Every story needs conflict. If it's a silly conflict, such as two cowboys bashing each other (and busting up the furniture in a honky-tonk bar) just because one is the good guy and one is the bad guy, then you will have a silly story. It doesn't matter how rich your prose is if the conflict doesn't matter.
An external conflict is one that pits your protagonist against someone or something that is going to hurt him or someone he loves. It might be an impersonal conflict -- he must survive a brutal storm, or get a job before he starves, or defeat the Klingons in battle. It might be an intensely personal conflict -- he must win the love of a woman, or kill a bad guy who's trying to kill him (for some plausible reason), or pass a geometry test to win the respect of his father. If you have that much of a conflict, you've got a story. But if you have only an external conflict, the story's likely to be rather "flat".
An internal conflict can be expressed as an equation. It's a pair of contrasting needs within the protagonist's heart, such as: duty vs. love, or cowardice vs. self-respect, or security vs. curiousity. This is the conflict that the protagonist must meet and resolve himself. No one else can do it for him. If your story presents an internal conflict and resolves it as honestly as the protagonist must do himself, it will be a stronger story. But a story that has only an internal conflict is likely to be "precious" or "over-literary". It lacks spice.
To build a really strong story, the protagonist must be facing an external conflict which hits him in exactly the worst possible place: the part of his soul that is already knotted up in an internal conflict. When the hero must conquer himself at the same time he conquers a problem outside himself, and solves both problems honestly, your story will be memorable and moving.
(By Charles Ott. Reference: Notes to Science Fiction Writer by Ben Bova.)
JavaScript: By Marcus Eatmon
History of JavaScript |
How JavaScript Relates to Java |
The Document Object Model