Conflict I

Let's talk about conflict. In the sense of constructing a story. It's commonly held that conflict is essential to a story, and if you read conflict as opposition then it's hard to argue that it isn't necessary. Your main characters are deal with a problem and if there is no opposition to the characters actions that would tend to indicate that the problem is easy to deal with, and how much of an intense interesting story would that make? Opposition, by the way, can be supplied by friends who think the character is wrong just as easily as by bad guys who want him to fail. There is a good range of opposition available and each should be used as appropriate to the story – Boromier was misguided, not evil, and repented just in time to save... well, you know the story.

Conflict is not necessary if the story is only about the nature of the character. The events highlight the failing inherent in their thinking and the story is about how they grow to overcome the internal problem. There is no need for conflict.

I may talk more about this later, but I just got sidetracked, so I'll call this Conflict I and put that on top of this bit.