Descriptive writing conflicts
Every descriptive writing essay needs a conflict.
Think of one of the all time favourite movies; Shrek.What if Shrek did not have a problem in its first movie.Shrek would have just lived in his swamp by himself. The whole story started when Lord Farquaad decided to relocate all the fairy tale creatures to Shrek’s swamp. Without this complication or problem, there would not have been any excitement or ending to the movie; nor would there have been the subsequent movies.
therefore you can see that coming up with a good problem for the main character lets you write great pieces of writing.
Without a conflict, the writeup would be quite boring and the reader would stop reading or an examiner may not award appropriate marks.
The following model introduces 6 different types of conflicts and inside each of the main types, there are a number of problems that can occour. Study these different types/sub types so that you can quickly come up with a number of plots for the story.
- Main character vs person – this is where the main character comes up with a problem due to an association with person. This is one of the main themes for a complication and a type that is widely used. The problem could come from a range of sources – a friend, an enemy, a bully or a thief.
- Main character vs nature/non living thing – this is where the main character is facing a problem from nature(floods, storms,earthquakes etc) or from non living things (buildings, vehicles etc)
- Main character vs self – these are complications caused by the main character itself. These could be mental (stress, self doubt,forgetting something) or physical(old age,accident, sickness)
- Main character vs society – This is where main character works with or against the community
- Main character vs supernatural themes -encounters with superheros, aliens, ghosts or magic are covered here. However, this type is not widely used in writing as this type of writing is not realistic.
- Main character vs technology – this is where the main character is having problems with technology.
