Where's the Conflict?

Here's Andrew helping me puzzle out a plot point. He's concentrating harder than I am, but it obviously helped. I passed 40K in SoD last week. I celebrated by buying myself new pants that 1) aren't maternity pants and 2) actually flatter my current figure, but 3) aren't my original size, but the next one up. While I'm still irked that I can't fit back into my regular pants, I'm VERY happy to have put away all of my maternity clothes now and actually feel something other than frumpy in work clothes. Progress.

Anyway, I found myself asking about conflict the other day as I prepared to keep chugging on SoD. The chapter was just a bear anyway as I had to fully transition into the middle of the book (never my fave), write toward a later scene without really knowing what's going on in this one, describe a new subset of Velorin society, keep some tension going about a subplot, and do all of this in Raynal's POV, which is my hardest POV to write. I forced and stumbled my way through getting everyone to an oasis, introducing the problem at the oasis, setting up camp, and dealing with the problem a bit. I was set to write a scene about a lively campfire dinner and dancing in order to introduce the cultural subset and reveal some backstory of another character. But it just all seemed so flat. Mainly because I had no idea what the conflict was. Rayn has come to some sort of peace with the new insanity in his life, the nomads he's with are nice people, the problem I've introduced has been dealt with for the moment (it'll bite him in the posterior later), and everything's pretty peachy-keen at the moment.

As Tam so elequently noted, that just won't cut it.

So I tried to figure out where there could be tension. I thought there might be something in the backstory I needed to trot out, but it wasn't there. At all. I toyed with the idea of skipping the chapter and writing the scenes beyond it, but I need the information that I know I can beat out of my mind to make the next scenes easier to write. Finally, I figured there might be some conflict if I had Elaynor (Rayn's traveling companion) decide to blather on about The Plan to Rayn while he's trying to listen to a campfire melody that may contain new information about a history he's trying to write--and he doesn't understand the singer's dialect unless he concentrates. Not the craziest conflict, but it was the best I could do. I set out to write it, pulling each word from my fingers, wincing at just about everything, knowing that my next major rewrite was going to start right at that scene.

Then Rayn surprised me. He dropped a clue about himself. As he was taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the campfire celebration, he remarked about how wonderful the laughter sounded and how it had been so long since he had heard any. I had to stop and look at those words for a while after they fell out of my fingertips. I tried to pester Rayn with questions, but he didn't want to talk after that. I kept writing, hoping he would drop a few more morsels. And he did. I now know a ton about his outlook on life and what he wants, why he's hunting for history and what he's avoiding with that hunt. I know his internal conflict. Can't really use it in the scene much right now, but damn is it going to make his POV scenes easier to write. It'll make the eventual rewrite of this putrifyingly bad chapter easier.

And following the meager conflict I was able to determine would be in this scene, the natural progression led to a very tense moment, rife with conflict that led naturally into the next chapter. Nice when it all comes together. Helps to know which questions to ask. Helps when your characters actually deign to respond.