Embrace the Conflict!

It's in my very nature to avoid conflict. I frequently do it at almost any cost. I greatly appreciate a fairly conflict free life. I don't need drama-- that's not what I thrive on.

So, even though I understand the incredible importance of conflict in writing, I admit that my books don't contain nearly enough of it. I've often wondered how to get over it. Especially, like in the book I am currently writing, when the characters are created before all the conflict is. You get to know them and love them and care about what happens to them, and then it's hard to do mean things to them!

I get a daily email kick-in-the-pants from Dave Farland (aka David Wolverton), and his most recent email was about conflict. This sentence really hit me:

"The reader is hiring you to thrust her into conflicts that she might well run from in real life. "

That she might well run from in real life. Isn't that why we read? To experience something that we aren't likely to, or are too afraid to experience in real life? And to wonder about how we would react in the same situation? I need to provide that. Like Dave Farland suggests, I need to pull out all the stops. I need to find a way to make more conflict even if it's really hard for my characters. And me.

And in the next book I write, I'm coming up with all the conflict first! Long before any characters are born, and I end up getting way too attached to them.