Internal vs. External Conflict in Romance

Our theme for this round of Prosering is kissing. Problem is, I don't write kissing stories, usually. I write dark fantasy and horror the vast majority of the time. And sure, there can be kissing in those stories, but as of yet it's happened so rarely that I don't feel like I have any sort of authority to speak on that subject. Not that lack of knowledge on a subject usually keeps me from blogging about it, but I decided instead to take a step back and look at the part of the stories that gets you to the best kinds of kisses: Conflict! (#2 on Sheena's list for writing kissing scenes that rock). 

My favorite fictional kisses are those that have been well-earned. In a lot of discussions about romance in fiction, I've seen conflict divided into two categories: internal and external.

External conflict is any force (parents, wars, strict social class rules, zombies, evil sorcerers, evil fiancés, rabid beavers, etc.) are keeping the couple from Being Together. This obstacle is the only thing standing in the way of the characters living happily ever after. Examples of movies and books with external conflict in romance: The Princess Bride, Cold Mountain, The Mummy, most YA dystopian romances that aren't love triangles (and some that are), and Romeo and Juliet.

That actually looks like a really uncomfortable position to be kissed in for Juliet.
Photo from sofi01's Flicker; shared under a Creative Commons license

Internal conflict is when any emotion, thought pattern, or belief is keeping the couple from being together. There's no physical person or thing standing in the way of the couple; rather, the couple is standing in their own way. A prime example of a story with an internal conflict is everyone's favorite, Pride and Prejudice. When you get down to it, there's nothing really keeping Lizzie and Mr. Darcy apart except their perceptions of each other. Another way of saying it, and one that makes it sound less boring, is that the characters' love for each other has to become stronger than any prejudices or previous bad experiences in their lives.

Other examples of love stories with internal conflict include Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice and Benedict), Lord of Scoundrels (by Loretta Chase; the all-time favorite romance novel of many a reader), and North & South (the Elizabeth Gaskill one).

Types of conflict split by genre more than I'd realized before starting this post. For example, the romance writing/reading community tends to favor internal conflict in their stories. Which I think is fair; for a genre that revolves around the examination and exploration of love, I think that's fair. You can only examine cruel parents so many times. But it seems that external conflict is much more common in YA and fantasy - perhaps because there is so much going on plot-wise, and other sorts of conflict with good and evil, that external conflict is also the simpler way to go (and rightfully so, in many cases).

Whichever way you decide to go for your story, maintaining the perfect balance in your conflict isn't easy. Love stories are absolutely awash with excessive conflict, where the writer feels the need to draw out the love story as long as possible. For example, you know that scene, where the bride is standing at the altar with the wrong man, and she suddenly has this massive epiphany that she really should be with the hero, and so she goes running through the streets in her wedding dress? (I'm looking at you, Spider-man 2). And they never show the bride's parents sobbing about the tens of thousands of dollars that were just wasted, or all the wedding guests that flew in from Oklahoma  and took time off from work that are now seriously irritated? That is internal conflict going too far. Big dramatic moments rarely feel like anything but contrivances.

External conflict can definitely be pulled to far as well, to the point where you the viewer are thinking, really? More rabid beavers? Didn't they take out their whole dam with laser cannons?

 Why is his mouth so red? That's creepy.
Photo by Roland zh; shared under a Creative Commons license

Of course, you don't have to just have one or the other. Most of the advice I found online talked about layering conflicts, which is something I hadn't thought about but really makes so much sense. I liked this article, and this one too (though it's more about m/m romance, the tips at the beginning are applicable to all romance). 

When I was searching around the internets for further info on this, I was fascinated to find these guidelines at the Harlequin Presents website for how they want internal or external conflict in submissions:

Here are the Harlequin Presents editors' top tips:

-Choose internal conflicts as the main drivers of your story
-Use external conflicts as added twists
-Make sure your chosen conflict is well developed, well motivated and consistent with the characters and their situations
-Check that your conflict is believable, relevant for the reader and sustainable over the course of a whole book
-Ideally, construct two or three emotional conflicts that can be played out and resolved through your story
-Conflict isn't a continual argument between the hero and heroine!
-Layer your conflict with highs and lows, advancements and retreats, passion and withdrawal.

 What are your favorite examples of internal and external conflict in romance?

Kissing an Alien

Think of the planet Earth. Think about kissing on the planet Earth. There are almost 200 countries on this planet and each one has different attitudes and approaches to kissing. Kissing in public ranges from being very common, to absolutely illegal.

So how should you handle it in your science fiction?

Any way you want – but make it interesting.

Kissing is a great opportunity for world building. If you're writing a first contact story, who is the first to try kissing the new alien species? What happens and what are the consequences? The person could die by toxin, or because they broke some law. Or maybe an alien kiss is the greatest high ever and it becomes a challenge to see how many aliens you can get to kiss you. Maybe the person is ostracized, or maybe just teased. These things give you the chance to not only display your society, but your character's true nature as well.

And this works both ways. You can tell the story from the alien's pov as well. If you were an alien, what would it be like smooching a human for the first time?

Even if it's not a first time, there's a huge realm of possibilities. Alien A loves Alien B but their pieces don't fit together, even for kissing. Maybe kissing causes the alien to teleport. Wouldn't that be a bummer? A society could have an entire cleansing ritual before kissing was allowed. Take a bath? No problem – except the bath is in sulfuric acid.

An alien's kiss could be addictive. Imagine a whole slave trade where the slaves are kept in line because they're dying for a kiss from their master. Or those aliens are simply the most successful drug lords ever. Flip the idea and you have aliens being kidnapped and held prisoner for the narcotic effects of their kiss.

The consequence of kissing aliens doesn't have to be the entire focus of your story, but it can add a unique layer of conflict and possibility. It will add richness to your society and can be one more hurdle you throw in the path of your protagonist.

So don't waste an opportunity. Make your kissing scenes with aliens exciting, or dangerous, or funny. Above all, make them interesting.

It's a Hero! It's a Villain! It's...Internal Conflict!

Melanie wrote a post on Friday about writing villains, and it's had me paying attention to the conflict and villains in the books I read.  I've been looking at the heroes, too.  The book I'm reading right now doesn't have a cut and dry antagonist, but there are loads of conflicts and consequences.

The book I'm talking about is Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion.  Heard of it lately?  Probably because it came out in theaters a couple of days ago.  Looks like Twilight, only with zombies, right?  It's not.  In fact, I'm not even 100% sure it's considered young adult.  The characters drop more F bombs, drink more alcohol, have more awkward zombie sex, and kill more of each other than any book I've read in a long time.  If you want to read the book, I say go for it because it's an excellent book, but be aware it isn't for prepubescent tweens wanting to read about undying romance.  (There is a little udead romance, but that's different.)

Anyway, if you've seen the commercials, you probably have some idea what the story's about.  If not, here's a (mostly spoiler-free) rundown.

R is a zombie that lives in a 747 at the airport.  He spends his day riding escalators and ruminating on the meaning of life after death.  Once in a while, he and his fellow zombies go on hunting expeditions where they capture and devour the Living.  It is during one such hunting trip that R meets Julie (after eating her boyfriend's brain and gaining his memories.)  Rather than eat her, something inside of him switches on and he saves her life by bringing her back to his 747 and hiding her from the other zombies.

Unlikely as it may be, Julie and R become friends.  R starts to change.  His usually limited speech begins to flow.  His hunger disappears.  He starts dreaming again.  He decides he wants to be different. He wants to be a human.

Last night as I'm closing in on the ending, something horrible happened.  Julie gave R a vodka laced glass of juice, and to his utter confusion, it made him drunk.  Even if you've never downed half a bottle of vodka, you probably know that alcohol has a way of making a person do things he wouldn't do if he were sober.  And R is no exception.  His drunken actions are no different than what they were at the beginning of the book, but because I spent so many pages watching him transform into this amazingly humane zombie, I was horrified.  So was he.

I closed the book and stared at it for a few minutes.  I picked it back up and started to open it, then shut it again.  He just spent an entire chapter talking about how he wanted to earn Julie's forgiveness, earn the trust she'd placed in him.  And now I don't know how he's going to do it.  Worse, he's put the largest surviving human city in jeopardy, because he was too much of a coward to right his wrong.  I put the book back down and went to bed.  It was too much for me to tackle at 10 pm.

I'll finish the book, though.  I've got 50 or so pages before it's over.  There's still time for him to fix this.  There's still enough pages left for him to take responsibility, and accept the consequences.  Sure, there are outside threats he has to face--a city full of humans that would kill him on the spot if they knew what he was; a girl he loves that may or may not turn against him when she finds out what he's done; an entire hive of zombies that will debrain him if he tries to go back home.  His chances seem pretty slim compared to those odds, but I don't think any of those things are the villains.  I think he is his own villain.

From everything I've read in this story, it's not a battle of good versus evil, or Dead versus Living.  It is all inside of R.  His struggle, his fight, takes place between the cursed part of him and the scraps of humanity clinging to life.  And even though what he did in the book last night is going to cause a domino effect, his reaction was completely human.  I hope that part of him wins, but since I haven't finished the book, I don't know for sure.

It's been an enlightening story for me.  Most of the time, the bad guy is a character, a group, a force of nature, but this week I've learned it can be something smaller.  Something inside of the hero that limits him, or makes him his own villain, and I have to say, it's been an exciting realization.

Sometimes a story needs a villain to threaten the status quo.  That all-encompassing evil that cannot be changed no matter how much compassion or righteousness the ultra-good hero has.  It can only be defeated.  But then there are times where the hero has to face his own weaknesses, and take responsibility for his actions to become a better man.  I feel like the stakes are higher when the character has to go up against himself.  If you fight a villain and you have right on your side, story logic says you are going to win.  (Heck, if you're the main character, chances are you are going to win, right or wrong.)  But if the character has to do battle with his own nature, it's not a sure thing that he's coming out the other side unscathed.  Which is why internal conflict, though not an action-filled scene of blood and gore, almost always trumps an external source of conflict for me.

Well, that's what I've got today.  Now it's time for me to finish R's story.  Will he face the fallout of his actions and prove to Julie that he's worthy of her?  I don't know, but I'm dying to find out.