Building Conflict: Why Low-Stakes Stories Bore Readers

The Engine That Drives Every Story

You’ve created compelling characters. You’ve built an evocative setting. Your prose is polished. But something’s missing—the narrative feels flat, the pages turn slowly, and readers report losing interest around the middle.

The problem is almost always conflict. Specifically: not enough of it, not the right kind, or conflict without meaningful stakes.

Conflict is the engine of narrative. Without it, you don’t have a story—you have a series of events that happen to people. With compelling conflict, even quiet literary fiction becomes unputdownable.

What Conflict Actually Is

Conflict is opposition. Someone wants something; something prevents them from getting it. That’s it—the foundational formula of all narrative.

But “opposition” doesn’t mean argument or violence. The subtlest literary fiction contains profound conflict: internal resistance, impossible choices, the gap between who we are and who we want to be.

Think of conflict as want versus obstacle. What does your character want? What stands in their way? If you can’t answer those questions for every scene, you’ve found your problem.

The Three Levels of Conflict

Internal Conflict

The protagonist struggles against themselves—fear, doubt, misbelief, desire, addiction, moral uncertainty. Internal conflict makes characters feel human and creates the potential for genuine transformation.

The most powerful internal conflicts are the ones characters don’t recognize themselves. The father who says he wants his children’s happiness but actually wants their obedience. The artist who claims to want success but sabotages every opportunity because they don’t believe they deserve it.

Interpersonal Conflict

Characters in opposition to each other—antagonists, rivals, friends with competing needs, family members with different visions of the family’s future. Interpersonal conflict externalizes the drama and creates scenes.

The best interpersonal conflicts aren’t good versus evil but competing goods or competing understandable positions. A divorce where both parents genuinely want what’s best for the child but disagree completely on what that means.

External Conflict

The protagonist against larger forces—nature, society, technology, fate, time. External conflict provides obstacle and scale, creates tension through physical or systemic pressure.

External conflict alone rarely sustains a story—we need internal and interpersonal dimensions to care—but it raises stakes and provides concrete problems to solve.

Why Low-Stakes Stories Bore Readers

Stakes are what the character stands to lose if they fail. Without meaningful stakes, there’s no tension. Without tension, readers don’t turn pages.

The Three Types of Stakes

Physical stakes: Survival, health, safety—yours or others’. These are the stakes of thrillers and horror, obvious and visceral.

Emotional stakes: Love, belonging, identity, meaning. These are the stakes of literary fiction, romance, and coming-of-age—potentially more powerful than physical stakes because they touch universal needs.

External stakes: Career, reputation, money, position. These create pressure but work best combined with emotional stakes—we care about the job loss because of what it means for the character’s sense of self.

Making Stakes Personal

The fate of the world is, paradoxically, less compelling than the fate of one person we care about. Global destruction is abstract; your protagonist’s mother dying is concrete.

Connect large-scale conflicts to personal stakes. The spy isn’t just stopping the bomb—they’re proving to their father they’re not the failure everyone believed. The soldier isn’t just fighting a war—they’re protecting the one person who showed them kindness.

Raising Stakes Progressively

Stakes should escalate throughout your narrative. What begins as embarrassment becomes job loss becomes relationship destruction becomes identity crisis. Each setback raises the cost of failure.

Ways to raise stakes:

• Add time pressure: The deadline approaches; the disease progresses; the enemy advances
• Expand consequences: Failure now affects not just the protagonist but others they love
• Remove options: The escape route closes; the backup plan fails; allies abandon
• Deepen investment: The character has sacrificed so much they can’t turn back
• Raise the cost of winning: Victory now requires something the character is unwilling to give

Scene-Level Conflict

Every scene needs its own conflict—not just the large narrative conflict but a specific obstacle in the immediate moment.

Your protagonist needs information. The person with that information doesn’t want to share it. That’s scene-level conflict—it can be resolved within pages while the larger conflicts continue.

The Goal-Conflict-Outcome Model

For each scene, identify:

• Goal: What does the POV character want in this scene?
• Conflict: What prevents them from getting it easily?
• Outcome: Did they get it, not get it, or get it at a cost?

If you can’t identify these elements, the scene may not be earning its place in your story.

Conflict Without Fighting

Beginning writers often equate conflict with argument or violence. Some of the most powerful conflict involves neither.

Quiet Conflict

• A character forced to make an impossible choice
• Someone working against their own best interests
• A conversation where both parties avoid what needs to be said
• The tension of waiting for news that will change everything
• Watching someone you love make a terrible mistake

These conflicts create tension without raised voices. They’re often more powerful than physical confrontation because they’re internal and relatable.

Common Conflict Problems

The Easy Resolution

Conflict that resolves without real cost. The argument that ends with apology. The obstacle cleared by coincidence. When problems solve too easily, readers feel cheated.

Make solutions cost something. Every resolution should create new problems or require sacrifice.

The Mismatched Conflict

External conflict that doesn’t connect to internal conflict. A thriller where the hero fights villains but never faces their own demons. A romance where external obstacles keep lovers apart but there’s no internal reason for their struggle.

Link your levels of conflict. The external battle should force internal growth.

The Muddy Stakes

Conflict without clear consequences. We know the character is in danger, but we don’t know exactly what happens if they fail. Spell out the stakes—make them specific and personal.

Building Conflict Into Every Level

Story level: What’s the core conflict of your narrative? What does the protagonist want; what stands in their way?

Act level: Each major section should have its own conflict arc—escalating problems and complications.

Chapter level: Each chapter should begin with a goal and end with an outcome that propels the next chapter.

Scene level: Every scene needs opposition—something that prevents easy resolution.

Line level: Even in dialogue, characters should have competing agendas, different information, conflicting desires.

The Test of Sufficient Conflict

Ask yourself: What’s the worst that could happen to my character? Now make it happen—or threaten it convincingly.

If your protagonist could walk away from the story without significant consequence, your stakes aren’t high enough. If they could solve their problem easily, your obstacles aren’t challenging enough. If readers don’t care whether they succeed, your conflict hasn’t connected to anything that matters.

Conflict isn’t cruelty to your characters—it’s respect for your readers. It’s the promise that this story is going somewhere, that something is at risk, that turning the page is worth the effort.

Without that promise, you don’t have a story. With it, readers will follow you anywhere.