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~ THE ROMANCE WRITER ~

"Territorial Conflict for Writers"
by Vanessa Grant

Every individual has the basic drive to create and maintain a safe place. As writers, we can use that basic drive to change a story spark into a plot, or to give meaningful conflict and energy to a sagging story.

When you walk into a room filled with strangers, one of the first things you do is establish territory. You find a chair you feel comfortable taking. You sit in the chair. You put your pen and notepad on the table, take your coat off and drape it over the back of the chair, then settle into position. You're feeling more comfortable now because you've established some control over territory. You make a comment to the person beside you - establishing allies along your border. 

The lecturer speaks for an hour, then there's a break. You walk to the back of the room and pour yourself a cup of coffee. You leave your coat on the chair and your notepad on the table as territory markers. You return and find someone in "your" chair. You don't own the chair, but you've carefully positioned your possessions as signals that this is your territory. Usually those signals are respected.

Someone is in your chair. If you were completely rational, you would shrug and move your coat and paper to the next chair, but you are genetically programmed to create a safe place by claiming and enforcing territory. It doesn't matter that losing custody of the lecture chair has nothing to do with your survival. To the primitive part of your mind, keeping territory secure means safety. Safety means survival. Your internal watchman has pushed a yellow alert button. You feel tension, adrenaline, the urge to fight or to flee. "Excuse me," you say, "but that's my chair." Or you pick up your possessions and retreat. 

Territory disputes are one of the most common forms of conflict in our society. A man shoots another in a dispute over a parking space. A woman shoots her son in a dispute over a messy room. These insane things have actually happened. My parking space. My house. My territory. My safety. We all have territory. Mental, physical, and emotional walls around us. Each of us has a subconscious watchman whose job is to warn of danger.

In developing characters, I search for areas of territorial conflict to germinate my story spark into a plot. When my characters feel threatened, they'll react in one of two ways: they'll fight back, or they'll run. Looking for a character's territorial boundaries, I begin with character self-concept. Our self-concept has associated territory that must be guarded to maintain the self-concept. If I define my character's self concept, I'll understand the psychological territory. If another character violates that territory, my story will have instant conflict.

A few years ago at a writers' brainstorming session, I shared an idea for a love story involving an Ecuadorian-Canadian archaeologist and a Canadian with a limp she managed to hide. As I explained my story to this group, I realized it lacked excitement. There was no conflict between the territories of hero and heroine. They had everything in common, but I doubt they'd fall in love. Someone suggested using a different heroine, and I asked myself what kind of heroine would fit my archaeologist hero. I understood Ricardo Swan's self concept. He prided himself in being rational and cool, the result of watching the mismatch between his rational father and his emotional Latin mother. His personal territory forbade him from becoming obsessed with anything. Even his love for archaeology was tempered by cool reason. Using the concept of territory, I realized Ricardo needed an antagonist to challenge his self concept. I decided Ricardo should fall uncomfortably in lust with a sensual, Latin woman, creating an internal struggle between his emotional desires and his self concept. I made the heroine a performer in conflict with her own nature. Onstage Maria was a sensual singer and dancer, but the boundaries of her territory as a sensual person were the boundaries of the stage itself. Offstage she was a woman willingly sequestered by her family. Her motivation for this denial of her own passionate nature was a prime motivating event. As a sheltered teenager, she was raped by a teacher she had a crush on. Now she won't allow eligible men to penetrate her territorial borders.

When I began Dance of Seduction, the strong internal conflict of both characters created external conflict almost the moment these two characters breached each other's territory, and the story almost wrote itself. In the end, the two characters re-drew their territorial boundaries to make new territory encompassing both.

Two people with incompatible territory will always experience conflict, whether they are father and daughter, coworkers, life partners, or members of a committee. For every character you create, there's another who will violate that character's territory.

Guidelines for developing territorial conflict: 

1. Develop your characters' self concepts and motivations. 

2. Describe the areas of territory that each prime character must patrol to maintain his or her self concept.

3. Determine the most feared dangers from your character's point of view. Normally any red-alert danger will be related to some prime motivating event in the character's past. 

4. Determine how this character has dealt with territorial invasions in the past. When the watchman pushes the alarm button, the character will normally make a fight-or-flight choice based on past behavior. 

5. Every protagonist needs an antagonist to provide a sense of danger/risk and to create meaningful conflict. In most love stories, the love partner is the antagonist, providing all the risks inherent in intimacy. The conflict between hero and antagonist, or between hero and heroine should have a focus. They need real differences, real problems. Ask yourself whether there is a natural conflict between territories of protagonist and antagonist. 

6. If your characters' territorial boundaries don't show an inherent conflict you may have trouble developing an interesting plot because of a lack of natural conflict. Look deeper. Look again. Or, as I had to do in The Dance of Seduction, recast your story. Get a different protagonist or antagonist.

7. Examine how the territorial habits of hero and antagonist or heroine will affect each other as their territories cross. This is the essence of your conflict and your plot. This is where problems develop for hero and heroine, where they stop being rational.

Copyright © 2001 Vanessa Grant

Vanessa Grant is the author of 28 romance novels, one adventure novel, and the award winning "Writing Romance" which can be previewed at http://www.vgrant.com/vgbooks.htm. Her books have been translated into 15 languages and she has over 10 million books in print. Her west coast North American settings are popular with readers world-wide. An ex-college instructor and a passionate storyteller, Vanessa teaches seminars both live and on-line (Courses) and has published an extensive collection of seminars for writers on audiotape. With three software developers in her family, Vanessa has also been involved in creating some wonderful software for writers, including the Dogwood Compendium of Names (Muse Names) - a desktop names database to help writers research character names quickly and easily. She's also a devotee of the mythological approach to writing and Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, which the StoryCraft Story-Development Software adopts.

Vanessa lives on the Gulf Islands on the West Coast of Canada with her husband and their assortment of pets, and divides her time among writing, lecturing, volunteer work, and family including her adult children and three grandchildren who live nearby.