Tybalt and Mercutio. Mr Jones and Axel Heyst. Steve Austin and Vince MacMahon. Conflict between forces that stand for something larger than themselves catches our attention and makes us want to finish the play, the novel, the film, or the broadcast.
If you want to dive into the nuts and bolts of how to structure fiction, you don’t need an MFA. You’d do just as well buying a few books on the subject. I’m reading 20 Master Plots by Ronald Tobias right now and I think it’s very good. But this post isn’t about how to layer tension into fictive relationships and how to transform story into plot.
This post is about slow-burning narrative conflict, though. This post is about keen (near-obsessive) analysis. This post is about MatPat and Elmo. Stop him when he’s telling lies:
Chris Cocca 