Continuing on with the theme of conflict (because I’ve been having so much trouble resolving the conflict in the book I’m writing and because the book I’m editing doesn’t have nearly enough), I was recently reminded of the conflict box.
I’m not entirely sure who came up with this idea, but I know that Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer discussed it when they were co-writing Don’t Look Down, the first of many collaborative works (and a fantastic book, but how could it not be with two such incredible authors writing it?). More recently, I was reminded of the conflict box by my good friend Pru Warren (whose romcoms are so good!) when I was complaining to her about my problem with my hero.
Basically, there are two different types of conflict box: one generally for fiction, and another specifically for romance (because, yes, authors of romance are special).
What this means is the protagonist’s goal should create the antagonist’s conflict and vice-versa.
For example, here’s the conflict box for the novel I’m struggling with:
If the heroine achieves her goal of finding her father she’ll also discover the secret the antagonist has been hiding for 30 years. The only way to keep that information from getting out is to ensure the heroine doesn’t find her father. The heroine and the antagonist are working at cross-purposes and therefore we’ve got a nice conflict.
For romance novels, we not only have an individual’s conflict, like the one above, but we also have the romantic conflict.
In a romance conflict box the hero’s goal must solve the heroine’s conflict, and vice-versa.
So, once again, in my current book this is my romance conflict box:
The hero’s goal is to marry someone he trusts, but the heroine, one of the few people he trusts, won’t marry anyone until she finds her father. For the heroine, she needs to find her father, which will take the help of the hero and as he helps her he learns to trust her. It works. What I needed to figure out–and what creating this romance conflict box showed me–was how the heroine’s goal was going to solve the hero’s conflict. It turns out it’s all about trust. Once I figured that out, I knew that I had to get the hero to realize that he trusted the heroine implicitly. Once he did that, the rest was easy.
If you’re struggling with your novel, or just want to see if you’re on the right track, I highly suggest creating a conflict box (or two, if you’re writing romance). It really helps!