Building Conflict: A Story Development Workbook for Screenwriters, Novelists, and Storytellers

A Practical Conflict Development Workbook Created by Kenneth Van Camp, MFA in Professional Screenwriting

Great stories don't simply give characters goals. They make those goals difficult to achieve.

Conflict drives stories forward, tests characters, creates uncertainty, and gives audiences a reason to care about what happens next.

But knowing that your story needs conflict isn't the same as knowing how to develop it.

Building Conflict is a focused, 28-page story development workbook that helps screenwriters, novelists, and storytellers identify weaknesses, explore possibilities, and strengthen the conflicts driving their stories.

Rather than offering vague advice to "raise the stakes" or "add more conflict," the workbook provides practical questions and exercises you can apply directly to your own writing project.

What You'll Explore

• Internal and external conflict: Identify the forces working against your characters, including their own fears, beliefs, and competing desires.
• Opposing character goals: Develop conflicts that arise when characters want incompatible things.
• Character relationships: Explore how relationships create tension and complications.
• Types of story conflict: Examine different sources of opposition and how they affect your narrative.
• Complications and reversals: Discover ways to make achieving a goal increasingly difficult.
• Barriers and blocked paths: Identify obstacles that force characters to make new decisions.
• Weaknesses in your story: Find places where your protagonist may be achieving goals too easily.
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Bring Your Story's Conflicts Together

The workbook concludes with a Complete Conflict Development Worksheet, allowing you to consolidate your strongest ideas into a practical development plan.

A Final Conflict Check helps you evaluate whether the story contains enough meaningful opposition, complications, and uncertainty to sustain audience interest.

Developed by an MFA-Trained Screenwriter

Created by Kenneth Van Camp, MFA in Professional Screenwriting, Building Conflict applies principles of dramatic storytelling to a practical workbook format.

Whether you're developing a feature-length screenplay, novel, television story, or another narrative project, the exercises are designed to help you make more deliberate creative decisions.

Strengthen the Story You're Writing

You don't need another article telling you that conflict matters.

You need a practical way to examine the conflict in your own story and determine where it can be strengthened.

Give your characters something worth fighting for. Then make them fight for it.



Building Conflict — $19

28-page digital PDF workbook. Instant download.