The hapless character here probably wishes he’d done several thousand more pull-ups over the last six months, because he might have a real struggle getting that boulder to its destination—without it suddenly rolling back on him. You as a writer can use some exercise too in developing the struggles your characters grapple with. Look at it as writing skill pull-ups. You can get started here, with material adapted from Melissa Donovan’s post on Writing Forward (https://www.writingforward.com/). It involves asking a simple question that can help you soar as a writer. So chalk those palms, and let’s get going.

Characters’ Internal and External Struggles

If you want to develop a truly compelling character, it’s critical for you to know what the character wants and what’s standing in the character’s way.

If you want to create a complex character, identify an external goal and an internal struggle for the character—then make sure the goal and the struggle are at odds with each other. You saw that brilliantly in The Hunger Games. Katniss Everdeen struggled internally because she didn’t want to hurt anyone—that was her internal goal. But to survive the Hunger Games, she had to kill her opponents—survival is her external goal. The result pitted her personal values (don’t harm others) against her external goal (survival).

Take another look at our man with the boulder. Are his internal and external goals at odds? Absolutely, and they’re a bit different from what Katniss faced. Our man’s internal goal is to survive (that boulder could do some radical damage). His external goal is to push the boulder to its appointed destination.

When a story demands that a character challenge or reevaluate his internal goals and values, things get interesting. It’s a surefire recipe for some much-needed conflict.

Another strategy for developing internal and external conflict is figuring out what a character wants and what a character needs. When a character’s wants and needs clash, conflict arises naturally, and the character becomes infinitely more interesting. We don’t know a lot about our man with the boulder. We can make an educated guess about his wants and needs. He wants to get the boulder to its destination. More urgently, he needs to live to tell about it—and those may or may not clash, depending on what’s just beyond the frame of the photo. In fact, he may fail at both: One slip or misstep or muscle cramp, and that boulder could roll back down the way it came, flattening our man in its path. 

Your Exercise:

Choose three protagonists with which you’re familiar from books, movies, or TV shows. Identify an external goal and an internal struggle for each one. Then write a paragraph about how the external goal and internal struggle are in conflict with each other.

Your Practice:

Create a new character with a conflicting external goal and an internal struggle. Make sure you describe what’s at stake for this character.

Questions:

How often are your values or personal goals challenged in real life as compared to those of characters in fictional stories? How do stakes and consequences factor into the decisions characters make when choosing between goals and morals? Can you explain, in your own words, why the conflict between a character’s external goals and internal values is interesting and useful in a story?

 

This storytelling exercise comes from Melissa Donovan’s book Story Drills: Fiction Writing Exercises, which takes you through the basics of storytelling by covering a wide range of concepts and storytelling techniques. The book is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble online, and iBooks.

(Photos: man with boulder, jigster.com; man rubbing eye, WebMD; Melissa Donovan, Writing Forward)