Without conflict there would be no songs sung in times of trouble, no paintings finished in moments of despair, and no stories told on fearful nights. Without conflict, there would be no art. Without change, nothing would grow-- no one would grow. Because conflict and change are a package deal, a tight-knit pair that always come hand in hand, and with one, the other will follow. We are born, we live, and then we die. Pretty boring if there was never any conflict, and extremely agonising if we never changed. Humans simply weren’t meant to stay on one plane and pretend everything is peaceful and everything is great. Humans were meant for problems, and humans were meant for alterations-- without them, we wouldn’t be living.
You see, conflict is what makes a story. It’s what fuels the fire to motivate, and what keeps that flame burning long after the task is complete. Conflict is what gives you the chance to get back on the horse, and ride even better. Without it, we may never know where our limits lie, and just how how far our borders can be stretched before they break. And that break, that bending point that ends with a snap, isn’t a curse on humanity...it’s a blessing. It lets us know that we hit a wall and ran into something we cannot face, then it leaves us to pick up the pieces and try again. Conflict tells us what we cannot do, then allows us get up and do something about it-- it allows us to change.
Stephen King has had first-hand experience with this concept of conflict, and the resulting changes. After all, fiction is based on conflict, on the idea of a problem and how characters react to it, and King is a master fiction-writer. As he states in On Writing, King’s novels are situational, centered around one idea or one question ( King 164). ‘What would happen...?’, ‘What if...?’, and ‘How would...?’ are all starters to the basis of many of the stories Stephen King has told. He is a situational writer, choosing to focus on one main key point of action rather than a complex plot or a character. And, because his writing focuses on this action, it falls under the old rule of thumb for writing: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. The climax is where conflict comes into play.
It is the culmination of all the tension within the story coming to a head, and it is where the characters either break or become stronger. The single peak of a book, of a story, hinges on conflict, and the result is change. Without one, there cannot be the other, and, without both, there is nothing to read.
Interestingly enough, one of King’s most famous novels, Carrie, was born of conflict and changed his life forever, despite that fact that he wasn’t so fond of the character or story itself (King 76). In the book, Carrie White, a high school girl, is the subject of bullying and teasing and, after one particularly horrific scene, she develops telekinetic powers and takes revenge on her tormentors. The, unfortunately, common conflict of bullying, morphed Carrie into a veritable monster, and changed not only her mindset, but her entire mental capacity as well (King 75). Now, while this is a fascinating, if not disturbing, story that emphasises the importance of conflict and change, it is not the main point of reference for which I was aiming.
At this time in his life, Stephen King wasn’t doing so well financially. Sure, he worked as a high school teacher, and sure, he took up yet another blue collar job in the evenings and in the summer, but even with his wife working as well, life wasn’t so easy. After hearing stories of teenage girl’s cruel capabilities, he began work on Carrie with a clear conflict in mind, though Tabitha, his wife, had to help him through the details (King 77). However, he didn’t enjoy the story so much and, once it was done, he sent it off to a few companies and shoved it away in the back of his mind (King 82-83).
After a few more months, I believe, of hard work, little pay, a too small house, and a broken down car, King got a call. Carrie, the story that had been written, inched towards Doubleday publication, and laid to rest, was being sold to Signet books for four hundred thousand dollars-- two hundred of that was his (King 86).
Like a never ending circle, with a wicked sense of humour, King’s life, and story, was one giant ring of conflict after change after conflict. He had received rejection letters as a young man when he began writing-- conflict-- and he stuck them by his desk and used them as inspiration-- change (King 41).. He worked two jobs to feebly support a family, and wrote when he could-- conflict-- his two jobs gave him the ideas he needed to write a selling book-- change (King 75; 83-84). Carrie, a book centered around conflict and the resulting change, solved his and his wife’s monetary issues, and started King off on the path of becoming one of the most successful authors of his generation.
Throughout his life, like the ever-alternating spike of a heartbeat monitor, conflict was followed by a personal change and, often times, another book. And around and around the cycle continued, until June of 1999, when, arguably, the biggest conflict of his life occurred (King 249). Stephen King, while out for a walk, was hit by a truck and almost killed. His injuries were extensive and, even a year later, the aftermath of the crash still affected him. Just 48 hours prior to the incident, King had been struggling to write the book that I, unaware of the weight of its content, chose to read this summer (King 265). Through time and space, back almost exactly fourteen years, one of my favourite authors had been writing, and failing at writing, the exact book I held in my hands.
The conflict at that time, as it was two days afterwards, and two months after that, was not the broken limbs and fractured hip-- it was the inability to create. For King’s entire life, writing is what has pulled him through the toughest times, and, without it, he believes that he couldn’t survive. Of course he has his wife, whom he loves very much, and, of course, he has his children, but, when you get down to the thick of it, writing is what has sustained him. The ever rising and falling waves of conflict and change, in both his stories and his life, spurred him on to create and, to King and I both, creation is the essence of survival.
After the crash, his determination grew and grew, until his wife set up a desk for him in the back room of their stuffy Maine house, and he wrote (King 267). At first for only forty minutes at a time, and then longer, and longer, and longer. By the final pages of On Writing, King states that sitting down is still difficult for him, and, sometimes the writing is slow, and, other times, it doesn’t come at all (King 269). Yet, he keeps trying. Because the conflict of not being able to create was changed by a near-death experience, and, as a result, his spark was renewed.
It doesn’t matter whether it his Stephen King’s life, his stories, or his writing style being discussed-- all three pertain to the same simple fact. It is necessary for conflict and change to exist, hand-in-hand, because, without either, humans could not survive. Oh, sure, we would physically survive and, to be honest, we’d probably be a lot safer, but, mentally, we would wither. We need the heartbeat rhythm of life to contain problems, so we can grow, and so we can create.
Humans, Stephen King, Carrie White, and you and I alike, create to survive. King writes stories based off of his own personal conflicts which hinge on the characters own problems. Carrie caused--created-- chaos after the horror of tormentation became too much for her to handle. And you and I, whether we are students or scientists or artists or textile workers, have that seed of creation inside of us somewhere. All we need is a conflict, preferably not a eighteen-wheeler or a monster dog, to spark the change, and help that seed to grow. As King so fondly details in the last lines of this novel, “Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.
Drink and be ?lled up.”-- conflicts and change included (King 270).