Season of My Mind

Job 28:3 He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection: the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death.

Season of My Mind

The trees dispose of leaves I suppose

As they prepare for gentle slumber

Colors alive, no chance to survive

The field a brilliant umber.

Season of change, the views rearrange

Silent earth awaits new birth

In the corners of my mind I find

A victim searching self worth

With colors so great I anticipate

The dancing and singing of trees

Wind always blowing, leaves overflowing

A time to relish the breeze.

I look inside it’s there I confide

To the season of indecision.

Do I stay or go my way

I plead for undimmed vision.

Conflict!

Phil. 1: 30 Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.
***

What do you mean conflict? Like fist fights? Knock down, drag out, bar room brawl scenes?

No, no, no friends. Conflict in writing is essentially a stirring of emotions. Did you ever notice how picking out a dress or shirt to wear can cause you to look for a different dress and just forget about shoes, that’s a whole other conflict in and of itself!

Have you ever read a book that didn’t have conflict? Seriously, a book with no conflict is not even a book, okay it may be a text book or something but a story is not going to be carried along without the proper use of conflict.

Did you ever struggle with a spiritual decision? There you go, that is internal conflict. How about struggling with a school assignment? Conflict! Or how about trying to decide if you’re marrying the right man when a new one comes along. Oh yeah, that’s conflict.

What I’m getting at here is Lesson four, it's all about conflict. In f2k we hand you the essentials that is needed to build a story and you guessed it, after you use the senses, you need to get the gist of whose POV you’re going to use, then it is on to conflict and the struggle of what will carry your story (whether short story or novel, fiction or non-fiction) you basically have to have conflict for your reader to stay stuck on the book like a licked stamp! (Wait they don’t have those anymore, but you get what I mean, right?)

Conflict isn’t as simple as a car crash scene, or an argument, or war. More times than not the conflict in a story comes from inner turmoil. The point of indecision, the inability to make up your mind. This is all considered good story material and you can build around the conflict many paragraphs or chapters if you like. The idea here is not to be so full blown that it becomes over the top implausible to believe, you have to nurture the conflict like taking care of a wound. You don’t just hurry it up to heal, it takes time to heal, and then there is the scab, and then the full crux of the tale where we find completion, satisfaction. The healing of the sore so to speak.

So where is your conflict going to lead us, the reader? I like a good conflict in a story but I want subtlety. As in lesson three, you don’t need to go over the top, you just need to understand what conflict adds to a tale and you are well on your way to making the most out of your story.

Now what are you going to do? Give me some conflict and I’ll give you a brownie point!