Conflict and Risk

I'm reading through Donald Maass's 'Writing the Breakout Novel' and a re-occurring theme throughout the book is conflict, and the need for lots of it in a great story. I've come to the realization that although I tend to put my characters into tough situations, and that they are, for the most part, in a state of conflict at some point in my stories, they (most often being some sort of weapon-wielding adventurer) are able to pretty much hack and slash their way through the situations that they're stuck in. It's a concept, a style perhaps, that I've developed by tending to read and emulate (hopefully mostly on a subconscious level) some of my favorite sword and sorcery, or pulp writers, like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, etc. The problem is (I think) that I've gotten good at atmosphere and a sense of place, but my characters don't hurt enough. Emotionally they don't risk much. It doesn't always need to be just life and limb alone (although I want that in there too); something more needs to be at stake.

So that's where I'm heading in my next project(s). A little more emotional risk to go along with the sword cleaving. Sounds fun.

“My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.”
― Robert E. Howard (That's Two-Gun Bob in the picture above)