How much internal conflict do you reckon a YA book needs?

Stiger05

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 25, 2011
Messages
2,497
Reaction score
234
Location
Huntsville, AL
Katniss in The Hunger Games. She changes - she goes up a notch in badassery to survive the Games, for instance, but she doesn't agonise over this change.

She does though. Part of her internal conflict was whether or not to play to the cameras for sponsors. Does she play up the "relationship" with Peeta to get necessary survival stuffs or does she do things her way? That was a large part of it from the moment she got to the Capital--from shooting her arrow at Seneca Crane to eating the berries in the arena--she had to decide how much of herself she was going to be and how much she was going to be someone else for survival.

If you look at her evolution over the course of the series she changed from an it's all about me and taking care of my family attitude and all her anger against the Capital, to seeing the bigger picture and not letting the rebellion turn her into a monster (like Gale).

I still see that as internal conflict. Battling between the self she started out as and the self she was forced to become. Absent the external conflict she would have continued living the status quo.
 

n3onkn1ght

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 7, 2010
Messages
582
Reaction score
41
Location
The Island
The inner conflict is what makes a good YA book good.

Internal conflict should be the core of a story, no matter the genre. It's literally the difference between any of the ten thousand by-the-numbers, plot-driven airport thrillers with cardboard characters, and a haunting, morose work like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold that still retains its emotional impact even long after the end of the Cold War. Plots come and go according to whatever's happening in the world at the time, but internal conflict (which is really just humans acting human) is what makes a work stand the test of time.
 

Drachen Jager

Professor of applied misanthropy
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 13, 2010
Messages
17,171
Reaction score
2,284
Location
Vancouver
I agree. I recently did a huge re-write on my sub novel and one of the major changes was to add several layers of internal conflict. I think it made a huge difference. I guess I'll see when my agent puts it back out on sub in the next week or so.
 

Windcutter

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 10, 2011
Messages
2,181
Reaction score
135
I find that the most compelling works (YA or otherwise) are those in which the internal and external conflicts are intertwined. I.E., the MC *cannot* overcome the external conflict without confronting (and usually surmounting) the internal stuff holding him back from his goals.
This is the classic conflict structure, yes. Though it's also traditionally hard to do it in action/adventure stories. Because there are only so many types of internal conflict that would prevent the MC from fighting a cursed mummy in an ancient tomb or bringing down a master vampire who took their friend hostage if they took on the adventure in the first place.
 

breaking_burgundy

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 10, 2011
Messages
554
Reaction score
48
Location
in transit
What I hate seeing is victim characters--characters who've done nothing wrong, but the world seems to hate them and throw obstacle after obstacle in their direction. I want to see characters who are at least partially responsible for whatever problems they're facing.