Crisis vs. Conflict

The best description of Conflict vs. Crisis can be found here.

Summary: Good storytellers differentiate between a crisis (an emergency, such as a car crash or an illness) and conflict (a clash of wills, a difficult moral choice, or an internal mental struggle). Beginning authors often focus on the exciting crisis rather than the conflict that makes readers care about the characters enduring the crisis.

The conflict that makes a story worth reading (and re-reading) involves the reader in the humanity of the characters involved in the crisis.   The best explanation I’ve seen of the difference between crisis and conflict comes from a Star Trek fan magazine I read as a kid.  I’m almost sure that the author was David Gerrold.  I’m reconstructing most of it myself in order to make my point, but it went something like this: 

  1. The Enterprise encounters the slime monster.  It attacks the ship. (Crisis)  Kirk kills it by freezing it. (Resolution) 
  2. The Enterprise encounters the ice beast.  It attacks a peaceful planet. (Crisis)  Kirk kills it by melting it. (Resolution) 
  3. The Enterprise encounters the crystal demon.  It attacks a strategic Federation base.  The only way to stop it is to shatter it with sound waves — but doing so will deafen an entire city of the galaxy’s finest musicians.  Doing nothing would mean that the Romulans might occupy the planet, shatter the demon and deafen the city anyway.  Kirk has to decide what to do.  (Conflict!) 

The first two scenarios might be exciting to watch.  Imagine the screams of the slime monster, the howls of the ice beast, the tension on the bridge as the Enterprise closes in for the kill.  Sounds like fun, but it is only action, like a video game. The last scenario has the same potential for action, but in addition, it lends itself to introspection, to the exploration of values, to the examination of choices.  For example, we might see the tearful pleas of the city dwellers, the belligerent boasting of the Romulans, and an argument between Spock and McCoy.  We might even see the hero change in some way, too, as he tries to negotiate a moral path that takes into account what all parties have at stake.  This is true dramatic conflict.