The Conflict Of Story.

Have you ever walked a path so long that you forget where it is you were walking too? I think of Hansel and Gretel leaving behind breadcrumbs to find their way back home, forgetting just how temporal they were. I think this is how life can be at times, we forget just what it is that makes the journey worth remembering. We lose our way home.

However in story it is just at that moment, when it looks like the children are doomed in the gingerbread house that we remember why it is that finding our way back home, our way out of the mess we find our selves in, is so important. Light breaks at the windows, a foreshadow that the story has changed and that hope of finding home is once again possible.

The thing about life is, is that there are many paths we find our selves on, many places we walk, things we see. But what makes a difference in story as in life is there is often a climactic happening, a struggle which leads to a resolution of story. The protagonists find hope when all seems lost.

There are even times when the climax to story is a negative turn, or seemingly so. It looks like the team has lost the game, or that the Goonies have lost their house to the blood sucking bank. It’s in those moments when all seems lost that the characters are taken from the situation and placed in a movement of story, to grow. And what seems to be a negative turn, the thing that just might kill the story in the first place become the very thing that helps move the characters of story to overcome conflict into getting what they want.

So it is In life as it is in story that conflict leads to turns that lead to resolutions. And we must be positive to use conflict to grow the characters of our story.