Weak Conflict Is Making Your Novel Bad
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Without conflict, you have no story. Conflict is what puts us on the edge of our seat—it's what gives a story its momentum and emotional impact. But weak, unbelievable, or melodramatic conflict ruins your entire story. So today, I'm revealing the three keys to strong conflict and walking through real examples of bad and good conflict, so you can spot weak conflict in your own story and fix it fast.
Good conflict needs three key qualities to actually hit your reader emotionally. If your conflict is lacking any of these points, you need to go back to the drawing board.
1. Make It External and Internal
First, good conflict is both external and internal. If your plot only focuses on your protagonist facing external obstacles—like going into battle or outrunning a serial killer—your story is only halfway there. The best stories also incorporate strong internal conflict.
Most stories already have external conflict because it's what we think about first when we're creating a plot. This type of conflict involves any outside forces that are out of your protagonist's control, like an unlivable environment, a weather event, an enemy, or that creepy old neighbor who keeps yodeling in the middle of the night. These are all external conflicts, and you can usually identify them using the protagonist versus obstacle formula. For example, in Jurassic Park, the external conflict is humans versus dinosaurs.
On the flip side, internal conflict refers to what your protagonist is battling inside their own mind—their most painful memories, their biggest regrets, or their deepest fears. It’s the protagonist versus themselves, and navigating this internal conflict is what transforms them over the course of the story. Internal conflict ensures that the plot is not only exciting on an action level but also emotionally impactful, because we witness how the story’s events change the protagonist.
Internal conflict makes a story feel deep, nuanced, and emotionally moving. If you haven't developed your story's internal conflict yet, here are some questions to help you figure out what your protagonist is grappling with:
What are their biggest regrets?
What keeps them up at night?
What are their deepest insecurities?
What do they fear above all else?
Make sure the reader knows these things about your protagonist—and that we see them actively grappling with their internal conflict on the page through their interiority. I promise, it’s going to make us feel so much more emotionally connected to them and invested in their journey.
In short, external conflict provides the plot, internal conflict provides the emotion—and you need both.
BAd example: Jurassic Park
Here’s an example of a plot that relies almost entirely on external conflict: Jurassic Park.
Don't get me wrong—I love this movie. It’s a classic for a reason. But when you drill into the conflict, it’s nearly 100% about humans versus dinosaurs. Yes, Dr. Grant does question the ethics of the park, but his internal conflict takes a backseat to the pure need to survive. The tension doesn’t really revolve around his internal reckoning—it’s all about escaping the T. rex’s deadly grasp.
That doesn’t make it a bad novel or film, of course. But developing the internal conflict could make it even more layered and impactful.
Good example: Arrival
Arrival is a great example of a narrative that nails both external and internal conflict. The external conflict is first contact with aliens, where the protagonist, Louise—a linguist—must help decipher the aliens' language to keep the world from falling into chaos. Super compelling, right? But we also get a lot of Louise’s internal conflict as she grapples with the discovery that she will have a daughter whom she will lose to terminal illness. We witness her grieving an unbearable loss she hasn’t even experienced yet and reckoning with the choice to have a child she knows she will lose too soon.
Because both the external and internal conflicts are strong, Arrival’s plot operates on multiple levels—there’s a fast-paced, urgent, action-packed plot and a thought-provoking character study.
2. Make It Believable
Once you have your external and internal conflicts figured out, the next step is to ensure they emerge in the story organically—because good conflict is also believable.
Imagine this: you’re writing a contemporary romance novel set in a small town in New England. You have a steamy romance between the sexy bookstore owner and the traveling nurse who’s in town temporarily. Just as their relationship heats up, they’re torn apart by a tornado that rips through their neighborhood and destroys their homes.
Unless this is a speculative world where tornadoes are common in New England—in which case, you would want to establish that early in the novel—this development is likely going to throw your reader off and feel totally out of the blue. But even if this were a more plausible weather event, like a hurricane, you still want to make sure it doesn’t feel random.
If your conflict comes out of nowhere, readers are going to check out and lose trust in your storytelling. The conflict should feel plausible, something the plot has been building to over time.
Bad example: Twilight
There’s a moment from Twilight that always struck me as a bit implausible and contrived: the baseball showdown scene. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s such a striking (pun intended) and honestly super goofy scene—and part of why it’s so memorable is because it comes out of left field (another pun intended).
Up to this point, the conflict has revolved around Bella and Edward, so the sudden appearance of these other vampires—and James’s fixation on Bella—feels like a random development thrown in solely to amplify the conflict.
Also, do you know any families who have a baseball game tradition complete with custom-branded hats? Maybe it’s normal—I admittedly don’t come from a sporty family—but it always felt a little forced.
Good example: The Queen’s Gambit
On the other hand, The Queen’s Gambit is a great example of natural conflict building. Beth’s rise through the chess world naturally builds up to her ultimate battle: a match against the best player on the planet. And her success in this match requires her to face her internal conflict—her addiction—making this scene so emotionally satisfying.
Conflict should never feel like a random plot twist thrown in just to spice things up. It should always be rooted in who your characters are, the environment they’re in, and the choices they’ve made.
3. Make It Difficult to Resolve
Once you’ve set up your conflict properly and made it believable, the final key to writing good conflict is realizing that good conflict is difficult to resolve.
If the solution to the conflict is just handed to your characters—if the T. rex suddenly collapses and dies, or the vampires decide to move across the country and never come after Bella again—your reader will wonder: What did I just read all of that for?
We want to see the characters have to work to resolve their conflict, and that tension should keep us turning pages until the very end.
Imagine if the final battle of Avengers: Endgame happened in the middle of the movie instead. Why would we keep watching?
If you resolve conflict too soon, you won’t retain your reader’s interest. So make sure there’s something unresolved and uncomfortable pulling us to the final page.
Bad example: Fifty shades of grey
Here’s an example where the conflict fizzles out prematurely, making the plot feel thin: Fifty Shades of Grey.
The initial conflict—Ana navigating her feelings for Christian and his whole thing—gets dealt with pretty quickly. After a few awkward conversations, they’re together. And once they’re together, there’s no more tension.
What are we left with for the rest of the story? Mostly, we see them fight about his control issues, come to some kind of lukewarm resolution, and then make up in graphic, sexy scenes. Then they fight about the same thing again. And then we get more sexy scenes.
Because the conflict keeps resolving and restarting in the same way over and over, the story starts to spin in place.
Your conflict should ideally escalate leading up to the climax. This technique keeps your readers—and your characters—on edge until the very final pages.
Good example: Gone girl
Look at Gone Girl. The story’s central conflict between Nick and Amy never lets up. Just when you think you understand their dynamic, it shifts entirely:
First, it’s Did Nick kill Amy?
Then, it’s Oh no, she’s framing him.
Then, it’s Wait, now she’s in danger.
Then, it’s Oh crap, now she’s back.
Every time the conflict resolves, it actually transforms into a twisted version of itself. That’s what keeps us reading.
Conflict is your plot’s engine, so you have to keep fueling it. If you stop feeding it, your story will putter out and die. This is why stories often struggle with a saggy middle—the conflict either resolves too soon or doesn’t evolve or escalate enough.
Let’s Tie It All Together.
If you want your conflict to work, you need:
External and internal conflict
Believability
Sustained tension
Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!
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