How to Get Published

by Al Kalar

A good story requires conflict. Without it, you don’t have much to offer the reader. Perhaps a fictional travelogue can get by without conflict, but any good yarn is pretty boring without it.

I ran across a good checklist for conflict written by our old friend, Ben Bova. The list is his, the comments are mine. (more…)

The story…must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of good and evil within a single person. - Maxwell Anderson

by Al Philipson

by LuMaxArt

For a story to be interesting, there must be conflict. If your goal is to describe some utopian society filled with all sorts of technological wonders, you don’t have a story, just a boring travelogue.  How interesting would Beowulf have been without Grendel, his mother, and the dragon?

Ben Bova once described “a story” as “a narrative description of a character struggling to solve a problem.”

So, what do you need to do to provide the problem or “conflict”? (more…)