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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/28286
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/28286
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I recently asked [this question](https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/28043/10394), about inner conflict. Mark Baker supplied an answer to that question which redefined how I saw inner conflict, and as a result, the whole process of making a novel. Because this way of thinking is still new to me, there are some parts of it which I don't have figured out yet. One of those parts is this question.

Mark Baker explained that the novel revolves around the inner conflict: a choice between two options. The climax is when the choice is made. This makes sense to me. As long as you have a single novel.

What if you are writing a series of novels though? There is only so much back-and-forth you can show between the two options - it's going to get repetitive fairly quickly. If the inner conflict is the main conflict of the novel, this poses a problem; the last thing you want is a repetitive and boring main conflict.

**How do you handle this problem?**

It's obvious to me that one of two things has to happen. 1) The inner conflict miraculously stays original every novel. I can't see this working short of introducing new inner conflicts every novel, which won't work if every one of them is central to your character. A character can't have that many centers.

2) You work with an external conflict (which _can_ change throughout and between the novels), and somehow make it as meaningful as the inner conflict. The actual inner conflict likely becomes a subplot.

Obviously one of these two things has to happen. How they can happen, I know not. Hence the question.

Original score: 3