written them. I mean, anytime that they’re apologizing or not responding and not yelling or choosing not to yell or telling the reader why it’s okay that so and so is like that. Try to take out that psychoanalyzing as they learn to behave properly or overcome their flaw, they will probably might have a few moments of psychoanalyzing themselves and others and making better choices. But especially in the beginning and even by the end, they’re not always perfect. We don’t need them to be perfect, and we don’t need them to always have the perfect response. Think about Pride and Prejudice. When Darcy is telling Elizabeth, I love you and I want you to marry me despite your family, which turns a very romantic scene into, I’m sorry, what did you just say? And he says something like, well, you can’t expect me to be happy about your circumstances. That is such a flawed thing to say. He is a very prideful man. He has prejudices. That’s the whole point of the title. And they’re coming out even in a moment when he is trying to declare his love for Elizabeth about how her mother talks too much and is embarrassing, and her sisters are flirts, and even her father can’t reign in the family, and how that stigma and that gossip is going to follow them. So really think about how your characters are reacting even in moments when they’re being pretty romantic or pretty awesome. Which brings me to the third idea, pull out the books that you love and the characters that you love and try to read them with an editor’s eye. Now, if you are going to get lost in the story, I suggest you read it backwards. I know that’s weird, but going backwards, take a high lighter, read it out loud, do anything that you can to help yourself not get lost in there and analyze what is going on. Maybe pull out the Pride and Prejudice scene where he is trying to propose. And then, of course, Elizabeth gets offended and goes off on him. And see what made him do this? And why would he do that? And as a human, why is he making that? And then what scenes in my book are like that where he’s declaring his love? But how can I make it really tense and awkward? How can I bring conflict to this situation so that my characters really have to choose more wisely, really have to choose each other, really have to choose if they’re going to save the world or to cross the time gap or whatever it is. Don’t just have them be a hero all the time. We actually crave Pride and Prejudice because he overcomes his prejudice for her family. He chooses that she is more than the gossip, that she’s worth fighting for. He wasn’t at that moment yet. And even as he’s proposing marriage to her.
Kat
So take your favorite stories and try to find what is creating the conflict. A lot of times side characters are pushing the main character into conflict or are poking their finger at them. In the car when you’re on the road trip and the kids are like, I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you. That’s the side characters a lot of times are trying to force the characters into decisions, or they’re creating conflict. They’re challenging the main character’s decisions and reasons for that. So take a good hard look at that. Maybe pull out some highlighters. I know not all of you like to mark on your book, so maybe copy the pages and then pull out the highlighter or take notes. But also if you’re going to get lost, read it backwards or out of order and see if that will help you see the conflict, just pull scenes and see the conflict on it. You can also do this with movies. Why is this character acting the way that they are? And this is really nice to do with other writers, where you watch something together and maybe take notes, and you can stay more accountable on not getting lost in the story, but really analyzing the characters and how they made decisions and how it impacted it, how it created more conflict at first, and then what decisions they made to smooth out the conflict. Maybe where you see that conflict could have been more, what conflict they could have added to it. Not every story is perfect, right? How could you add that story to your book or maybe pull out a scene with conflict and rewrite it? You don’t have to publish it. That’s just you working on writing even more conflict. What would they have said that would have made this even more tense in the story? Or maybe if they had made this decision, then this, this, and this would happen. Writing a fan fiction short story about it. But those are simple ideas that you can use this summer to make sure that the book and the story that you are working on has conflict. Because I have to say, if a story has no conflict in it, many readers won’t understand what the point is of spending time reading it. We come to stories to learn. We come to stories to be in a position of emotional charge, without actually having to leave our house. That’s what we like. We like finding the monster, pursuing the murder, finding love without having to leave our potato chips in our couch and our lawn chair or whatever. Our heart will actually react to things that are happening in the story if we’re invested in it. And we’re only going to get invested if there’s actually something to learn, somebody to chase, something to figure out. So that’s why we come to the story. We want the conflict. And the other thing to avoid is ordinary conflict. So we come to stories because there’s something extraordinary about them. There’s something a little bit different. There’s something a little bit more. We want to learn from them in a just more exaggerated, right? We could all write a story about our day-to-day, but nobody would read it because it’s just pretty ordinary, right? If our story is just I keep going to pick up the kids, people get it. But we come to story because something else is happening and we want to figure out. So make sure that your conflict is not ordinary either. To really up that ante by listening to other people, figuring out what conflict is happening in actual human lives, watch some movies, take some notes, see if you can start a little analyze the conflict club, and then take a look at your story and see how you can up it.
Kat
Let me know what you think about conflict, how you add conflict to your story. Let me know which one of these challenges you like better. Maybe if you try one and it works, I would love to hear about it. Or maybe you have tried it without me suggesting it and you want to tell me which one worked and which one didn’t, how you got more conflict in there. Or what is your favorite movie in which that conflict really pushed the envelope of this story? I’d love to hear from you on Twitter @pencilslipstick, on Instagram, @pencilsandlipstick, or @katcaldwell.author. Or you can find all the links in the show notes below. Let me know what you feel about conflict, and I will see you next week.