Reading, 'Riting, and Ramblings

Most of the craft advice offered by writers, including me, is 100% unverified opinion. We don't do in-depth analyses of bestselling works across genres to determine what makes a protagonist "likeable" vs. "unlikeable." We don't compare books with differing story structures against the frequencies of certain keywords in Amazon reviews to pinpoint what makes a book "boring" vs. "unputdownable." We just speculate what readers' responses will be to our writing based on our own reading experiences. Half-listening to beta reader feedback is about as scientific as we get.

Writing is an "art," not an exact science, so most of the time our off-the-cuff theorizing is okay. However, because we base our opinions on gut feelings and personal tastes, it is very easy to confound how readers actually behave with how we wish they did.

1. Protagonists don't have to be likeable. They just have to be interesting.

Earlier this year, a literary catfight broke out when Publishers Weekly asked a certain author whether she would like to be friends with her novel's protagonist, a rage-filled wannabe artist turned creepy stalker. The author snapped, "For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? If you're reading to find friends, you're in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities."

The academic elite can debate the place of likeability in evaluations of literary merit all they like, but the vast majority of flesh-and-blood readers must like the main character to enjoy a book. They don't read to "find life"—they live life every day, and it's terribly disappointing. They read to find a version of life that isn't life, to experience emotional highs and lows that mundane reality can't offer. To do this, they must identify with the protagonist to a certain degree.

What makes an imaginary character likeable isn't necessarily what makes a real person likeable. In real life, other people are other people. In a story, other people are us. We want our real-life friends to be pleasant and obliging, to cause little trouble, to be conveniently available when we want them but never pushy when we don't. In other words, we like our friends to be supporting characters. Protagonists are, obviously, not supporting characters. Rather, they're vessels for ourselves.

Take Bella Swan, the heroine of the Twilight series. Bella would make a lousy friend. She's sarcastic and antisocial. She's always moping around, obsessing over her boyfriend. But teenage girls love her as a protagonist. Though they wouldn't want to hang out with her, they'd love to be her—getting rescued and fussed over by a pretty, powerful man. They wish they could be snarky and mopey, and never lift a finger to make themselves attractive to others, and handsome boys would fight to the death for the privilege of dating them anyway.

This makes Bella a "likeable" character in YA. What makes protagonists "likeable" in other genres varies. Hard-boiled detectives and international spies have sharp wits and masculine vices (drinking, smoking, womanizing/man-eating, bloodlust for violence, etc.). They're likeable because mystery/thriller readers like to pretend they're equally witty bad-asses who could triumph over evil, given the chance. Romance heroines come in flavors of uptight proper lady, fiery-tempered tomboy, shy and pure-hearted maiden, etc., because modern women like to fancy they are one and all of those things. Children's and middle-grade protagonists tend to have the originality and definition of a stick figure. Young readers don't identify with heroes and heroines too different from themselves, so the safest route is to present a blank slate with shallow attributes only (e.g., age, hair/eye color, and favorite hobbies).

Readers can get annoyed by side characters, villains, and even romantic interests, but they can't stand to get annoyed by the main character. If they don't like the main character from page one, they will most likely not buy the book. If they do buy the book, they will most likely lose steam before they finish it. Then they'll complain about it. For all the certain author's indignation, the highlighted comments on Amazon for the book in question are not complimentary.

• "I didn't believe in the main character."
• "The problem with [this book] for me was that I just didn't like any of the characters—particularly not the protagonist/narrator."
• "It did not get my interest from the beginning...I thought she'd be more interesting as a character, but she wasn't."

(Note: Review snippets modified for grammar.)

This author can wish that readers want unforgiving portraits of humanity as hard as she pleases. In reality, she has a lot of readers who bravely persevered through a few unpleasant chapters, then put her book down for good.

2. Unrealistic stories are shallow. Good writing captures life.

(a) See above re: Why People Read.

(b) People read fiction through a certain mental filter. They will accept the outrageous, but will criticize the mundane. For example, people will easily accept the fact that Edward Cullen is a 105-year-old vampire with the emotional maturity of a 17-year-old boy. But they will take exception to his "unrealistic" heroism and physical perfection. People say, "The character of Edward Cullen is unrealistic because he's super strong, super rich, and super pretty." They don't say, "The character of Edward Cullen is unrealistic because he's a freaking vampire."

This morning I started to read John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. I'm only 15% of the way in, so I won't pass any judgements on the whole, but from the first three chapters I can say this: For an oft-cited example of "realistic fiction" for teens, it is totally, unabashedly unrealistic.

The 16-year-old heroine has an intelligence, humility, and philosophical maturity rarely (if ever) seen in adults. Her love interest is impossibly gorgeous and impossibly witty. They speak as if they've rehearsed the dialogue in advance, with lengthy soliloquies on the inevitable oblivion of humanity and "existentially fraught free throws." I don't even recognize some of the vocabulary coming out of these teenagers' mouths, and I got a perfectly respectable score on the verbal section of the GRE.

But few people would balk at this. Unrealistically witty dialogue is an accepted staple of fiction. It's necessary, even. Have you ever transcribed a natural conversation? It's painful. People don't speak in complete sentences. They speak in nonlinear fragments and run-ons. They have annoying ticks like inserting "um" and "or whatever" every few words, and they say very simple things in absurdly convoluted and oblique ways. Creating a "realistic" yet coherent conversation in print is impossible.

When reviewers complain that a story element is "unrealistic," their real complaint is usually something else. When they say a handsome billionaire falling for a mousy secretary is "unrealistic," they're really saying that the characters were underdeveloped and their romance was flat and contrived. When they say the pat deus ex machina at the end was "unrealistic," they're really saying that it felt cheap. (In general, when people complain about the ending, the problem isn't the ending. The problem is the middle leading up to it.)

Stories aren't meant to be 100% realistic. They're meant to be compact dilutions of reality packaged and polished for entertainment and allegory. People don't go into a work of fiction expecting the Historic Annals of Jane Doe. They expect Jane Doe's story to follow a standard structure that doesn't exist in real life. Depriving readers of the familiar structure because it's "unrealistic" can be cruel and, frankly, pretentious.

In Minding Frankie, Lisa, a beautiful and level-headed graphic designer, is in an unstable relationship with manipulative playboy Antoine. She meets the main character, Noel, in a business course at the local college. They become fast friends. When she runs away from her parents' toxic home, she ends up on Noel's doorstep. They move in together and, with Noel's infant daughter Frankie, form a cute patchwork family. Lisa realizes that she would be much happier with a gentle man like Noel than with a cad like Antoine. Frankie learns to talk and calls Lisa "Mama." We all know where this is headed.

Then on page 243, the evil social worker Moira has her sudden change of heart and decides to stop trying to take Frankie away.

In a twisted way, she would prefer it if these two awkward, lonely people—Lisa and Noel—should find happiness and beat their demons through this child. If it were Hollywood, they would also find great happiness in each other.

Because Binchy wanted to avoid "Hollywood" cliches, she kept their relationship strictly platonic. She threw in some random woman at the last minute whom Noel, with no build-up whatsoever, starts to date. Lisa stays with her immature leech of a boyfriend until she snaps out of it and leaves town for a new job. The End.

Yes, this is how real people act. But this book made me angry. I felt like Binchy was yanking my chain, deliberately invoking tropes so she could subvert them to make a point. If you use a rom-com setup, you have to deliver a rom-com resolution. If you don't intend to have a Happily Ever After, don't mislead readers with the fairy tale structure in the first place.

3. Good stories sell books. Just write good stories and the money will follow.

This is one of those widespread platitudes that looks like an obvious truth on the surface, but it's utter nonsense if you think about it.

The logic: If you write good stories, people will like your work. If they like your work, they will buy more of it and recommend it to friends. Your fame and popularity will grow slowly but surely in proportion to the quality of your work.

The flaw: Nobody knows if a story is good until after they've read it.

In order for people to read your stories, they have to (a) find them and (b) buy them. Whether they find them depends on a lot of factors, but mostly on two: genre and blind luck. If you're in a tiny niche genre, you have better chances of people stumbling upon your work. If you're in a popular one, competing for readers' attention and time with tens of thousands of bestsellers and midlisters, it's up to blind luck.

Part of the "quality = sales" logic is that people will recommend good books to their friends. But people who recommend books are a tiny subset of readers. People who rate and review them are an even tinier fringe subset of readers who, more often than not, have ulterior motives for offering a detailed critique of a book for the benefit of unspecified strangers. And then, these few habitual recommenders and reviewers will only praise an extraordinary few titles to an extraordinary few friends with the same tastes and interests. By definition, your book is more likely to be ordinary than extraordinary, so the only ones who will spread the title by word of mouth are your parents and people who owe you favors.

But say that, despite the odds, someone hears about your book or spots it in the Kindle store.

1. The cover art must intrigue them enough to make them click on the thumbnail.
2. The description must appeal to them enough to make them open the preview.
3. The first page must hook them strongly enough to make them want to read the rest.
4. The customer and editorial reviews must be impressive and flawless enough to make them feel comfortable spending their money.

The process for evaluating a physical book is the same, but with added hurdles because the price is higher, there are no customer reviews handy for reassurance, and it has to be the sort of book people aren't embarrassed to be seen purchasing.

In short, the two things that sell books are hype and marketing. Story quality does not. There is no mystical pink glow emanating from high-quality books that tells potential customers, "This story is good!" If there were, the makeup of the top 100 books on Amazon would be very different.

This is the world of the 19th century...as depicted in 21st-century romance novels. It has very little in common with the 19th century as it actually was. Novels rarely have much to do with the world as it actually is, but in most genres you can inject a strain of realism without much harm. Historical romances are unique. The conventions of novels set in the Regency and Victorian eras are so deeply ingrained in their authors' and audiences' collective imagination that the fictional version has, effectively, usurped history.

Your novel takes place in an adorable hamlet some 16 miles from London, circa 1860. Your heroine is a genteel corset-sporting lady. Her dear father recently passed away from unspecified illness, leaving her all alone in the cold, cruel world. She needs to manage the estate, but no solicitor will work with a mere slip of a woman like her. Since her brother Fitzwilliam, the rightful heir, disappeared at sea ten years ago, they refuse to communicate with anyone but the nearest male relative, her Evil Uncle Joe, who arranges to marry her off to his philandering son. Her friends and relatives encourage the match, reminding her that, at the ripe age of four-and-twenty, she is already an old maid.

But being a spunky lass, she takes matters into her own hands. She stumbles upon a handsome amnesiac nobleman, whom she mistakes for a common wandering minstrel, and convinces him to pretend to be her long lost brother. As Fitzwilliam, he can seize the estate from Evil Uncle Joe and quietly pass it back to her. Of course it's all just for show, until they fall desperately in love, etc. etc.*

* The twist: he actually is her brother Fitzwilliam, but he only regains his memories after they've given in to their feelings in a steamy night of passion. Then after many chapters of tragedy and tears it turns out she's actually the daughter of their father's deceased pirate friend, so they're not blood-related and it's okay.

How exciting. And how utterly nonsensical.

(a) Unmarried women of age in the Victorian era, and before, were perfectly capable of owning and managing their own properties. Solicitors worked with them all the time. Public sentiment was strongly in favor of giving married women these rights as well, and women of means usually had protections in their marriage settlements to make sure they were functionally independent. By 1870 women owned the properties they acquired after marriage, and by 1882 they retained the properties they had owned before marriage too. That's a lot of "mere slips" in need of a good lawyer.

(b) Arranged marriages fell out of fashion in Britain long before the 19th century. Guardians steered their children towards young people they approved of, and they could kick a fuss over lovers they didn't like, but they had as little say in who their adult daughters and sons married as parents do today.

(c) The average age of first marriage for well-to-do Victorian women was twenty-five. For men, it was twenty-seven to twenty-eight. Men and women in the middle classes were often well over thirty, because they waited until they were financially established to start a family. Your twenty-four-year-old heroine may have younger, prettier rivals, but she is nowhere close to an old maid. (Anne, the heroine of Jane Austen's Persuasion, published in 1817, was twenty-seven and still had her pick of admirers.)

But while history buffs would rage at this plot, historical romance buffs will love it. Write your novel more realistically, and the two will swap. If your heroine behaves as a real woman in 1860 would have, working with a lawyer to manage her estate and laughing at her uncle for trying to dictate her marriage, your critique partners and beta readers will chastise you for not doing your research.

"She's acting like a feminist in 2013!" they'll sneer. "Women in the Victorian era didn't have any power over their lives. Don't you know that?"

Actually, though women were treated pretty badly in the 1800s, and many prominent men were racist, sexist SOBs, everyday life as a female wasn't nearly as bad as romance novels would have you believe. In Pride and Prejudice, the ridiculous Mr. Collins reads to the Bennets nightly from Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women, written in 1766. These sermons, by the early 1800s, were well-known and well-mocked for being absurdly sexist and old fashioned. They contain gems like:

• "Be ever cautious in displaying your good sense. It will be thought you assume superiority over the rest of the company."
• "The men will complain of your reserve. They will assure you that a franker behaviour would make you more amiable. But, trust me, they are not sincere...It would make you less amiable as women; an important distinction which many of your sex are unaware of."
• "I am astonished at the folly of many women who are still reproaching their husbands for leaving them alone...Had you behaved to them with more respectful observance—studying their humours, overlooking their mistakes, submitting to their opinions in matters indifferent, giving soft answers to hasty words, complaining as little as possible—your house might be the abode of domestic bliss."

In Austen's novel, published in 1813, Mr. Collins' choice is a gag. The youngest Bennets are appalled, while the oldest are amused, by their cousin's obtuse, stuffy advice. The Regency era was certainly sexist compared to today, but they didn't expect women to be silent, empty-headed dolls.

But in the historical romance version of 19th century England/America, every Regency heroine is frowned upon for having a spine and working vocal chords. Every Victorian heroine is ostracized for spending her time with books instead of embroidery. And every hero is astounded to meet a woman with a vocabulary larger than "Yes, my Lord."

In contrast to the novels written today about the 19th century, the bestselling novels written in the nineteenth century feature heroines who assert themselves all the time.

Elinor Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility, 1811) and Anne Elliot (Persuasion, 1817) both manage their household finances to ensure their families live within their means. Emma Woodhouse (Emma, 1815) has dominated her hypochondriac father and mousy governess since childhood and declares she will never marry (though she reneges on that one). Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice, 1813) is witty and outspoken and turns down two wealthy suitors because she can't stand to marry a man she doesn't respect.

The opinionated and passionate Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre, 1847) rebels against her worldly family and wicked schoolmaster; makes a living for herself as a teacher; and refuses first her possessive employer, then her uppity cousin. She only marries Mr. Rochester after she inherits 20 thousand pounds and he's been permanently disabled, upending the balance of power between them.

Margaret Hale (North and South, 1855) finds her family a new apartment when they move to Milton-Northern. She participates in heated discussions of politics with the local men; makes friends with the cotton mill workers and their families; and takes a rock to the head from an angry mob when she tries to dissuade them from attacking their employer, Mr. Thornton, who had brought in Irish laborers to break their strike. Like Jane Eyre, she only marries Mr. Thornton after his mill goes bankrupt and she rescues it with her substantial inheritance.

Strong-willed Jo March (Little Women, 1868-1869) pursues a literary career in New York City and abhors the very thought of marriage until she meets a gentle professor who can be her equal partner in life.

Then there are the antagonists, who are even more assertive: the dour Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the crazed and caged Mrs. Rochester, the intimidating businesswoman Mrs. Thornton.

Of course there are many other books featuring demure, blushing maidens, and female novelists were critically slammed for not being "masculine" enough, but the above titles were so popular in their time that you have to wonder if people really disapproved of strong, independent women.

The 19th century rollicked with technological advances and aggressive social and legal reform, but from the way it's portrayed today, you'd think we were stuck in 1750 until World War II. Victorian romance heroines have never heard of the rational dress or women's suffrage movements, which started to murmur to life around 1850. They don't pursue higher education, though women's colleges were established as early as the 1830s. They certainly don't have jobs, though by the last quarter of the century most did. Lower class girls worked in factories, agriculture, domestic service, and even mines. Middle class women worked as teachers, secretaries, telephone/telegraph operators, nurses, librarians, and more. Upper class women were expected to spend their time doing charity work, at least—not just whirling around at balls and making out with handsome rogues.

But in the historical romance version of the 19th century, women's lives revolve entirely around men. And here we have a bizarre contradiction. The heroines frequently complain that their lives shouldn't revolve around men. They have lively characters that defy convention. They rebel in adorable spunky ways, fleeing hand-wringing parents and dull suitors to enjoy wild horse rides through the countryside.

Yet their fictional lives do revolve around men—particularly sex with men and marriage with men—though in reality they didn't have to.

The supposed free nature of most historical romance heroines is a facade. A sham. Because in the real 19th century, a woman could be free if she wanted to be. She might feel social pressure to marry, she might face a hard life if she didn't, but it was her choice. Ten percent of the adult population in the 1800s never married. Among working women, a full third of them remained single. The pay was lousy, especially in over-saturated occupations like teaching, but you could live reasonably well. The upper-class heroines in novels needn't worry about income anyway; they could happily live out their days on well-funded estates. But though most of them loudly detest the institution of marriage, or the men proposing it, they always get married in the end anyway.

Historical romances are misnamed. They have nothing to do with history, but are really a subgenre of fantasy. They're fairy tales for adults. They don't take place in, say, 1860 London, but rather, "Long, long ago, in a land far, far away." But more than most other fantasy genres, this fairy tale world has rigid rules that authors must follow, or break at their peril.

• Women are spinsters after twenty.
• Women can't live well unless they marry well.
• All women must be repressed and silent. There are dire consequences for any with the bad breeding to use their brains.

Why do we insist that the Regency/Victorian eras were like this? Because these rules are the only way to keep the sham going. Romance readers want thrilling stories of virile princes sweeping swooning princesses off their feet. But in this day and age, you're not supposed to write that. You're not supposed to write about submissive women becoming the willing prey of dominating men; the feminists get huffy. But if your setting is historical, you have a whole arsenal of excuses. The mere fact that she's in the 19th century—or the imaginary 19th century established by the genre—releases your heroine from any obligations to support herself or make her own decisions.

"Yes, she's weak and useless, but that's only because women were forced to be weak and useless. Women weren't allowed to control their own lives. That's the way things were!"

If you write seemingly intelligent, independent heroines into Regency romances, you get to have your cake and eat it too. You can champion women's lib and decry the outdated institution of marriage, but then invoke marriage as the happy solution to all of life's problems. You can pretend to support gender equality, but then secretly sigh for the days when all women had to do was wear low-cut gowns and men would pamper them for life.

The problem is, those days never existed.

The problem isn't necessarily that authors don't care about conflict. Most of the time they write stories they believe have plenty of conflict, but they're mistaken. The story has no emotional impact. It treads water without going anywhere. Readers become bored, annoyed, and disappointed. And the writers are astounded. Their story is exciting! Their story is profound! It's jam-packed with action and emotional highs and lows. How could anyone say it's lame?

What these authors have written is a story with a faux conflict. It is not a real conflict that pulls readers in and makes them bond with the characters. Here are two ways to recognize a faux story conflict before you publish a story to an angry avalanche of one-star reviews.

Your conflict is as stable as a sand castle at high tide.

A real story conflict will remain a conflict until your protagonists take action to resolve it. It is a faux conflict if it dissolves when they decide it isn't a conflict anymore.

I had an e-book sitting in my files from a few years ago that I felt guilty for never reading. Two weeks ago I cracked it open. The story was a romance between a hot doctor and his hot ex-wife, who suddenly landed in his emergency room after ten years. They valiantly fight their mutual attraction. They say, "No, we can't, we're exes! Our marriage was miserable and we'll end up miserable again!"

They have sex a few times anyway. And then the hot doctor says, "Eh, is it really all that bad to date an ex?" And the hot ex-wife says, "No, I guess it isn't." And they live happily ever after.

I recently borrowed another e-book from my new local library. The story was about an alcoholic slacker who suddenly becomes a single father when his ex-girlfriend passes away. He cleans himself up, joins AA, and enrolls in college classes to give his daughter a better future. The main antagonist is an uptight social worker who's determined to take his child away. She hounds him relentlessly, snooping through his home and interrogating his friends and family, hell-bent on finding some justification to declare him unfit.

They have a Jean Valjean/Inspector Javert thing going on most of the way through. Then the social worker realizes she's being stubborn, forgets about him, and moves on to other things. He gets his degree and lives with his little girl happily ever after.

This is akin to an action movie ending when Goldfinger calls up James Bond to say, "I've been doing some personal reflection, and I think this whole arch-villain thing isn't for me. Mary and I have decided to retire to Wisconsin and run a B&B. Take care!"

If your conflict depends on antagonists, they'd better antagonize to the end. If you keep your lovers apart through various contrivances, you must continue to contrive until they overcome the barriers and run into each other's arms. If there is no resolution necessary beyond, "Never mind, we're being silly," it is a faux conflict.

Your characters fail the Reasonable Person test.

In many areas of American law, you'll find the standard of the Reasonable Person applied to determine whether a person's actions were understandable in a given situation. Say Writer A self-publishes a book featuring minor characters from a series she had sold to Publisher B. Publisher B sues, saying clause C of her contract grants them first rights to all books in the series. Writer A says she didn't violate the contract, because she understood clause C to apply only to books in the series, and not to spin-offs. In this case, arbitrators will consider whether a Reasonable Person would have interpreted clause C the same way Writer A did, or if a Reasonable Person would have known that she was violating the contract by self-publishing the spin-off.

The Reasonable Person is not the typical person of average intelligence. The Reasonable Person is an ideal. It's a fictional standard for how adult members of society "should" act in similar circumstances. The question is not, "Would the average woman with an IQ of 110 and two kids bother to read and untangle clause C?" The question is whether a fully competent adult with a basic understanding of the American language and legal system, who had read clause C backwards and forwards before signing the dotted line, would still have interpreted it to mean spin-offs are fair game.

Disclaimer: I have had no legal training whatsoever. Don't take my interpretation at face value.

Readers apply a diluted Reasonable Person test to fictional characters all the time, whether they know it or not. They don't sympathize with realistic characters who behave stupidly, spinelessly, and unpredictably, but with "reasonable" people who behave logically given their background and current circumstances. Some readers go beyond the "reasonable" requirement and expect your protagonist to be omniscient...but that's a topic for another time.

With regards to plotting, a story conflict is not a conflict if a reasonable person in your hero/heroine's place would not consider it a conflict.

For example, your heroine is a sexy modern woman. Your hero is an upstanding modern man. At the climax of their star-crossed romance, your heroine walks in on the hero hugging his sobbing ex. So she throws a tantrum and sulks for weeks, refusing to answer his calls.

Would a person behave this way in real life? Definitely. We've all seen the Facebook dramas.

Would you, the reader, behave this way? Maybe, though you wouldn't like to admit it.

But would a reasonable person behave this way? No.

It doesn't matter if this heroine's behavior is realistic. It doesn't matter if you've long established that she's a drama queen, so her behavior is perfectly consistent with her character. Readers will find this woman annoying. A reasonable woman over the age of 18 would not assume that her upstanding boyfriend is cheating because of a single hug. Especially a wet, phlegmy hug. This is a faux conflict.

If your conflict depends on a character behaving unreasonably, she must have perfectly reasonable grounds to be unreasonable. Say your heroine and hero have a history. They dated in college, but the hero, while drunk, stupidly gave in to the amorous advances of her sultry roommate, Myrtle. Your heroine was traumatized when she walked in on them. So her trust in him, when they meet years later, is tenuous. He proves that he's matured into an upstanding, faithful modern man. She relents. And then BAM, she arrives at his apartment unannounced and sees him embracing Myrtle. Again. Even the most open-minded woman would get the wrong idea. Cutting him out of her life is still extreme, but it's more understandable. Now readers are more likely to sympathize.

***

It can be difficult to come up with a genuine story conflict in this day and age, especially if you want all of your characters to be relateable. Historical novels are still popular because the unforgiving societies of the 18th through 20th centuries offer oodles of opportunities for conflict: families object to differences in social class, tyrannical governments oppress people right and left, girls are ruined by scandalous whispers, and men have sexist prejudices and buckets of repressed emotions for your sweet, lively heroine to shake up. If your heroine is poor, unattractive, connection-less, or even partially non-white, you can pick from a smorgasbord of abuses for her to suffer on every page.

But today, alas, people have it pretty good. Women can be self-sufficient, so few parents care how much their daughter's mate makes or who his relatives are. And even if they do, so what? You might sympathize with a heroine in 1813 who meekly accepts her family's rejection of her lover, but in 2013? She won't die alone in the streets because Daddy cut her out of his will.

Still, there are many solid sources of internal and external conflict available, if you look for them.