Working the Theory External Conflict Scenes

Now that we have chosen the story skeleton, the challenge is providing riveting obstacles between question and answer to keep the reader glued to the page. The reader knows from the outset that the hero will most likely survive. Your mission is to make them question the outcome anyway. We do this by utilizing the four layers of conflict.

We began with the premise of a meteor streaking toward earth, Dick as a conflicted scientist, his crumbling marriage to Sally, and Ted and Jane as coworkers who make his life miserable.  We have selected the Disaster Thriller format. Let’s start crafting conflict.

External conflicts test the protagonist’s courage, nerves, and determination.

They are high tension scenes that focus on the question of whether the overall story goal will be achieved. They include the main actions and reactions and turning points leading directly to, and including, the climax of the story.

External scenes show the characters caught up in the situation of your premise such as: boy meets girl, the volcano erupts, aliens invade the town, a body has been found, they are all forced to go to a wedding or reunion, or the wagon train heads out for the wild west. They do not address the subplots unless and until the subplot collides with the main plot at the climax.
They introduce the protagonist, the inciting event, the story goal, the prize for reaching the goal, and the cost for not reaching the story goal (stakes). They show him developing and attempting a plan of action for tackling the story problem. In the usual three-act structure, his first plan fails and he must come up with a second plan (the wrong solution). That plan fails and he must come up with the third plan (the right solution).

There have to be some positive moments where it looks like the protagonist is gaining ground. You could divide them equally: five scenes where he is making headway and five scenes where he is losing ground.

Once you’ve picked a skeleton and dressed it up, it is time to list your initial thoughts on events that will happen to trigger then escalate this external conflict: snags in the plan, unexpected discoveries, reversals, gains, and increasing levels of threat. Arrange them in an order that shows cause and effect and final resolution. The first scene should contain the inciting event. The final scene should contain the climax.

Continuing with our premise, we have come up with a list of scenes that introduce and eventually resolve the outer conflict: the imminent meteor strike.

External Conflict 1: Dick learns a meteor will strike.

External Conflict 2: He thinks of a way to stop it while it is still far away. He will nudge it with a satellite.

External Conflict 3: The satellite crashes into, but doesn’t change, the meteor's trajectory.

External Conflict 4: He comes up with plan to divert the meteor with a laser beam.

External Conflict 5: They can’t get the beam close enough from the ground.

External Conflict 6: They send the laser to the space station. The equipment breaks off and is lost in space.

External Conflict 7: They are back to the drawing board - all seems lost. They enter countdown mode.

External Conflict 8: Dick comes up with a final plan. It is do or die. They will nuke the meteor.

External Conflict 9: They rev up the shuttle loaded with a lethal payload to intercept the meteor and, despite last minute glitches, the shuttle takes off on a suicide mission.

External Conflict 10: Their plan succeeds and everyone lives, except the crew of the shuttle.

Next week, we will craft Antagonist Conflict scenes.

The four layer method is laid out in Story Building Blocks: The Four Layers of Conflict, available in paperback and e-book if you wish to have a copy with all of the information. The theory information is also available on https://dianahurwitz.com/.

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