Conflict

Mark Batterson post:  No Conflict = No Story

Wrapping four days in New York City.

Enjoyed Carnegie Deli twice, Central Park, and a walk through Time Square is like a shot of adrenaline.  Fun to hang out with my friends, Bob Powers and Joel Clark.

I was here to attend The Story Seminar. Robert McKee is a little too curmudgeonly for my taste, but he is brilliant.  We spent ten hours a day examining the art and science of story.  Fascinating stuff. I think it’ll help me as a writer and preacher, but the primary take away is applying the principles of story to my own life story.

One of the main points is this simple fact: no conflict = no story.  We recognize that epic movies involve epic conflict, but we want our lives to tell an amazing story with no conflict. Do you want your life to be an epic?  Then it necessitates epic conflict.  You’re going to have to take huge risks or make huge sacrifices.  There is no way around it. But those greater and greater conflicts force us to draw on greater and greater capacities.  And through the conflict, character is formed.

I believe that God is writing His-story, history with a hyphen in it, through our lives.  He’s given us a script called Scripture. He’s given us a teleprompter called the Holy Spirit.  And He wants our lives to be epic. But it will involve the very same elements of any great story: inciting incidents, evolving conflict, overwhelming antagonism, progressive complication.  There will be major ups and major downs.  You have to go to the limits and go to the depths.  Ultimately, every story is about the change in the character.  And change only happens through conflict–internal and external.  That conflict will make or break the character. If it’s handled correctly, it forces the character to draw on greater capacities–more willpower, more love, more sacrifice.  More conflict = More character.