NaNoWriMo Day 12: High Stakes

I have a lot of action scenes in my NaNo project this year. By action, I mean fight scenes, high stakes drama. I’m trying to balance them with reflective scenes where the characters are trying to figure out how what’s happening around them affects their mind and emotions. And, even more important, when the characters are engaged in physical action, how is that related to what’s going on inside their heads? Think: their internal conflict.

For example, two of my main characters grew up as war orphans, forced to fight in a rebellion back on their home planet. After being out of the war and away from the planet for several years, they find themselves back and fighting antagonists.

I’m being careful to reflect how they feel about these action scenes: regret; nostalgia; anger–because they find themselves back in the situations they escaped all those years ago.

So here’s a good video that discusses how internal conflict works with external conflict: