What Is the Difference Between Internal and External Conflict?
Quick answer: Internal vs external conflict: one is a struggle inside the character, the other a struggle against the world. Definitions, examples and how to braid the two.
External conflict is a struggle between a character and something outside them: another person, nature, society, a machine, a deadline. Internal conflict is a struggle within the character: between duty and desire, fear and ambition, who they are and who they want to be. External conflict gives a story its events; internal conflict gives those events their meaning. A storm at sea is external. Whether the captain believes he deserves to survive it is internal.
The distinction matters because stories that run on only one kind tend to fail in predictable ways. All external conflict produces spectacle without weight, things happen to people we do not know. All internal conflict produces weight without spectacle, feelings circulate but nothing forces a decision. The craft is in braiding them, so the outer fight keeps forcing the inner one into the open.
The longer answer: pressure and fault line
Think of external conflict as pressure and internal conflict as the fault line the pressure finds. A rival, a war, an illness, a lawsuit: these are engines of event, and traditional taxonomies sort them into character versus character, versus nature, versus society, and versus fate or the supernatural. They supply deadlines and dangers, the things that make scenes possible.
Internal conflict is different in kind, not just location. It is a contradiction the character carries: I love my brother and I resent him; I want the job and I despise what it requires. The structural point is that internal conflict cannot be resolved by winning an external fight. Defeating the rival does not settle whether you needed to defeat him. That is why endings that resolve only the outer plot can feel hollow even when technically complete.
In practice the two feed each other in a loop. External events force internal choices; internal flaws generate new external trouble. When a scene feels inert, it is usually because the loop has stalled and one kind of conflict is running unaccompanied.
Examples where you can watch both
In Herman Melville's 'Bartleby, the Scrivener' (1853), the external conflict is almost comically small, an employee who prefers not to work, but it drives an enormous internal conflict in the narrator between charity, propriety and self-regard. The story is really about the lawyer's soul, staged as an office problem.
Reverse the proportions and you get adventure with an inner keel. In Jack London's 'To Build a Fire' (1908), the external conflict is total, a man against lethal cold, and the internal conflict is his arrogance, his refusal to respect advice. The cold kills his body; the pride is what put it there. Contemporary fiction works the same braid: a custody drama supplies courtrooms and lawyers outside, while inside a parent fights the suspicion that the other parent might be right.
How to braid them in your own story
Start with a one-line statement of each: outside, 'Ana must keep the family restaurant open through the inspection'; inside, 'Ana cannot admit she never wanted to inherit it'. Then design scenes where the external fight forces the internal contradiction into visible behaviour. The inspector's visit matters because of what it makes Ana do, lie to her mother, snap at the loyal cook, not because of the clipboard.
Give the internal conflict a decision scene of its own near the climax. The outer plot can be won or lost, but the inner question must be chosen. In a 2,000-word contest entry there is no room for two separate climaxes, so stage one action that answers both at once: the moment Ana stops the inspection herself is the moment she admits the truth. Writory's Short Story Contest rubric scores emotion and structure as separate strands, and this braid is how a single scene earns marks on both.
Common mistakes
The most frequent is decorative internal conflict: the character worries in monologue but the worry never alters an action, so it could be deleted without changing the plot. If the inner struggle costs nothing on the page, it is not yet conflict, it is mood.
Second is the mismatched resolution, where winning the external battle is presented as settling the internal one. The promotion arrives and apparently cures the self-loathing; readers feel the cheat even when they cannot name it. Third is scale snobbery in both directions. A quiet story does not become serious by ignoring events, and a thriller does not become deep by pausing for a paragraph of doubt every chapter. Braid, do not alternate.
What poets can take from this
- Write one sentence for the outer fight and one for the inner contradiction before drafting.
- Make every major external event force an internal choice with visible behavioural cost.
- Never let an external victory stand in for an internal decision.
- If a worry never changes an action, cut it or give it consequences.
- In short fiction, stage one climactic action that answers both conflicts at once.
Try it yourself
Write a scene in which a character must publicly defend a decision they privately believe was wrong. The external conflict is the argument they are winning; the internal conflict is the truth they are losing. Let one physical gesture betray the inner side.
Questions
Can a story have only internal conflict?
Almost never in a pure form, because internal conflict needs external situations to become visible. Even the most inward story stages its struggle through actions: a letter unsent, a door not knocked on. The outer world can be small, but it must exist.
What are the main types of external conflict?
The traditional list is character versus character, versus nature, versus society, versus technology, and versus fate or the supernatural. Most stories combine two or three, with one dominant.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the August contest and have your own poem read and scored.