Conflict (creating them, and presenting them in a great way)

[Fisseha]

Hello! I've come to this forum to ask for help in writing, because it's one of my weakest points.

I'm currently having problems with 'having' a conflict with my story. Maybe because I tend to change too much, or because I'm never satisfied.

The conflict that I planned was 'Discrimination', I want to focus on this, however I wasn't too sure how to work with it.

Followed by a sub-conflict 'Death', however in this part, I want to show that the murderer isn't the antagonist.

I'm not really sure how I'll pull the strings, so I want some examples (a novel, a game, etc.) And I'll take a look at how they do it.

[Ezmar]

My advice would be to come up with a story you want to tell first, and then examine those ideas to discover what themes drive that story. My novel deals a lot with loss and acceptance, but it primarily started as a cool time travel story I wanted to tell.

This is by no means the only way to go about crafting a story, it's just the only one I'm personally qualified to recommend.

[Widdershins]

I'll second Ezmar's advice. It seems possible the trouble you're running into with the topics you mention-- discrimination and death-- is that they are less conflicts, in and of themselves, than thematic elements. And if you're writing about ideas, it's more challenging to shape together a story instead of an editorial: a story is what comes from giving ideas specific human context.

That said, those are both fertile topics for a central conflict! I'd suggest you explore paring them down to smaller, more individual elements. Who is experiencing discrimination in your story? What personal desire or goal is it preventing them from achieving? Who is discriminating against them? Why do they hold the opinions they do?

Death is even easier to humanize, because it is a universal experience-- the trick is to make it actionable. Who is dying? How does it impact those around them? How do they feel about it (if applicable)? What does the murderer hope to accomplish through this death (if applicable)?

For good examples on those themes, I'd maybe try BioWare's Dragon Age games (the second especially leans heavily into both topics). For a very different take, the film Gosford Park is an English country house murder mystery with upstairs-downstairs elements that play into discrimination, too. For books, Toni Morrison's Beloved applies to pretty much every single aspect you mention. Jose Saramago's Death with Interruptions is also excellent, and quite literally humanizes death as a character.

I hope some of that helps!

[Kuiper]

It seems possible the trouble you're running into with the topics you mention-- discrimination and death-- is that they are less conflicts, in and of themselves, than thematic elements. And if you're writing about ideas, it's more challenging to shape together a story instead of an editorial: a story is what comes from giving ideas specific human context.

Quoting this for emphasis. "Discrimination" are themes that lend themselves to conflict, but they are not conflict in and of themselves.

Conflict can basically be boiled down to two points:

1. Character wants thing.
2. Something is preventing them from having that thing.

This can manifest itself in many ways. For example:

Alice wants something to eat, but she doesn't want to get out of bed to go to the kitchen. (Internal conflict based on tension between two conflicting desires)

Alice wants something to eat, but there's no food in the house because Carol ate it all. (External conflict between two characters.)

Alice wants something to eat, but she has no money to buy food with. (Conflict between character's desires and her circumstances.)

If you want to connect a theme like "death" to an overarching conflict, then you can manifest it some way by giving your main character a specific desire and having death stand in the way of that desire. For example, Alice wants to enjoy a long and happy life with her husband, but her husband gets diagnosed with a terminal illness which stands in the way of that goal.

However, one thing that often goes overlooked is that every scene can contain conflict of some sort, because characters are always acting with some kind of desire and motivation. Long-term, your goal might be to graduate from medical school and become a practicing physician, but in the short term, you have smaller goals: you want to get a good grade on your next exam, you want to have fun with your friends this weekend, you want to eat something to sate your growing hunger. While you probably have a large overarching goal that guides the course of your life, it is unlikely that this is something you will be thinking about every moment of every day. Likewise, if you have a story that is about someone dealing with a loved one receiving about a diagnosis for a terminal illness, it may be best to avoid having this be an omnipresent thing that completely dominates their thoughts in every single scene. (There are characters who are like this, and many viewers/readers tend to find this unbearable.) Maybe Alice is sad that her husband will be dying soon, but in the moment, she might be more concerned with the fact that a close friend isn't returning her calls, or that she locked her keys in her car, or that she encountered someone extraordinarily rude.

When it comes to conflict in your story, it isn't as simple as "pick one conflict and then never think about after you've made your choice." A good method might be to start the writing process for each individual scene by asking yourself, "What's the conflict here? What does the character want, and what is keeping them from achieving that goal?" In the answer to that question, you have your conflict.