Conflict is essential to good fiction.  If we started to read a book and found that it contained no unexpected surprises to prick our curiosity, we’d soon lose interest.

In life, we often find ourselves in conflict, usually with those close to us, sometimes with authority figures and every once in a while with strangers.  This week I found myself unexpectedly drawn into an infuriating debate with a door-to-door salesman.  In fairness to him, he’d picked a bad moment – but in my defence he was an annoying, jumped up little oik with a clipboard.  I’d settled down to write just 45 minutes before he called, and in that time I’d received two automated robo-American telephone messages, and my computer had frozen on me when I tried to go online for research.  When I answered the door, the conversation went something like this:

“Hello, I’m from X Power.  How are you today?   Can I ask you a few questions?”

(Me – hesitant but polite)  “Well, what’s it about?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you unless you answer my questions.  Are you the home owner?”

(Smiling, surprised)  “Yes, but you’ll have to tell me what it’s about if you want me to answer your questions.  If you want me to change my service provider, I’m afraid I’m not interested.”

“No, it’s not about that, but I can’t tell you what it’s about unless you answer my questions.”

(Now getting annoyed)  “Well I won’t answer your questions unless you tell me what it’s about.”

“Don’t you want to save money?”

(Exasperated)  “So you do want me to move my electricity supply?”

“No.  I’ve already told you it’s not about that . . . . .

We went on like this for another 30 seconds, until I eventually told him, “No, no, no, no, no.  If you won’t tell me what it’s about, I won’t answer your questions.  I’ve got work to do.”    Amazingly, he answered me by saying, “Ah, that’s one of my questions.  So you work at home – “  He ticked his clipboard with a flourish.  As I said goodbye and pushed the door shut on him, he walked down the path mumbling under his breath.  I was so mad by this stage I was actually  fantasizing about chasing him down the road and punching him on his bum-fluffy teenaged chin.

Of course, we don’t really do that kind of thing in the real civilised world, so instead I stomped back down the stairs to my office and tried to get back to work.  But what if we did behave like that?  What if we did let our anger get the better of us?  That’s where the story starts to take a new turn.

For this exercise, try taking yourself back to a real argument you’ve been involved in.  It might be a recent disagreement, or one way back as far as childhood.  Start to write about that argument, just as you remember it, but in the third person as if you were describing it as it happened to someone else.  Try to capture the sense of the moment – the smells, the temperature, the facial expression of your antagonist . . .  and then at the point of closure in the real argument, change direction.  So for me, my fiction might involve me chasing down the street to dropkick oik-boy.  Keep writing, using your imagination to take the story somewhere else altogether.

When your passage comes to a natural conclusion, shut it away and return to it the next day.  You may find you have something to work into your current project, or it could be an independent piece in its own right.

Either way, it’s  certainly therapeutic – and it doesn’t cost a thing!

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