You can’t have stories without conflicts, or more simply put, without problems. Cozy slice-of-life short stories are one thing, but if you’re writing a novel, you need one big problem and then smaller problems along the way. That’s how you make a story. But what are good conflict ideas for stories that you could use for inspiration?
Conflicts need to be tailor-made for your story. It means that they need to fit your genre but also your protagonist. There also needs to be something about your protagonist that makes the conflict especially bad for them specifically, things like flaws and other existing problems. So let’s start stirring some trouble!
PLEASE NOTE
I’m gradually adding more ideas to this post, so if you’ve got any requests for what you’d like to see more of, please let me know!
Related reading: Story ideas from Save the Cat genres – Why writing prompts are useful
How to write conflict for your story
Whenever you’re choosing your protagonist + conflict pairing, you have to remember that the conflict needs to be so big for that specific person that it can’t be solved in a couple of pages or with a single phone call. Unless, of course, there’s a reason why that phone call can’t be made. Maybe it’s the medieval times.
Sometimes you might have a global-scale problem, like alien invasion or a giant tsunami, which we can probably all agree are genuine problems. The problem with those types of conflicts is that your readers aren’t going to care about them if you don’t make them personal as well. Maybe your hero wants to save a group of schoolchildren from the tsunami or he needs to find his childhood sweetheart before the world ends.
I would have liked to give you conflict ideas for single scenes, but that’s a lot harder to do because the conflict should arise from something that already exists in the story or has been put into motion. Any idea for a single scene would therefore involve other scenes, too. That said, some of these ideas are larger scale and some smaller.
Whatever kind conflict you’re writing, there should be a point where the conflict has originated and a point where your protagonist gets personally involved with it. You also need to remember your genre and who you’re writing for. Teenage problems are different from middle-aged problems, and that’s okay. So with that in mind, here are some good conflict ideas for stories that you can use.
Good conflict ideas for stories of any genre
I’m going to get into genre-specific ideas later in the post but I’m going to start with ones that you can use for general fiction or tweak them to fit your genre. Also, I’m going to give the characters names because I don’t want to keep talking about “characters”, “them” or “a person”, but the names are not relevant. Change them! Or not!
- Billie’s mother dies leaving her with nothing but debt. To make things even worse, Billie has never had a job and she doesn’t know anything about the real world.
- Maya needs money to be able to keep her horse, so she decides to take part in a prestigious singing competition. Unfortunately, she’s deadly afraid of performing in front of people.
- Alexandr needs to talk to his tenant about late rent payments when she goes into labor and he ends up acting as her boyfriend at the hospital
- When Charles finds a letter from his father that is dated way after the date he died in a car crash, he has to go find answers despite being estranged from his entire family.
- Greta has only just divorced from her husband of 40 years and she’s ready to start a new life in Spain. Much to her dismay, her plans have to change when a grand-daughter she knew nothing about turns up at her door looking for shelter.
- Katie and Myra like to prank each other, but could it be just another prank when Myra calls Katie in the middle of the night asking her to help hide a body? And what if Myra’s police officer father finds out?
- Toby’s father goes missing in the prairie, and Toby has to forget everything he knows about city-living and high society when he goes look for him.
- Amy is on her way to make up with her best friend, but when she sees a cute puppy in the bus, she misses her stop and makes her bestie think that Amy chose the band camp over her
Conflict ideas for fantasy
There are many kinds of fantasy novels, but the one thing that is an absolute requirement is magic. You can use any of these fantasy conflict ideas for the main conflict of your story or as an additional plotline.
- When the war approaches his village, Avi has to escape before they find out he is only half human. To make matter’s worse, he has to accept help from someone who’s tormented him for his lack of parents for all his life.
- When the messenger raven arrives, it has a pink ribbon tied around its leg instead of the message that was supposed to be brought back
- Marian falls in love with a girl who’s been promised to the king so she decides to duel the king to win her for herself. Will Marian let her drunk father train her for the duel?
- Avery has always trusted magic to solve everything. What will she do when a strange illness takes away her ability to feel magic?
- Arvid is just a farmer’s boy when a strange creature tells him a secret that he must protect with his life. What wouldn’t he do in exchange for healing his dying mother?
- Enja is the only one who sees the strange lights in the forest. She has to choose between staying with her ill-tempered step-mother and risking everything to find out what’s in the woods.
- Reya has been suffering from sleeplessness which is the only plausible reason she got the herbs mixed up when making the love potion
MORE IDEAS: Fantasy writing prompts – Romantasy writing prompts
Conflict ides for romance
Romance novels can’t be all rainbows and butterflies – a love story is all the more satisfying when our two lovers have faced the danger of being separated. We want the angst and torment of being in love, too. Any good romance novel also has problems that aren’t related to the romance arc and that’s how you distinguish your story from others like it.
- When Padme falls in love with her childhood friend, she has to come to terms with the fact that their families will never accept their relationship unless she gives up her career as a dancer and he becomes a vegetarian.
- Mike swore he wouldn’t even look at girls until he graduates from med school. What he didn’t expect was to fall in love with a guy who volunteers at the hospital.
- Pedro and Isabel meet at a costume party and they’re convinced they’re soulmates. But how will they get on in real life when Isabel works at Victoria’s Secret and Pedro is in a death metal band?
- Diana is convinced the new teacher’s aide is the laziest person on earth. Will she change her mind when they’re both assigned to chaperone the school trip to Paris?
- Joy and Thomas were supposed to be nothing but a casual fling during the pandemic. So why does Joy keep thinking about him while planning her wedding with Nathan?
- A romantic moment between Nadya and Tori goes wrong when the cat knocks over a glass of water, making Nadya yell at the creature and reveal she isn’t a cat person after all
- Wanda has always had a crush on Dan – will she tell the committee he cheated at the Master Archer championships?
- He is a perfumer and she gets migraines – they could never spend time together
MORE IDEAS: Romantic writing prompts – Cute writing prompts about relationships – Steamy writing prompts – Extra spicy writing prompts
Conflict ideas for science fiction
Science fiction is characterised by technology and the future of humankind, and often in involves space travel as well. You can really use the genre to explore what it means to be human or just to speculate how we’ll all be living a few decades into the future. Here are some conflict ideas you could use for your scifi story.
- There’s no such thing as free lunch, or as Chip is about to find out, free oxygen.
- Neri is determined to find out whether birds really used to exist or not, but the CEO of CocaShell is going to do everything he can to stop her mission – even if it has to get personal.
- There are twelve of you living in the community and two babies on the way, but there’s only enough food growing for eleven – you need to choose who leaves the community to find something else in the wastelands.
- Vee is trying to find her biological parents but all the clues lead to the biology lab that was closed because of dangerous emissions.
- Ferocity lives between digital footprints, but when she comes across dangerous, classified information, she’s forced to join the regular world even if normal people don’t speak in binary code and she frequently gets in trouble with her manners.
- Everyone knows the tracking implants are for your own safety, and Dek swears he didn’t try to gouge it out on purpose.
- January Webweaver is supposed to prove we shouldn’t be afraid of using 21st century technology but an upcoming solarstorm is in danger of interruting her entire presentation
MORE IDEAS: Dystopian and science fiction writing prompts
Find out exactly what to write a story about
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Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.
