War is what happens when language fails. – Margaret Atwood
These same words can apply to conflict in fiction. When characters cannot talk to one another or when they speak without communicating or hear without listening, the emotional battle begins.
Building on yesterday’s post about envisioning fiction as a clash of cultures, here’s another angle to consider: Every story is a war story.
In her column for Writer’s Digest, the writer Nancy Kress made this comparison directly:
Every war includes these factors: combatants who know which side they’re on; something significant at stake; murderous action in which both sides are struggling as hard as they can to prevail; an end to the war through victory, surrender, exhaustion or default; some means of deciding who won.
In his column on the Killzone blog, James Scott Bell expands on this concept, suggesting that every story is a war story, even romance and comedy. This may sound unlikely, but while the goals and stakes may differ, the lovers in a romantic story still have to battle to win their victory.
“Unless the lovers fight through obstacles because they must be together or lose the deepest part of their lives (psychological death), the story isn’t full capacity,” Bell writes.
While you might not think it tasteful to reframe comedies as war stories, the protagonists still must have a worthy goal, overcome obstacles, stagger through setbacks and apparent defeat, and eventually win the day (or not). According to Bell, the trick is that the characters in a comedy have to behave as though they are acting in a tragedy. Meet the Parents is funny only because Ben Stiller so desperately wants to win over his fiancée’s father. Amid the jokes about weight and farts, The Nutty Professor is about a man who desperately needs to believe that he is deserving of love.
While you don’t need to go overboard, casting your characters as opponents in a war – not merely an interpersonal conflict – can help you heighten the emotional tension. Even a trivial conflict can capture your reader’s attention if your characters believe their battle is life or death.
“Thinking in these terms will ensure that your scenes have significance,” Bell notes. “Think about each move a character makes as a battle tactic, and each physical action and dialogue exchange as a weapon. These can be subtle and involve subterfuge or distraction, as well as direct assault. But they’re all employed to gain the victory.”
If you try this approach, Bell suggests a few questions to ask as you write:
- What are the two sides in this war?
- What is at stake?
- At what point in the story do the two sides understand, intellectually or emotionally, that they’re at war? Or, if the characters don’t know yet that there’s a war on, when does the reader know?
Suggested reading: The Art of War by Sun Tzu; The War of the Roses by Warren Adler