7 Types Of Narrative Conflict

7 Types of Narrative Conflict

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Every work of literature, and much nonfiction narrative, is based on at least one of the post-obit conflicts. When you lot write a story or a biography, or relate a true event or series of events, you need not focus on such themes, and in that location's no reason to state them explicitly (except in passing, possibly, to provide insight about a biographical subject), but yous're wise to identify the conflicts inherent in your limerick and apply them every bit you write.

i. Person vs. Fate/God
This category could be considered part of disharmonize with self or with society (many people count simply four types of conflict, including those two and disharmonize with another person or with nature). That'due south a valid statement, as ane confronts fate as role of an internal struggle and religion is a construct of society, merely explicitly naming fate (Oedipus Rex) or God — or the gods (The Odyssey) — as the antagonist is a useful stardom.

2. Person vs. Self
A person's struggle with his or her own prejudices or doubts or character flaws constitutes this type of conflict (Hamlet).

3. Person vs. Person
Any story featuring a hero and a villain or villains (The Count of Monte Cristo) represents this type of conflict, though the villain(s) is/are often representative of another adversary in this list, whether a villain is in essence an alter ego of the protagonist (thus representing the conflict of person versus self) or stands in for society.

4. Person vs. Society
When the protagonist'southward conflict extends to confronting institutions, traditions, or laws of his or her culture, he or she struggles to overcome them, either triumphing over a corrupt society (I describe a blank hither), rejecting information technology (Fahrenheit 451), or succumbing to information technology (1984).

5. Person vs. Nature
In this conflict, the protagonist is pitted confronting nature (Robinson Crusoe) or a representation of it, oftentimes in the form of an brute (Moby Dick).

six. Person vs. Supernatural
Superficially, conflict with the supernatural may seem equivalent to conflict with fate or God, or representative of a struggle with an evocation of self (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) or nature (The Birds). But this category stands on its ain anxiety as well.

7. Person vs. Technology
Humanity's innate skepticism about the wonders of technology has resulted in many stories in which antagonists apply technology to gain power or in which technology takes over or becomes a malign influence on gild (Brave New Globe).

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