Everyone knows that you can't have a story without conflict. There must be something working against your protagonist for the story to have momentum and build to the resolution. Knowing the appropriate name for your story's conflict can help you explain it in book proposals for publishing houses, on the back-cover copy of your book, or to friends and family asking about it.
The first thing I want to address is that you may use one or more of these within the same story or your conflict may be a combination of two or more. These are purely the nine most common narrative conflicts, so you should be able to find at least one that relates to your story.
1. Character vs. Self
In the character versus self narrative conflict, your main character will face off against potentially the most difficult opponent: themselves. Struggles against oneself can be something as big and dramatic as Jekyll and Hyde, or it could be a personal struggle like finding one's self or coming of age in a challenging world. These types of stories often incorporate some sort of mental struggle and often have mental health disorders in them.
You can see the character versus self conflict in various pieces of literature including The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Pinocchio, The Lion King, A Christmas Carol, Hamlet, Catcher in the Rye, Crime and Punishment, Star Wars (the prequel and sequel series), Emma, The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, and Girl, Interrupted.
2. Character vs. Character(s)
If your character is going to be fighting another character, your story will be heavily hero versus villain. There will be one character (and possibly their minions) trying to stop your main character from achieving their goal. This may be the most common narrative conflict and maybe even the easiest to write. Make sure that your conflict is believable and that your villain is still likable to make this work.
Stories and movies that include this narrative conflict include The Lion and the Mouse, Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Toy Story, Star Wars (the original trilogy), Harry Potter, BBC's Sherlock, The Outsiders, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Othello, Les Miserables, and Hamilton.
3. Character vs. Society/Culture
Almost every good dystopian novel has a main character that rebels against the strict rules their society has enforced. Another way to use this trope is to show warring between two cultures and someone stuck in the middle of it all. Or perhaps your main character doesn't fit in with societal standards and has to find a place to fit in. These are all ways that a character can fight against a culture or society in a story.
Movies and books that include this stereotype include The Country Mouse and the City Mouse, Beauty and the Beast, Oliver and Company, Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Robin Hood, The Hunger Games Trilogy, The Maze Runner Trilogy, The Legend Trilogy, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Oliver Twist, The Hate U Give, and The Devil Wears Prada.
4. Character vs. God(s)
This conflict can sometimes be mistaken for character versus self if their struggle is with their religion and they never confront a physical god. However, you could also have them face a physical form of a deity. If it is one that already exists, be sure to do extensive research into the background of that god or goddess to not be corrected by people who believe in the religion or have done mythology studies on the gods. Another thing to note about this conflict is that it should not be solved by deus ex machina by another god.
Examples of a character versus gods conflict are Hercules, The Percy Jackson Series, The Heroes of Olympus Series, The Magnus Chase Series, The Trials of Apollo Series, The Kane Chronicles, Mistborn, Wrath of the Titans, and The Odyssey.
5. Character vs. Fate
If you have ever read a "Chosen One" novel, this is likely the category that it would fall into. Either way, we all have this plan for our life, but we might find it disrupted by a supposed "way fate will lead us". There are many characters that are either born into something (whether it be a chosen one role or just a family expectation) or believe there is a certain path their life is supposed to take. Your character has to choose if they will continue down the path they started on or go in the new direction that fate is pushing them.
You can find the character versus fate conflict in Brave, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, BBC's Merlin, Sliding Doors, Groundhog Day, The Age of Adaline, Before I Fall, Macbeth, Wicked, The Butterfly Effect, Monty Python's the Holy Grail, and The Time Traveler's Wife.
6. Character vs. The Unknown/Supernatural
This label is for a lot of things that don't really have a category that they fall into. Is your character traveling to a foreign land and having no idea what will happen? Will your character encounter aliens? Will they befriend a vampire or werewolf? All of those happen to fall into the character versus the unknown/supernatural category. Be sure to do proper research if you are using space travel and/or mythical creatures that already exist (we have too many different iterations of vampires already).
Look for examples of character versus the unknown or supernatural in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Meet the Robinsons, Wall-E, Gulliver's Travels, The Fifth Wave, Ghostbusters, Seveneves, The Road, Lord of the Rings, The Raven, The Shining, Alien, Predator, and Interstellar.
7. Character vs. Nature
Anytime your character is exposed to an obstacle caused by nature or has to fight nature, they would fit into this narrative conflict. Whether they are dropped into an uninhabited place and have to learn to survive while battling animals or they are stranded thanks to a natural disaster, any kind of weather circumstance makes your main narrative conflict character versus nature. If you plan on writing some survival story, know what you are talking about or real experts in the field will criticize your story.
Great examples of character versus nature are The Cricket and the Ant, Bambi, A Bug's Life, Hatchet The Martian, The Shallows, 47 Meters Down, Crawl, Twister, Into the Wild, Lost, Adrift, Moby Dick, and The Wilds.
8. Character vs. Technology
When humans try to make technology that either emulates the intelligence or essence of being human or creates technology that is smarter than them, they run into issues. While technological advancements come with great benefits, they also cause some serious issues. If your character is fighting anything that was created in a lab, this is likely a character versus technology story. The only drawback with this narrative conflict is that you have to make the technology and science behind it believable enough for your readers.
Movies and books that include character versus technology conflicts include Smart House, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Matrix, A Brave New World, The Terminator, Frankenstein, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Giver, and I, Robot.
As I stated above, your story may have more than one of these conflicts included throughout the novel. The Revenant includes character vs. nature and character vs. character in different parts of the story. The Life of Pi (not included in a list because there are too many) has character vs. self, character vs. nature, character vs. the unknown, and character vs. God. So there may not be just one narrative conflict that explains your story in a nice way, but you should be able to use at least one.
If you know which one your story falls into, you can use that to explain it as you would any adjective. For example, you could say it is a character versus nature story if it revolves around a character living in northern Alaska in the winter. You also now have comparative novels to use based on which category your novel falls into. Basically any Gary Paulsen novel would be comparable to the northern Alaska novel example above. If you did not know, having comparative novels is a large section you should include in a book proposal when querying to a traditional publishing house. If you plan on self-publishing, comparable stories can help you explain the novel to anyone who asks!
Until Next Time,
Ally Mac
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