Read The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes for Free Online

that's where the excitement and involvement—as well as reader sympathy for your character—lie.
    Please note that conflict does not necessarily mean an actual physical fight, although sometimes it certainly may be exactly that. Conflict may be any of the following examples:
    • Two men argue in a board meeting, each intent on convincing the members of the board that he should be named president of the firm.
    • A young woman pleads with her father to accept into the family the man she loves.
    • Two can race along a highway, the driver of one intent on forcing the other off the road.
    • A detective persistently questions an uncooperative witness, trying to dig out information that would help solve a murder.
    • A man maneuvers in a dark alley, trying to slip away from an armed pursuer whose occasional small sounds give away his position.
    • Lovers'quarrel.
    • A man and woman discuss whether to buy a new car. He wants if she doesn't.
    • A woman reporter tries to get information for a story from a derelict on skid row, but he keeps slipping away from the subject, into reminiscences.
    • Daniel Boone fights a bear.
    Of course you will think of many more examples, once you have it clear in your mind that conflict always means a fight, at some level.
    How do you make sure you have a fight and not some form of blind bad luck?
    You make sure two characters are involved.
    You give them opposing goals.
    You put them onstage now.
    You make sure both are motivated to struggle now .
    Virtually all the high points of most stories involve conflict. It's the fuel that makes fiction go. Nothing is more exciting and involving. And—please note—"fiction friction" of this kind is another example of how fiction is better than life.
    In life, you might walk out of your house in the morning and get struck by lightning.
    Blind luck, meaningless, against which you are powerless. Life is like that. Dumb! But in fiction the character has the power: he can control his own destiny, or at least thinks he can.
    He will struggle, if he's worth writing about, and will encounter endless fights. The outcome will depend on him—not on blind luck.
    A lot better than life sometimes is, right?
    Of course.

10. Don't Have Things Happen for No Reason
    One morning not long ago, my student Wally came by the office with part of another story. Sipping my second cup of coffee, I read what he had brought to me.
    "Wally," I said finally, this story doesn't make sense."
    "What do you mean?" Wally asked.
    "I mean your characters don't seem to have any background motivation for their story intentions here, they constantly seem to be running into other people and information strictly by coincidence, and they often do or say things for no apparent immediate reason."
    Wally looked blank. "That's bad?"
    "Wally, it makes your story totally illogical!"
    "Wait a minute," Wally protested. "I don't have to be logical. I'm writing fiction!"
    It's a fairly common misconception, this one of Wally's. Since fiction is make-believe, says this line of reasoning, then the most important thing is to be imaginative and original—and so anyone who tries to argue for logic and credibility in a story must be trying to thwart somebody's artistic genius.
    The truth, as you've probably already begun to see, is just the opposite. Because fiction is make-believe, it has to be more logical than real life if it is to be believed. In real life, things may occur for no apparent reason. But in fiction you the writer simply cannot ever afford to lose sight of logic and let things happen for no apparent reason.
    To make your stories logical, and therefore believable, you work always to make sure there is always a reason for what happens.
    For one thing, you always provide characters with the right background—upbringing, experience, information—to motivate them generally in the direction of the action you want to show them taking.
    A character, if she is to act with seeming