What Are the 7 Types of Conflict in a Story?
Quick answer: The 7 types of conflict in a story: character vs character, self, nature, society, technology, the supernatural and fate, each explained with named examples.
The seven types of conflict usually taught are: character versus character, character versus self, character versus nature, character versus society, character versus technology, character versus the supernatural, and character versus fate. The first two are the ancient core, external and internal opposition; the rest name the different shapes the outside world's resistance can take. Every plot ever written runs on one or more of them.
The list is a sorting tool rather than a rulebook. Its practical value is diagnostic: naming your story's dominant conflict type tells you where the pressure must come from, and which scenes are obligatory.
The seven, each with a story you can check
The classic examples make the categories concrete rather than abstract, so here is the full set with named cases.
Why the categories blur, and why that is fine
Press on any strong story and the categories bleed into each other, which is a feature of good fiction rather than a failure of the list. Frankenstein is character versus technology on the surface, but Victor's real war is with his own ambition, character versus self. The Old Man and the Sea looks like man against nature, yet Santiago respects the fish; his true opponent is the idea of defeat. In The Turn of the Screw, the ambiguity about whether the conflict is supernatural or internal is the entire point.
So use the types as lenses, not boxes. Asking which conflict is really driving this story, beneath the visible one, is one of the most productive questions in revision, because the hidden conflict is usually where the theme lives.
Choosing and layering conflicts in your own work
Short fiction usually carries one external conflict plus one internal one; novels can braid three or four. The reliable pattern is to let the external conflict force the internal one to crisis: the storm (nature) strands the brothers together until the old grievance (character versus character) and the guilt beneath it (versus self) must surface. External events supply momentum; internal stakes supply meaning.
Match the conflict type to the scale of your form as well. A 1,500-word story cannot stage a war against society, but it can stage one clerk refusing one form, which is the same conflict at short-story resolution. Choosing the smallest arena that still contains the whole conflict is most of short fiction craft.
Using the list to diagnose a stalled draft
The taxonomy earns its keep in revision, when a story has gone inert and you cannot say why. Name the conflict type you intended, then check whether the scenes actually stage it. A draft meant to be character versus society often turns out to contain no society on the page, just the protagonist grumbling in rooms; the diagnosis tells you the missing scene is the one where the system pushes back through a person with a face.
The list also exposes accidental substitutions. Writers planning versus self frequently deliver versus circumstance instead, a string of bad luck rather than an inner struggle, because bad luck is easier to write than a divided heart. If your climax could be resolved by better weather or a returned phone call, the conflict drifted somewhere along the way. Rename what is actually on the page, then either commit to it or restore the original.
Common mistakes and misconceptions
The commonest error is single-layer conflict: pure external struggle with no interior consequence, which reads as an action report, or pure interior brooding with no external pressure, which reads as a diary. The second error is arbitrary opposition, conflict bolted on because stories need conflict, unconnected to what the protagonist fears or wants; readers register it as noise.
Two misconceptions: that more types means more sophistication (a story juggling five conflicts usually resolves none), and that the list is exhaustive or official (some versions count four types, some eight; character versus machine and versus God appear in older lists). The taxonomy serves the story, never the reverse.
What poets can take from this
- Name your story's dominant conflict type, then find the hidden one beneath it.
- Pair one external conflict with one internal one; let the first force the second.
- Shrink big conflict types to the smallest arena that still contains them.
- Check that the opposition connects to what your protagonist specifically fears.
- Resolve the internal conflict at the climax; external tidiness matters less.
Try it yourself
Roll a die twice to pick two of the seven conflict types. Write a 600-word story that runs both at once, using the external one to force the internal one to a decision by the final paragraph.
Questions
What are the two main categories of conflict?
Internal and external. Internal conflict happens within a character, desire against duty, fear against need. External conflict opposes the character to outside forces: people, nature, systems, machines, spirits or destiny. The seven types are subdivisions of the external, plus the internal.
Can a story have more than one type of conflict?
Almost all good ones do. The usual architecture is one external conflict driving events and one internal conflict carrying meaning, resolved together at the climax. Problems start only when multiple conflicts compete instead of connecting.
What type of conflict is a mystery story?
Usually character versus character, detective against culprit, even when the culprit is offstage for most of the tale. Many mysteries add character versus self, the detective's own past or code, and noir often shades toward character versus society.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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