Conflict is essential to writing a good story. It injects tension into every scene, ensuring your readers are invested in what’s happening. Without it, your narrative devolves into a series of events without meaning or substance.
But how do you use that tension to add weight to your story? How do you make the conflict relevant to your main character and their goals? And how do you ultimately weave it all together with your story’s thematic truth? I’ll explore five ways to build thematic conflict in this article, using Rocky III as a case study.
Five Ways To Build Thematic Conflict:
- Internal + External Conflict
- Goals + Opposition
- Motives + Action
- Raise The Stakes
- Build To A Resolution
The Importance of Thematic Conflict
Thousands of stories utilize dramatic conflict, but the ones that stay with us often center around our struggle to persevere and overcome in the face of tremendous odds. Knowing how to weave that dramatic conflict with theme leads to meaningful narratives that engage and resonate with us.
For me, no character or franchise better embodies thematic conflict than Rocky. While all the films succeed in building the kind of tension that keeps us engaged as an audience, Rocky III highlights Rocky’s struggles in and outside the ring.
Internal + External Conflict
Understanding internal and external conflict is essential for crafting engaging and complex stories. Simply put, your protagonist’s inner conflict is characterized by their struggle between the lie they believe and the truth they must embrace. In contrast, the external conflict centers around their desire to attain a specific goal in the face of opposition.
After beating Apollo Creed in a thrilling rematch, Rocky III opens with Rocky defending his heavyweight title against a string of contenders. He falls prey to his own success and is all set to retire when a brawler named Clubber Lang emerges from obscurity to challenge the legitimacy of his perfect record while demanding his own shot at the title.
This scene not only sets up the external conflict by identifying Clubber as the main antagonistic force, but it also masterfully integrates Rocky’s inner conflict by exposing the lies that Rocky has come to believe about himself in light of his lucrative success.
Goals + Opposition
Set a clear goal for your protagonist, then set everything else up in opposition to them attaining that goal. The joy of any story stems from watching them confront those challenges and how they are ultimately transformed by them.
Humiliated by Clubber’s audacious challenge, Rocky sets his sights on proving that he still has what it takes to fight one last time. But in an unexpected twist, Mickey, his beloved manager, immediately opposes that goal.
This scene is a good example of how opposition drives choice and how choice results in consequences. Rocky convinces Mickey to train him one last time, but he soon discovers it’s a choice that will come with a terrible price.
Motives + Action
Don’t allow your story to devolve into a series of events without thematic cohesion. Remember that story is a cycle of cause and effect, where your internal conflict drives motive, and motive drives external action.
Rocky’s choice to go up against Clubber results in disaster. In one fell swoop, he loses his edge, his title, and Mickey. He experiences grief and self-loathing, angered by his inability to live up to the image of the champion he thought he was. And it’s in his darkest hour that Apollo Creed shows up to provide some new motivation.
Rocky’s desire to reclaim what he’s lost becomes the new motive that drives him to act. And although he accepts Apollo’s offer to train him, he’s still plagued by the lie that makes him question if he really has what it takes to win.
Raise The Stakes
Don’t let your story lose steam. Instead, keep stirring the conflict throughout your story by relentlessly raising the stakes at key moments that directly influence your protagonist’s gradual acceptance of your story’s thematic truth.
Although Rocky chooses to train with Apollo, his progress and performance suffer because of his inner demons, which cause him to lose faith in himself. For the first time in his life, Rocky is confronted by an enemy greater than any opponent he’s ever faced.
Rocky’s exchange with Adrian raises the stakes because it goes beyond the obvious challenges of the external conflict. It delves into the character’s inner fears, deconstructing everything he’s come to believe about himself. All so he can embrace the thematic truth: That fear can never take anything away or define who we are as long as we’re willing to confront it.
Build To A Resolution
Give your story a satisfying payoff by ensuring that the multiple narrative threads created by your internal and external conflict come together at the climax, where the story’s thematic truth is ultimately revealed and expressed.
Rocky confronts his fear and regains his edge as he pours everything into his training. We’ve been with him through the lows and the highs. And we’re rewarded with the payoff as he enters the ring with Clubber for the second time.
All the loose ends are tied up here. Rocky’s internal fight with fear is resolved as he goes toe to toe with Clubber, causing his opponent to exhaust all his energy. And with one final punch, Rocky regains his confidence and wins back the heavyweight title.
Summing It Up
To build thematic conflict, you need to use theme to weave your internal and external conflict together throughout your entire narrative. This will not only hook your readers but also guarantee they will stay invested from beginning to end.
I hope this article provided you with some insightful tips on how to build thematic conflict into your story. Keep striving to make your story the best it can be. And above all, keep writing!
Until next time,
