This is a short post on implementing or introducing conflict as a sequence of events into your writing. Returning to your character’s goal, we talked about conflict being the most crucial thing in fiction because nothing happens without conflict. And that’s true. So, what tools can we use to build or inject conflict into any narrative?

We can get creative and think of obstacles and setbacks related to our character’s goal and context—plausible within context. Sure, but how do we implement them on the page? Is there a specific sequence? A trail? A chain?

Yes. The tool we are going to cover today is called Try and Fail/Try succeed cycle. It’s basically a template for implementing obstacles and setbacks. These cycles will allow you to orderly include obstacles in your fiction, creating a dramatic series of events. Every event is a link in your chain of conflict.

Let’s see. My character’s goal is to make the best end-of-year barbeque. Some obstacles I can think of are my grill not working, running out of gas and coal, forgetting to get salt, overcooking the meat, and nobody showing up to my barbeque.

With those obstacles and my goal in mind. I can use this tool of the try fail/try succeed cycles to boss around my obstacles and create a chain of events.

Let’s see an example:

Mark got up early that Sunday to clean the grill, get a bag of coal, salt the meat, and be ready for the party. It was a sunny Sunday morning in Miami, and Mark wanted to start early because he knew that, but at midday, his house would fill with hungry relatives and friends. He opened the grill’s lid and found a coral snake inside(TRY AND FAIL). He was used to snakes and alligators, so removing them from the grill, he thought, wasn’t much of a problem. He devised a simple strategy. If he provided the snake with a new home, the snake would move on its own instead of pushing her out in a rush. So, Mark did just that. He set up a cardboard box close to the grill, made sure it was warm, and put some enticing tiny pieces of salted meat on a trail for the snake to consume on its way out. Then he grabbed a yard wood stick made from a tree branch and gently pushed the snake out of the grill and down into the cardboard box(TRY AND SUCCEED.)

As you can see in the example, the cycle takes the obstacle, adds an attempt to solve it and a failure, and then some forward momentum and success.

Then, with a new situation, after having resolved the obstacle, a new cycle of try and fail, try and succeed starts. It’s that simple. And to use it well, that’s all you need to know. Just keep repeating the cycles as you go ahead, introducing conflict, and remember that you have to give the reader and the story some breathing room. This happens when you think of a story as peaks and valleys. During the peaks, the tension rises, and the conflict unfolds. During the valleys, the resolution of the scene or introduction of a new situation or goal takes place. It’s that simple.

Best of luck.