Mary Rosenblum:  I wanted to talk about conflict tonight.  A lot of novice writers really have a hard time understanding just what conflict is and how much you need in order to tell a story.  You have a whole spectrum of conflict ranging from the huge external threats of thrillers or action adventure fiction....killer subs on the loose, a stolen nuke, impending flood, hurricane, what have you,   to the very subtle....one man's need to escape his famous father's shadow, a woman's need to take control of her own life.

Is natural disaster a conflict?

Mary Rosenblum:  Sure David.  A problem facing the main character is a conflict.   In the case of a natural disaster, your MC might just have to survive, save his village, save her kids, or maybe even stop the entire thing somehow.  That's a very external conflict. The other end of the spectrum we have  a character who needs to fix something within himself/herself .   The conflict might not even be addressed directly, but indirectly, though that character's behavior and conversation.  You tend to see much subtler conflicts in literary fiction, although not always.  You often have strong internal conflict that couple with the traditional external conflicts  to drive genres like mystery, suspense, and thriller.   Although in all three of those cases, it's the external conflict that tends to carry the weight of the story.
Does  a good story need both internal and external conflict? or can external conflict sand on its own?
Mary Rosenblum:  It doesn't have to have both, David.  But you will get a deeper and more complex story if you use both . If you've ever read the old Conan the Barbarian stories, they're a great example from the pulp fiction era of 'all external' conflict.  Conan was simply not an internally conflicted man. :-)  You have, on the other end of that spectrum, the 'all internal' stories where they don't even seem to be stories at first read. Nothing Much Happens and the internal conflict may be hard to spot. Mostly that turns up in literary fiction.  You do tend to see a balance of internal and external in mainstream. Mystery of course, is pretty external driven. We must have that whodunnit!  But more and more, characterization -- complex characterization -- plays a major role. They've moved away from the two dimensionality of Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, and the like.  When you come up with a cool character and/or a great setting, it's really not hard to find a conflict.  Our lives are full of conflict.  Throw a problem at your character.  Just be careful that you really do know what the main problem is in your story. :-) I just got a story from a student where the student was focusing on one conflict in the story and was completely oblivious to the much larger issue that was not getting dealt with . It really needed to be the central conflict.
Does a good story have to have conflict?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yes, David. Conflict and character change are pretty much the definition of 'story' as opposed to 'scene'.  It is what engages readers. A lovely description of an idyllic landscape is nice for a travel magazine, but it won't engage a reader looking for a story.
What do you mean by character change?
 Mary Rosenblum:   Burkley, at some point in the story, the character changes in some way. You can have an external threat...a charging lion.  And our hero fights off the lion. But he's no different than he was before fighting off the lion. He's still alive, still very much the same person.  Say the hero sees the lion about to attack the brother that betrayed him, is about to let it, then realizes that he can't do that, and fights off the lion.  The character has changed in how he regards his brother. He, himself, has changed internally. A lot of what engages readers with a story is curiosity. Will he survive? Will she reconcile with her sister?  The more threads of conflict you can weave in, up to a point, the better.  Remember, in a novel, you can have several subplots going on, and each of them will involve conflict and resolution...or can.
Where is the point? Or when is the point?
Mary Rosenblum:  The point is when the story becomes SO complicated that the readers can no longer follow the main plot.    When you have to keep turning away from the main plot to move your several subplots along and you've got conflicts all over the place, readers can get overwhelmed.
To say nothing of the author!
Mary Rosenblum:  It is, burkley. The best way to get a handle on that is to swap your mss for critique with other novice writers.  And see what they say.  And of course, the risk is that you'll get to the end of the book and realize you now have to tie up five or six plot/subplot threads in one chapter. It can begin to seem to the readers like a flurry of knot tying. Everything in writing is a balance between too much and too little.   You veer from side to side of that 'center line' all the time when you're starting out.  Problems don't have to be huge. They can be quite small and personal. A kid has to earn enough money to pay for his tuition to college in the fall, he's from a poor family. At the same time, he has run afoul of the local gang leader.

Mary, when a story goes on for hundreds of pages and there are sub plots and flash backs and multiple characters, how does the author keep it all straight? who's who what s happening when and where?
Mary Rosenblum:  David with GREAT difficulty! Yes, you can do that, and many authors have done it very well. But many others have ended up with several hundred pages of confusion! Sometimes it's a good idea to think about what you're doing and ask yourself what is really important in this story. It’s easy to start adding all kinds of neat stuff just because it is neat stuff.  But if you think about it for awhile, you can probably pick out the stuff that really is important. Leave the other stuff out of this novel.  I see that in short fiction a lot.  The main story gets buried in 'cool stuff' about the characters in the past, their lives outside the story and so on.
Mary, I recently read a novel that began with an iffy plot premise, added several more story lines, and then never wrapped up any of them...this, at the end of 600+ pages! I was NOT happy.
Mary Rosenblum:  I wouldn't be either!  Poor writing DOES get published, alas. Doesn't mean you have to buy it or read it!
What's the difference between the conflict used to create obstacles and the main conflict? How do you tell which one is the main conflict?
Mary Rosenblum:  That's a really pertinent question, Charie. Because sometimes the author has trouble with that. You need to decide for sure for yourself what the main conflict is.  Then your 'obstacles' that is, the subplot problems that complicate the story, need to be less compelling than the main problem. If  your 'obstacle' conflicts start becoming stronger than your main conflict, maybe you need to rethink the story. Certainly, when I was starting out, I'd be sure I knew my central conflict in a story, but as I wrote it, I'd realize that I had a larger conflict that was more powerful than my 'main' conflict. I changed a number of stories in very fundamental ways.
I keep thinking my main conflict needs to be stronger because my "obstacles" are murder and attempted murder.
Mary Rosenblum:  Charie, it's hard to get stronger than death . That’s' why most mysteries revolve around a murder rather than a theft or embezzlement.   But if there are a lot of killings in your story, the impact of death is going to be lessened by desensitization. You see that in fantasy a lot, Charie.  The future of a kingdom or magic universe or what have you is at risk. Death is less powerful than that conflict.
Lord of the Rings is a great example because it's so classic.  Let's look at the layers of conflicts in that huge story.  The ultimate, the central conflict that threads all three volumes is the end of the world as we know it. Evil will rule.  Then you have conflicts that face kingdoms, nations...they will be destroyed or survive.  Then we move down to personal conflict...characters we have gotten to know well live or die. Each of these conflict arcs supports the main, central arc -- end of the world as we know it, or not. You do that same thing,, Charie, on a smaller level with any novel.  Jens has to find a way to pay for a lifesaving cancer treatment for his mother.   He plans to win a sled dog race in order to do it. In  the process he makes an enemy of one of the older drivers, will have to deal with that man's sabotage,  Obstacle number one. And in the race, he'll have to overcome his fear of heights when he has to climb down a cliff to help a driver who fell. Obstacle two.
In both of these subplots, you have conflict and resolution but they support the central conflict of 'must save his mother'.  Ideally you tie them together. The nasty driver has hurt him in some way and he's the driver who falls. So our kid has a chance for revenge. Other drivers went on by, if he stops he'll lose the race, and he's scared of heights. But he does it anyway, and maybe the nasty driver tells him about the shortcut he was going to use. So the kid is still able to win.
Are obstacles to conflict resolution necessary or at least desirable to a good story?
Mary Rosenblum:  Sure, David. Otherwise, it's over too quickly. Boy needs water. Boy finds bucket. Boy gets water.
Boring.
Boy needs water. Strange man has only bucket and demands tasks. Boy does tasks and gains magic, defeats strange man, grows up. Boy gets water.
Not quite so boring.

When writing a book proposal, would you include the "obstacle" conflicts along with the main conflict when describing the story?
Mary Rosenblum:  Gail, you have to be careful about including your subplots. You may give the impression that the book is not strongly driven by a central plot arc.
So, any mention of subplots should be cursory, after the main plot is clearly outlined?
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, Gail, if you’re talking fiction, you really don't do a proposal the way you do a proposal for a nonfiction book. Instead  of an outline, you write a synopsis. It's more like a book jacket blurb, meant to entice the reader and to reveal the main plot arc.  Your subplots are mentioned briefly as needed. When Dorothy's house is sucked up by a tornado and deposited in a strange land over the rainbow, she must travel to the magic city of Oz in order to get home. But a wicked witch has other plans for her, and only through the friendship of three unlikely companions is she able to defeat the witch and gain her passage back home again.
There you go, Gail.  Notice that I didn't mention the needs of the tin man, the lion, and the scarecrow, or that the wizard sends them away after the first visit or that he's a humbug? Of course I was doing something VERY short, but even longer, it would be similar. Stick to the main plot, minimize the subplots.