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As I work on the neverending final chapter of what's mine is yours, more and more often I come back to the idea that I am generating for myself a uniying framework around conceptualizing, complicating, and portraying moments of confict between characters. My entrypoint to fandom was primarily via hurt/comfort. I was a young teen and accidentally stumbled onto ff.net, and the soapy drama of someone being or feeling deeply hurt and subsequently experiencing the exact kind of care they need appealed to me greatly.
I have posited before that the core draw of hurt/comfort is the promise of perfect safety. In a lot of h/c fic, there is almost an element of mind reading. What do you need? How can I give it to you even if you're ashamed to ask for it? And can the fact that you've been broken down "enough" by either physical or emotional pain allow me to give it to you when you might otherwise turn it away?
In this way, h/c can be a surprisingly conflictless genre. What conflict exists often exists in service of total apology by the end of the story. The older I've gotten the more critical I've become of stories where someone, either intentionally or unintentionally, utilizes their own pain as an excuse for any and all bad behavior: "I hurt more than you, so I'm owed remorse because [my trauma response is outside of my control / I'm not emotionally stable enough to reckon with the ways I can cause harm myself / you didn't intuit my needs quickly enough so you deserved to take everything I dished out / etc]." This isn't really conflict. It's sanitizing and somewhat dehumanizing. Accountability takes a backseat to comfort. The victim gets to be perfect, and then the story gets to end.
I say all of this as someone who is still a huge h/c fan and loves the genre and what it can offer around vulnerability and getting to the root of something. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to really complete the cycle of healing something. That's all true! Also sometimes my blorbo needs to get sick and have someone give them soup, and to believe they've done nothing wrong now or ever amen.
But this fannish upbringing did not help me write conflict.
My understanding of all of this has changed slowly over time. This current WIP has pushed me harder than any other story in terms of conflict without easy answers. I put some guys in an impossible situation and tried to honor their individual perspectives. No one is really all the way right or all the way wrong, or even most of the way in either direction. Someone gets hurt more, yes, but does that make them a victim? I think a younger version of me would have structured this much more as a hurt/comfort fic, but adult me ended up having a different take.
I worried before posting chapter one (and the subsequent chapters too) that the comment section would turn into a courtroom: who is the poor baby and who is the predator? I've been really delighted actually to see so many different takes, many of which go all in on acknowledging that everyone here is hurting. That is literally the point. It's all about pain. It's all about what we do to each other. All I've done is make it literal.
When I think about writing conflict I am thinking about the ways I have hurt the people I love, and the ways they have hurt me. I am thinking about the people in this world who hate me, and what might be driving that hate, and the fact that I'll never be able to change it, and the fact that I don't have to. I am thinking about getting it wrong when you're young and don't know any better, and then looking back and holding that messy young self with all the compassion you can muster.
I am thinking about:
The challenge for me as a writer is to leave it unsettled. Stop fiddling, stop making it better so quickly, stop making your characters say exactly what they mean and especially stop letting them hear what the other person is saying without their own filters and biases in the way. Let them fight, be angry, verbally spar, retreat and cry. Let them hate one another. I don't necessarily struggle when it comes to bringing things back around. I'm fundamentally an optimist, and I'm pretty bad at holding grudges — my characters will come with me into that space if I let them, and what the story so often needs is for me to hold off as long as I can before letting them clear the air.
I may come back to this topic at some point, either to talk about revising conflict or to discuss specific craft strategies to evoke some of those difficult emotions without letting them overwhelm the story or veer into soap opera land, but for now I think this is where I'll leave it! I hope you are all doing well and that if you're writing you let them fight a little. <3
I have posited before that the core draw of hurt/comfort is the promise of perfect safety. In a lot of h/c fic, there is almost an element of mind reading. What do you need? How can I give it to you even if you're ashamed to ask for it? And can the fact that you've been broken down "enough" by either physical or emotional pain allow me to give it to you when you might otherwise turn it away?
In this way, h/c can be a surprisingly conflictless genre. What conflict exists often exists in service of total apology by the end of the story. The older I've gotten the more critical I've become of stories where someone, either intentionally or unintentionally, utilizes their own pain as an excuse for any and all bad behavior: "I hurt more than you, so I'm owed remorse because [my trauma response is outside of my control / I'm not emotionally stable enough to reckon with the ways I can cause harm myself / you didn't intuit my needs quickly enough so you deserved to take everything I dished out / etc]." This isn't really conflict. It's sanitizing and somewhat dehumanizing. Accountability takes a backseat to comfort. The victim gets to be perfect, and then the story gets to end.
I say all of this as someone who is still a huge h/c fan and loves the genre and what it can offer around vulnerability and getting to the root of something. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to really complete the cycle of healing something. That's all true! Also sometimes my blorbo needs to get sick and have someone give them soup, and to believe they've done nothing wrong now or ever amen.
But this fannish upbringing did not help me write conflict.
My understanding of all of this has changed slowly over time. This current WIP has pushed me harder than any other story in terms of conflict without easy answers. I put some guys in an impossible situation and tried to honor their individual perspectives. No one is really all the way right or all the way wrong, or even most of the way in either direction. Someone gets hurt more, yes, but does that make them a victim? I think a younger version of me would have structured this much more as a hurt/comfort fic, but adult me ended up having a different take.
I worried before posting chapter one (and the subsequent chapters too) that the comment section would turn into a courtroom: who is the poor baby and who is the predator? I've been really delighted actually to see so many different takes, many of which go all in on acknowledging that everyone here is hurting. That is literally the point. It's all about pain. It's all about what we do to each other. All I've done is make it literal.
When I think about writing conflict I am thinking about the ways I have hurt the people I love, and the ways they have hurt me. I am thinking about the people in this world who hate me, and what might be driving that hate, and the fact that I'll never be able to change it, and the fact that I don't have to. I am thinking about getting it wrong when you're young and don't know any better, and then looking back and holding that messy young self with all the compassion you can muster.
I am thinking about:
- core immutable personality traits and their healed and unhealed forms
- saying the thing you didn't mean and trying a dozen different ways to take it back
- microexpressions and posture
- how a story changes with every telling
- fighting as a release of tension
- the thin line between courage and impulsiveness
- and hurting someone just because you're angry and you want to
The challenge for me as a writer is to leave it unsettled. Stop fiddling, stop making it better so quickly, stop making your characters say exactly what they mean and especially stop letting them hear what the other person is saying without their own filters and biases in the way. Let them fight, be angry, verbally spar, retreat and cry. Let them hate one another. I don't necessarily struggle when it comes to bringing things back around. I'm fundamentally an optimist, and I'm pretty bad at holding grudges — my characters will come with me into that space if I let them, and what the story so often needs is for me to hold off as long as I can before letting them clear the air.
I may come back to this topic at some point, either to talk about revising conflict or to discuss specific craft strategies to evoke some of those difficult emotions without letting them overwhelm the story or veer into soap opera land, but for now I think this is where I'll leave it! I hope you are all doing well and that if you're writing you let them fight a little. <3
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