Character Conflicts

What's the worse thing that could happen to them?

Make it happen. (In some form or another.)

Spend some time getting to know why that is the worst thing that could happen to them. That might spawn other ideas.

Best of luck!

What is it your characters fear the most? Make that happen. Then see how they react.

What does each character want? Really, really want -- want more than anything else. Find the most important want for each character. Some will have a material want, but for others it should be psychological.

Once those are identified, figure out what can get in the way of them achieving those wants. What can go wrong? What obstacles will they have to overcome?

Not every character needs to achieve their want. A secondary character's failure can remind the reader that failure is possible and accentuate the risk the main character faces.

J. R. Tomlin said:

What is it your characters fear the most? Make that happen. Then see how they react.

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Great minds think alike.

In the same vein: take two of your characters that are into each other, and make them quarrel. Listen to them shout at each other. Now, what was that all about?

DwayneA said:

I'm currently doing a major rethink to the characters in my future fantasy novel. I'm developing their strengths and weaknesses, yet I'm trying to build the major conflicts they encounter and resolve during the story. Can someone give me some pointers?

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This is SF/F, so my first thought is: What about these characters dramatizes or personifies the weirdness/world/science? How does this personification come into conflict with anything else in the story?

That's where I'd start, anyway.

story and character are one. If you think of them as separate you will not really move it forwards.

One thing that always helps with that is to have characters with opposed methods for solving their problems. It doesn't matter so much how, but when characters have different attitudes and even moral codes but have to work together that can add an extra layer of spice to the situation.

DwayneA said:

I'm currently doing a major rethink to the characters in my future fantasy novel. I'm developing their strengths and weaknesses, yet I'm trying to build the major conflicts they encounter and resolve during the story. Can someone give me some pointers?

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First pointer - characters' strengths/weaknesses and their major conflicts should be related to each other.

I always develop the characters before I start plotting out conflicts (or anything else). Their personalities will lead me to the most interesting situations to put them in. Whether characters get along or not isn't really important for conflict either. Some of my most dramatic disagreements are between characters who love each other and normally get along very well. I've found that so long as I have a fairly large cast of characters who are all different from one another, then the dynamics and resulting conflicts simply happen naturally.

DwayneA said:

The main protagonist [...] doesn't think much of himself, he has low self-estem, compares himself to others and feels inferior. His main conflicts are that he worries that he'll forever be a failure in life, that nobody could care less about him, and that he'll never prove his worth as an individual to everyone.

The secondary hero has low self-esteem, timid, and doesn't think much of himself. He fears that he will always be a failure in the eyes of his family and everyone else.

How do these four sound so far?

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Dwayne, these two sound very similar to me (based on the descriptions you posted).
Perhaps try to figure out what kind of interactions these people will have with each other, and how these interactions will help them resolve some of their problems/dilemmas?

IMO, it's tough to write a character with no internal conflicts. Nobody's perfect. And those internal flaws cause people stress.

And yeah, your heroes sound very similar...

DwayneA said:

they are best friends

I will do some more work on them and see if I can develop the secondary hero any more and give him some other conflicts and flaws

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Take it from someone who knows... if they are too much alike in their "I'm not good enough" attitudes they're not going to be best friends. I had horrible self esteem when I was in high school, but I *avoided* others like myself. I tried to seek out those people who were more open minded and appeared to be more confident so I could leech their feel-good attitude. It's pretty common for people to dislike someone if they see their own flaws in that other person.

Your characters appear to be loose stereotypes. I only say that because they don't seem like they have a lot of depth. You've got to give them a reason WHY they think/feel/appear the way they do. Okay, so two of your characters have low self esteem. Why? What happened to them when they were younger to hurt their self esteem? Were their parents harsh? Did other kids tease them a lot? Were they different than other kids (too tall, too short, too skinny, too fat, speech impediment, etc). Your female lead - why is she scared of her anger? Did she have a bout of bloodlust during a fighting match and accidentally kill her opponent? Did she accidentally maim or otherwise seriously injure a sibling or friend when she got mad? Did she kill someone on purpose and regret it later? Give us some DEPTH.

Also, don't add in flaws just to try and make things "better." Too many flaws makes your character a big mess. If the flaws aren't "real" your readers will know.

I know this is sometimes frowned upon, but I would say do a little exercise at first and base your characters off of someone you know. Just do it for a short period of time. Put those people in your characters' places, give them a random conflict, and imagine how those people you know would react. That should help you come up with something more realistic. If that doesn't work, go to the mall and do a little people-watching. Sit in the food court and just listen/watch. Or maybe study psychology...

Sassee said:

Also, don't add in flaws just to try and make things "better." Too many flaws makes your character a big mess. If the flaws aren't "real" your readers will know.

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I agree. Random flaws that don't stem from something real and organic are usually clear to spot. That's the character profile which reads, "He's quick-tempered and doesn't like children and tells lies and has a fear of spiders." It feels like the author is grabbing bits and pieces from here and there to fill in the gaps. Where do these flaws come from, how do they interact and how do they affect the plot?

Plus, I'd much rather read about a character with one well-thought-out realistic flaw than a character with lots of little problems which don't really mesh together. Take Macbeth. Shakespeare didn't need to give him great ambition and low self-esteem and greed and a dislike of black people. Shakespeare gave him one great flaw, just one, and that pretty much wrote the plot.

Why does he stay in the watch?
Was he always insecure and timid, or did these traits emerge after his little misadventure?

DwayneA said:

okay I've done some more work on the secondary hero. Here's his updated flaws and conflicts.

This young watchman is insecure, timid, and fears many things. He was once a brave man, but during one late-night watch, something startled him and he was never quite the same.

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I'm afraid I don't find this very plausible. "Something startled him" isn't enough for me to buy that someone who's brave suddenly turns into a shrinking coward. The "something" would have to be Cthulu himself for that scenario to be plausible. Maybe that's just me, though. I've been startled many, many times in my life, but I don't think I'm insecure or timid.

Also, as Gray Rose points out, why is this faint heart still in the watch? I wouldn't want someone who's scared and timid being at all responsible for my safety.

He's a mockery because of his many fears

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"His many fears"? Shouldn't he be scared of whatever startled him? I just don't get the connection between "something startles him" and "now he's scared of lots of things". I'm afraid of cancer because I lost a family member to it, but the loss didn't make me afraid of other diseases.

and his parents and sister have grown ashamed of him because of it. More than anything, he wants to redeem himself in the eyes of his family and find courage again.

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That's a noble goal, but as I said, this guy's fear of many unspecified things could be made more realistic.

I'm having a hard time imagining somebody "losing their courage" in the first place.

DwayneA said:

I think it's appropriate to have a brave man suddenly losing his courage then trying to find it again as a major conflict for this character.

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It's a conflict all right to have someone need to recover their courage when the odds are against them. But here are the implausible parts :

1. "Something startled him". If you want readers to admire and like your character, it should take a lot more than being startled to make him a timid coward.

2. He's now scared of many things. What precisely are these many things? Spiders? Heights? Disease? How does one incident of being startled make you scared of many things?

3. He's still a guard.

Dwayne hon you're trying too hard. It's like you're pulling things out of thin air hoping they will work. Put yourself in your character's shoes. WHAT would scare him so badly to make him have a complete change of character? The only sorts of things that do that to real people are seriously traumatizing events - he watched someone die a grisly death, he was tortured, etc.

Here, let's brainstorm with your character. Okay, so he's a guard of some kind on night watch. He's sitting around being bored, maybe he's a little tired. There's one other guard there sort of near him who's also bored and tired. Wait, what's that? Did he see something? He thinks it's his imagination. He ignores it. Seconds later a huge creature leaps out of the darkness and rips the other guards to shreds. OMG! Your character tries to save the guy and can't, and the creature drags the body off. Your character runs screaming back to a superior with the story, who doesn't believe him because (omg again) there's no blood on the ground. The superior thinks the other guard was a deserter and your character is covering for him. So now your character has a rational fear of the dark and a reason for people to look down on him. See?

Try that for a while and see what you come up with.