JentooEnglish Literature

AP® English Literature and Composition · Structure (STR) — Skill Category 3, Prose Fiction

3.F Internal and External Conflict (STR-1.N)

Conflict is any sustained opposing pressure on a character, not a fight or an argument. External conflict comes from outside the character; internal conflict is two incompatible things the character wants or believes at once, and most strong scenes run both together.

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External conflict is a force outside the character pushing back: a bank that refuses to release money, a company that holds a lease, a storm, a rival. Internal conflict is inside the character: two values, loyalties, or beliefs that cannot both be honored. A character can want to protect a brother and also believe that protecting him means withholding his own money. That is not indecision for its own sake. It is two real commitments pulling in opposite directions, and the character cannot satisfy both. This is why internal conflict grips harder than an external obstacle alone: a dragon can be outrun or defeated, but a character cannot simply defeat half of herself and move on.

Conflict does not require raised voices. Two brothers can divide a house calmly, agree on every point out loud, and still be in conflict if each is privately committed to something the other's plan destroys. The quarrel would just be the conflict becoming visible, not the conflict itself. Reading for conflict means reading for what is structurally opposed under the surface, whether or not anyone says it.

Because internal and external conflict so often run in the same passage, the reading work is separating which pressure is which, and watching what happens when one is removed. If a character keeps resisting after the outside obstacle is gone, the external conflict was a cover for an internal one all along, and the earlier scenes have to be reread with that in mind. This move connects directly to how endings reshape a whole plot: resolution of the external plot can expose that the real tension, the one the pacing was actually building toward, was internal the entire time.

Key terms

Internal conflict
Opposing values, desires, or beliefs within one character that cannot both be satisfied.
External conflict
An opposing force outside the character, such as another person, an institution, or nature.
Obstacle
The specific outside thing blocking a character, which may turn out to hide a deeper internal conflict.
Resolution
The point where a conflict is settled or revealed, which can expose which kind of conflict was really driving the plot.

Watch it explained

  1. How it worksHow does an internal conflict between two values differ from an outside force blocking a character?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't conflict in a narrative the same thing as an argument or a fistfight?
  3. Worked exampleShow me the internal and the external conflict pulling on Hamlet inside the same scene.
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to an external conflict that turns out to have been an internal one the whole time?

Check yourself

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Rhoda has 5 hours before the train. The bank will not release her brother's money without a signature she believes is forged, and the manager has said so plainly. She also believes that her brother, who is 22, will spend it in a month and be worse off than before. She sits in the outer office and does not join the queue. Which description of the conflict is most accurate?

End of topic.

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