I read a lot. And I read in a lot of genres. But I’m going to talk about romance specifically. Part of this applies to all genres, but some of it is specific to romance.
I read quite a bit of romance, and I’ve read books I loved, books I disliked, and books that fell somewhere in between. The books I’ve noticed that fall flat for me and don’t entertain me like they should have something in common. There’s little or no real conflict. There’s nothing to make your heart hurt. Nothing to bring tears to your eyes or make you want to strangle one or more of the characters. Take Kait Nolan’s newest release, To Get Me To You. I wanted to slap both the hero and the shero for being so stupid. Why were they both being so stubborn? Couldn’t they just get together and talk about it? This book made me FEEL. It made me feel invested in the characters. I wanted things to work out, and I was frustrated that they didn’t seem to be. Kait did her job as an author. She made me care. And that’s done partly with conflict. With romance, you know you’re eventually going to get a happy ending. But while you’re reading, there’s always that little niggling doubt. That doubt makes it interesting. You know a romance author is going to make things work out in the end. Right? *bites fingernails and hopes*
Now there’s external conflict and internal conflict. External conflict is when outside forces hinder the characters from getting what they want or need. Internal conflict is when something inside the characters is hindering them. In my opinion, internal conflict is much more powerful. But external conflict can be heartbreaking, too, depending on what it is. Kait’s book had external conflict, too. You need to read it so you’ll know what it is. 🙂
My Vampires’ Curse trilogy had both kinds of conflict. Libby loved Adam, but she couldn’t get past the fact that, as a vampire, he needed to feed either from her or from a blood donor. She didn’t want to share him, but she didn’t want to feed him. This continued through three novellas until it was resolved. It led to a lot of tension. Then there were external conflicts involving lots of bad guys.
What spurred this whole thing was a conversation I had with someone about lack of conflict in books. I started thinking about it. So if you’re a new author, think about what you can do to cause conflict between your main characters. You know, sometimes, this can be a lot of fun. Torture those characters! 🙂
Here’s where you can buy the two books mentioned in the post. *shameless promotion*
lauralynnelliott.com 