As writing exercises in our DreamCaster writing discussion group, we often use “templates” to build our narratives. To be clear, this does not mean we have a patented method to create great stories.

These are simply exercises. Much as a martial arts student practices kata, or patterns, meant to train for balance, muscle memory, and combinations of moves, so our templates build skills which can later be used more creatively in the competition to create great stories.

Here’s a template we’re working with in the first half of the year, one we call the “Conflict Template.” If you’d like to try your own hand at it, this article will walk you through the steps. If you’d like to work with our group, support us on Patreon at the DreamCaster level and above.

We’ll call this pattern the “Conflict Template,” because the try/fail obstacle pattern we used in The Plotting Game will be replaced with interpersonal conflicts.

To step things up a bit, we’ll also complicate the “Character” element. Where before we focused on a Character Weakness, this time you can pick from one of the following central Character Motivations: jealousy, duty, debt, a terrible secret, a vulnerability, guilt, hatred, or love.

And for a final trick, let’s start the story “In Medias Res,” but we’ll do it in a very specific way. So, make sure to read the instructions carefully. You’re going to write the opening last.  

To help make the parts of the pattern clear, an example plot of a basic conflict story is included. 

Recommended Word Count: 5,000

1. Flash Forward – In Medias Res (written last.)
2. Orientation
3. Character (show -don’t tell- the motivation)
4. Threshold Event / Inciting Incident (Combine these or move quickly from one to the next.)
5. Conflict 1
6. Conflict 2
7. Conflict 3/Climax (Combine these or move quickly from one to the next.)
8. Denouement

For this template, avoid using a “false climax.” That’s where the story seems to climax, but you’re holding back, and real threat happens just as the characters begin to relax. It’s often used in movies; it’s another lesson, and I think it’s overused.

If you’re like most writers, you’ll be tempted to find a story you’ve been working on and convince yourself that you can make it fit the template. This is almost always a mistake, especially because it’s not the purpose of the exercise.

As we did in The Plotting Game, start with nothing and follow the pattern to build the result. Logic it out. One of the things you’re learning is that your ideas are not precious; they are just ideas. And everything you write is not an award contender; it’s just exercise. If you exercise long enough and hard enough, you may create something special after all.

Orientation: Introduce Who, What, When, Where, and Why

Important Note: The orientation IS NOT backstory. Imagine a curtain being drawn back on a stage. What do you see? What setting and characters are you introduced to? Keep this section of the story short – a few paragraphs at most.

Example Template Info on Orientation:

Story opens on a small oar and sail powered ship approaching an uncharted island at dawn. The flower art on the sail, nine white petals surrounding a blood red pistil tell us these are not Vikings. A powerful leader strides the deck with a young girl, his daughter, beside him. A woman in a flowing white dress with a red club shaped icon front and back stands near the prow.

Cali, the 12-year-old daughter, is accompanying her warlord father on a mission. They are to find ghost campion, a rare flower found on some islands in the Forgiving Sea that bestows mystical powers on certain women, most commonly the ability to heal.

Character: Show us who the protagonist of the story is and their motivation.

Cali is the protagonist, and the story is told from her viewpoint. She is in conflict with the woman in the white dress. Her name is Si Meara and she is Cali’s mentor. Cali is not a good student. Her father pays a great deal of attention to Si Meara and is highly protective of her. He is impatient and stern with Cali. This leads to jealousy, and a growing, childish hatred of Si Meara.

Threshold Event / Inciting Incident: Something “out of the ordinary” from the orientation scene must happen and it must directly involve the protagonist, drawing them in to the forward movement of the story.

For a moment, Cali’s father turns his attention to a small cage with sick animal in it, possibly a rabbit. He scolds Cali for failing to heal it —her lesson for the day— and he picks up the cage and tosses it overboard (showing ruthless temper). 

Cali makes excuses, blaming Si Meara for giving her only dried ghost campion to work with. Her father tells her to do something useful and help the first mate lower the sails. As she does so, something gets stuck. Knowing she will be blamed no matter, she takes the opportunity to turn the spar so that the boat will hit the docks and knock Si Meara into the water.

The first mate, who likes Cali, takes the blame. In a rage, the father nearly drowns him, but in the end Cali’s father calms himself and orders Si Meara to heal the first mate. It will take several healing sessions.

Conflict One:  Cali cheats to succeed at a test from Si Meara.

After making camp, Si Meara prepares a test for Cali. The women who can use ghost campion to heal are all sensitive synesthetes, and Si Meara explains how the scent of ghost campion on the wind will lead them to it. The scent of a blossoming plant, Si Meara explains, will manifest to Cali as a sound, vision, taste, or even a feeling, and that will be her means of activating the healing properties of ghost campion for the rest of her life.

Si Meara has carefully cultivated a plant and by use of magic and special nutrients has encouraged it to bloom this evening. It is close by, and Cali is to find it. Now we learn Cali often fakes her abilities in order please her father. 

By reading “tells” in Si Meara’s behavior, Cali manages to find the ghost campion, but it is not quite blooming yet and has not released its pollen. Si Meara is suspicious, as she did not pick up the scent herself prior to Cali’s feat. She says something, fueling Cali’s negative feelings toward her.

Conflict Two: Cali fails at her first important task and Si Meara exposes her failure.

They go in search of wild ghost campion. Cali is assigned to lead a party, including her father, up a jungle-covered mountain slow. Si Meara takes a party, including the first mate, in another direction. 

Cali finds nothing. Si Meara returns with some ghost campion, showing Cali up.  Worse, she confesses to Cali’s father that she sensed a great blossoming in the direction she sent Cali. It was a setup to allow Cali an easy success.  Instead, it exposed her total lack of talent for the job. 

That evening, Cali’s father mercilessly interrogates her about whether she has allowed a man to “touch” her. That would have destroyed her gift. First mate steps in and vouches for her honor; he has closely watched and protected her and always will.

This double humiliation stokes Cali’s jealousy of and hatred for Si Meara, setting up Conflict Three and the Climax.

Conflict Three: Cali fails a second opportunity and falsely accuses Si Meara.

The final conflict is a last test for Cali. If she fails, her father has threatened to send her to the brothels. The first mate tries to calm the father and it works to a degree.

Cali hits upon a plan when she sees Si Meara checking on first mate’s health and they share a laugh together. The next day they once more go in search of ghost campion, all together. Si Meara is close at hand, watching Cali. This allows Cali to watch her for “tells.” 

Cali finds a rich patch of ghost campion and in the midst of all the blossoms, she fakes a seizure of some sort. When she awakes and her father is near, she tells him that her gift is one of visions instead of healing. 

He asks what she has seen. Cali demurs, but upon his later insistence she tells a false tale of Si Meara expressing her love for the first mate and how she approached him when they were on the other side of the island together.

Climax: The story reaches the height of its action and emotion. It’s win or lose; live or die. Cali learns her nature and the price of her father’s attention.

Father goes into a rage and —in a move Cali does not anticipate— horrifies her by beheading the first mate. Then he has his men create a funeral pyre for the body and ties Si Meara to it, burning her and all her gear and possessions. Cali pleads for her father to show mercy. He does not listen, even when she confesses outright.

When Si Meara is immolated and her possessions burn, some of what is burned is her store of dried ghost campion. When Cali breathes it in, to her surprise, her natural gifts are activated. Instead of smelling it, she is overcome by light and pounding music and the taste of death. Not only that, but she is also one of those rarest women for whom ghost campion provides true visions.

Her terrifying vision of is of a future empire where her father rules with absolute tyranny and the heads of his enemies are fixed to pikes which line the thoroughfares from city to city. The only threat, the only fate he must avoid is to be at sea this very night. There is a kraken lurking in the waters near the island and by morning it will be gone. If they leave now, it will find them and take men from the boat for its supper, one of them her father.

Denouement: This is the falling action and conclusion of the story, in which Cali makes a decision. 

Cali notices that her father is now highly attentive to her; highly pleased, promising to keep her always by his side to hear her visions. He unpacks a fine white dress that has been sewn for her. She has gotten what she wanted at the beginning, but the true nature of her accomplishment is vivid in her imagination.

She tells her father of his coming victories and how his enemies will fall by the thousands and thousands. There is only one thing he must do to assure it all, she tells him. They must leave the island before dark and sail for the setting sun.

Opening: Take a scene from Conflict Three or the Climax and place it at the beginning of the manuscript.

Start with Cali finding the big patch of ghost campion and wading into it, feeling the proud eyes her father and the first mate upon her, her body trembling as she begins to fake her seizure. She has it figured out. She can be a soothsayer, and even Si Meara will never dare to question her. 

I want to emphasize that this story grew organically by following the template, starting with a random scene. (I have a small Viking ship model on my desk that I bought in Iceland. I imagined who might be on its deck and where they might be going.)

Step by step, I followed the template and answered the questions, considered the possibilities necessary to evolve the story according to the template. What seems like a structured story got that way by doing the exercise, not by trying to wrench a pre-existing tale into the pattern.

In the end, the story described above seems a bit too dark to be a DreamForge story, but it is a coherent story about personal desires, growth, and coming to understand evil, ending with a decision that may save others. 

When I go to write this story, it may chafe at staying in harness. That’s OK, as long as it doesn’t pull me over a cliff in its efforts to get free. Creation is often a struggle between discipline and imagination. 

The course imagination cannot set alone needs direction. The spark that discipline cannot find is inspiration.