AP® English Literature and Composition · Structure (STR) — Skill Category 3, Prose Fiction
3.F Multiple Conflicts That Intersect (STR-1.O, STR-1.P)
When two conflicts cross so that one choice or one act must answer both, the pressure on the main conflict multiplies, because every move now carries two costs instead of one.
A story usually runs more than one conflict at once: a private one inside a family or a person, and a public one out in the town, the court, the committee. Most of the time these run on separate tracks and never touch. Multiple conflicts intersect when a single decision or a single act has to settle both at the same time. That is the mechanism. The character cannot solve the public problem without also paying a private price, or cannot protect someone private without taking a public stand. The two pressures do not add, they multiply, because now there is no clean way to act on principle alone. Every public reason carries a private cost, and every private need forces a public exposure.
To Kill a Mockingbird runs this exactly. The town conflict is the trial of Tom Robinson and the racism it exposes. The family conflict is Atticus raising Scout and Jem and trying to keep them decent in a town turning ugly around them. These intersect constantly: when Atticus defends Tom, his children are taunted and endangered at school and on the street, so his public stand is also a private risk to his own family. He cannot choose one conflict without the other moving.
Pay attention to what happens when one conflict resolves before the other. If a secondary conflict clears away, it does not relieve the primary one; it strips away what was distracting from it, leaving the main conflict standing alone and harder to avoid. This matters for reading an ending: a story often closes one line of tension on purpose, so the remaining one lands with full weight and nothing left to blame it on.
Key terms
- Intersecting conflicts
- Two separate lines of tension, often private and public, that cross so one act must answer both.
- Primary conflict
- The main tension driving the story, which the plot ultimately turns on resolving.
- Secondary conflict
- A smaller or supporting tension that often complicates, delays, or masks the primary conflict.
- Pressure multiplication
- The effect where crossing conflicts raise stakes by combining costs rather than simply adding separate problems.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow do two conflicts crossing each other raise the pressure on the primary conflict?
- Worked exampleShow me how the family conflict and the town's conflict intersect in To Kill a Mockingbird.
- Going furtherWhat happens when a secondary conflict resolves and the primary conflict is left standing?
Check yourself
End of topic.