E.A. Brady

It might sound strange for me to admit this, but you know what I struggle with as a writer?

Conflict.

Do you know the one thing that all fiction needs to be worth reading?

You guessed it, conflict.

I have a hard time writing it. I try to avoid it in my own life as much as I can.

And just as in my real life, I want things to go well for my characters. I write romance. I don’t want to break people’s hearts. I don’t want them to struggle.

Struggling sucks! Broken hearts suck worse!

But what do I love to read about? People overcoming their struggles to earn their happily ever after.

I think that’s called irony.🤷‍♀️🤔

Either way, it’s part of the craft that I’ll be working diligently on over the coming year.

I don’t want people to read my books and think my heroes and heroines got off too easy, or that their stories were boring. 😬

In order to prevent that from happening, I’ll be diving headfirst into one of my Christmas presents, The Conflict Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. (*That’s not an affiliate link. I just like to shop local, so I linked to bookshop.org.)

Just a quick skim through the table of contents already has my mind swimming with some new possibilities. (Who among us hasn’t sent a text to the wrong person? That could be a fun one to play with!)

I also joined a small group within my local writers’ guild. Our main focus is on finishing our novels, with stress on increasing the tension and conflict within them to tell better stories.

It’s part of the way I hope to continue to evolve as a writer.

How do you feel about conflict? Love to read it, hate to live it? Let me know below or hit me up on the socials – preferably Instagram because I spend more time there than anywhere else. Or shoot me an email and let’s talk!

If you’re a writer, how do write through the tough stuff to get your protagonist to the end of the rainbow?