All Our Struggles Are Interesting

I was nine years old and a fourth-grade student when I wrote a short story in writing composition class about two astronauts going to a faraway planet. I don’t recall the story’s details very well, but I do recall it had a beginning, a middle, and an ending.

In the beginning, my astronauts blast off in their rocket and leave Earth. During the middle, they travel through space, land on the planet, and run from giants. And during the ending, they escape harm from the giants and return home safely.

All the stories I wrote after that had a beginning, a middle, and an ending. And they had conflict in the middle and successful outcomes at the end. That’s all I knew about story writing. I didn’t know it was a formula (though I should have guessed it) until I took a theater arts class in college. From theater, I learned about Aristotle’s three act structure and the elements of writing outlined in The Poetics. I learned that the beginning is Act One where the audience meets all the actors, the middle is Act Two where the lead actor has problems, and the ending is Act Three where the lead actor resolves his problems.

And I learned that Greek theater and its tragedies gave writers a deep way of exploring the emotions aroused in us by conflict. Sometimes conflict meant violence. But mostly it meant struggle to overcome great odds stacked against the protagonist (the “first actor” on stage, or simply the play’s leading man and hero).

Put simply, conflict was struggle and struggle was interesting.

And thousands of years later, it still is. Without conflict, the play—the story—isn’t gripping or engaging. Without it, we don’t wonder what happens next. Without it, we don’t care.

After taking that class, I’ve never let my story characters not struggle to overcome problems. Every story has a main problem for the “first actor” to overcome, and smaller problems to test their mettle. And every successful story—whether in a book, play, or movie—does the same.

How much conflict to put in a story is up to the author (or the publisher … some love to choke their audiences with action from beginning to end), so like any good recipe, adjust to taste.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.

Steve, 7/22/2023

This post “All Our Struggles Are Interesting” copyright © 2023 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.