In life, we will often go out of our way to avoid conflict, especially as we mature and find that trouble is easily available and not all that exciting. But we like to read about other people’s troubles, and as writers we must work counter to our tendency to avoid conflict. Here are a few ways to get your character in a bit of trouble or conflict, thus drawing plot out of your people. This is fun. Loosen up your writing hand and try to imitate these with your own content.
1) Give your characters talents, a flaw, and real vulnerability. Here, in “The Third and Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri, the narrator is the bridegroom of the woman he is describing, whom he has never met:
She was the daughter of a schoolteacher in Beleghata. I was told that she could cook, knit, embroider, sketch landscapes, and recite poems by Tagore, but these talents could not make up for the fact that she did not possess a fair complexion, and so a string of men had rejected her to her face.
2) Put your character in a dilemma; his or her choice will reveal character. Make sure this is a choice between two concrete options, A or B, and not a choice between A or not A. This example comes from “Gravity” by David Leavitt:
Theo had a choice between a drug that would save his sight and a drug that would keep him alive, so he chose not to go blind.
3) Turning point: have your character come to want something new. Start with specific, grounded action and build to meaning, as Sherman Alexie does in “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock”:
My father smiled, turned the volume up, and we rode down the highway while Jimi led the way like a snowplow. Until that night, I’d always been neutral about Jimi Hendrix. But, in that near-blizzard with my father at the wheel, with the nervous silence caused by the dangerous roads and Jimi’s guitar, there seemed to be more to all that music. The reverberation came to mean something, took form and function.