A Test
Donald Maas says memorable characters are born from inner conflict. I decided to test this theory. Of all the characters I’ve read about, I chose the one that, for me, was the most memorable. And hands down, the answer was Hadassah, from Francine Rivers’ Mark of the Lion trilogy. I then examined Hadassah’s inner conflict, and WOW, does she have a lot. She’s falling in love with a Roman aristocrat, one who wants nothing to do with the Christian God she worships. Her heart is pulled in two very opposite directions. Love for the Lord and love for Marcus. But to add to the intensity is another inner conflict. Her desire to share her faith with the Valerians, but her consuming fear that doing so will get her killed. These two inner conflicts drive the story forward. I found myself thinking about Hadassah long after I turned the final page. Donald Maas hit the proverbial nail on the head. I remember Hadassah so well because of the inner conflict she faced throughout the course of the story.
How do we create inner conflict?
First, let’s establish an important point.
Inner conflict is not the same as inner turmoil. True inner conflict occurs when a character wants two mutually exclusive things. Inner conflict means our character is torn in two opposite directions. Let’s return to Hadassah. Letting herself fall in love with Marcus would mean forsaking God. And obeying God means rejecting Marcus’ love. Hadassah cannot have both. She just can’t. This is true inner conflict.
Answer the following questions:
– What does your protagonist want most in the world?
– What is opposite of this desire or goal?
– How can you make it so your protagonist wants both of these things?
The inner conflict from my WIP, Wishing on Willows:
My heroine wants to keep her husband’s memory alive. She thinks letting go of his memory and moving on with her life would negate what they had while he was alive. But at the same time, she finds herself falling in love with the man who’s trying to buy out her cafe (the same cafe she built in honor of her husband). She can’t have both. It’s impossible. She can’t stay loyal to her dead husband AND fall in love with this other man. She’s torn in two and it’s this inner conflict that drives the story.
My hero wants to build a successful string of condos and win the VP position at his dad’s company so he can regain a sense of worth and prove he’s not a failure. At the same time, he feels this strong desire to protect the heroine from hurt. There’s only one small problem. By buying out her cafe, he will cause her a great deal of hurt. So his inner conflict is huge. He has to prove to himself he’s not a failure and in his eyes, the only way to do this is by securing his promotion, and the only way to do that is by forcing the heroine to sell, which would hurt her – the one thing he doesn’t want to do. And so the story goes…
In Conclusion:
Spend a little time thinking about ways to increase the inner conflict within your characters. It’s a fail safe way to ensure that your readers will invest emotion into your story and remember your characters long after they close the book.
Question to Ponder:
What fictional character (movies or books) do you remember the most?