Writing 102: Conflict
EN GARDE READER! You’re challenged to a duel of epic conflict! Today the magnificent, the wonderful, the amazing, Lady Verbosa (Anne Winchell) has once again delivered a magnificent post for us to enjoy! KYA! 🗡️
What is Conflict?
Thanks, Vivian! I’ll try not to be too verbose, but I’m Lady Verbosa for a reason! (Vivian: 🤭) When I teach storytelling, the very first thing to address is conflict. Well, first I go over the syllabus. But once we get into the content itself, it’s conflict time! According to Evan Skolnick in a wonderful book on video game storytelling, “Conflict powers your story. Conflict is the burning energy that propels it forward.” Without conflict, you don’t really have a story, at least not a story that can be told according to the Western tradition. When you get into other cultures, you’ll run across kishōtenketsu, a dramatic structure defined by a lack of conflict. But we’re not dealing with that! As far as I know, every other dramatic structure, even other non-Western ones, derive their power from conflict, and that’s what we’re looking at here. We want nice, juicy stories with plenty of conflict!
Which of course raises the question, what is conflict? I’ll go back to Skolnick, since I like his really basic definition:
“Someone wants or needs something, but someone or something stands in the way.”
Basically, there are two opposing forces, and when they clash, conflict ensues. This can be major or minor, and there are all different types, as I’ll explain, but this is the general definition I’ll be relying on. Oh, and one final thing from Skolnick that I love and that I’ll be using throughout: he proposes that people frame things as want, but statements. For example, I want to be typing this blog, but my cat keeps climbing on my lap. Conflict! Anyway, let’s get down to the details of how to get conflicts that fit your story and keep your audience invested.
Story Structure
As a huge fan of dramatic structure, I could spend a whole blogpost on this. Oh wait, I already did! Check it out here! That provides you with the basics, but while I talk about conflict in that post, I never really get into the details of how exactly it fits in. So let’s look at getting your conflict and structure to work together!
Choosing the Best Fit
If you read my blogpost on dramatic structure (you did, right?), then you know that Western dramatic structures are all variations on the Three Act Structure, which is basically a beginning, middle, and end. Stories have a dramatic question, or an overarching question driving the narrative that usually has a variation of yes/no as an answer, and the way we reach that answer is through conflict. A common dramatic question is “Will the hero defeat the villain?” Well, if you had a story with poorly done conflict, this might just be essentially a leveling-up montage followed by the villain being easily defeated. Stories like this definitely exist, but a flat story like this can easily be fixed by adding actual conflict. Think of the want, but statements. In the flat montage version, the hero wants to defeat the villain, and does. Um, where’s the conflict in that? We need that but!
(Vivian: WHO DARES DISTURB ME!? THE DESTROYER OF EXPOSITION! THE CONQUEROR OF WORLDS! THE GREAT ONE INCARNA- YARRRR!!! Slips on a banana peel)
Definitely not a great conflict, right? So let’s look at how story structure can help. First, you have to look at your dramatic question and actually add conflict to it. Sure it’s a yes/no variation, but that doesn’t mean it should be easy. The hero wants to defeat the villain, but the villain wants to win. Okay, that’s already adding conflict just by adding that base motivation! And honestly, for the overarching dramatic question, that’s probably fine. You just need some sort of pushback.
Then we get into the structure itself. Now, there are a lot of different possibilities. Again, I wrote a massive blogpost about it. What you want to do is decide what kinds of conflicts you want driving your story forward, and how much detail there should be. At the very least, you need a call to action (the character(s) wants to live according to the status quo, but something challenges it), a first plot point (the character(s) wants to return to their status quo, but something prevents this and removes them from the status quo entirely), a second plot point (the character(s) wants to give up because everything seems lost, but something pushes them to keep going), a climax (the character(s) wants to win, but the antagonist is almost evenly matched), and a resolution where the conflict is resolved (the character(s) wants a new status quo, and hey! They get it!). As you get into more detailed dramatic structures, you’ll add on to these basic conflicts in specific ways. It’s a good sign if you’re able to clearly identify the conflicts driving your dramatic conflict, since they closely align with your dramatic question.
As you can see, each step is set up with a different conflict, but they all contribute to the overarching conflict which reflects the theme of the story. I’ll get into that in a little bit, I promise, but first, let’s address a problem I often see in stories: pacing.
Controlling Pacing
Have you ever read a book, watched a movie, played a game, or consumed some type of media that left you feeling overwhelmed and burnt out? Or one where you’re absolutely dragging and struggling to maintain interest? Those are pacing problems, and it’s sometimes easy to fall into the trap of cramming in too much conflict or spacing it too far apart.
Too Much Conflict
Sometimes we get excited about our stories, and we want to get as much in as possible, and get it in as quickly as possible. We want the audience hooked, and what better way than to give them high stakes conflicts? After all, even I’m saying you need to do that. So why is it a problem?
Imagine you wake up, look at the clock, and panic because you slept through your alarm. You scramble to get dressed and get in the car to get to work on time. As soon as you leave your neighborhood, a car speeds through an intersection and slams into you, spinning your car out of control. The moment your car stops, someone opens the door and points a gun at you, demanding your money. The person drags you out of the car, and you give them your wallet. They run off right when an ambulance arrives, and as the people get out of the ambulance, you notice they seem slightly… off. When the first gets to you, their face looks like a mask, and you foolishly ask if they’re human. Abruptly, the person tears off its human shell, as do the others, revealing vicious aliens out for human flesh. You run as fast as you can and manage to get to a hiding spot, and you see other people nearby gesturing you to come over. You do so, but when you get close, you notice that they’re also a little… off. But in a different way. As you approach, they lumber out. Zombies!
(Vivian: I read once a series where the semi-climax, not the actual climax but way before, was 4 or 5 chapters of action, after halfway through the third one I just started skipping until I found anything that wasn’t action)
It can be so frustrating! After reading the little story above, are you annoyed at all the pointless plot twists and constant action? Think about the poor character! Everything is happening boom boom boom! That’s way too much conflict. Notice how the conflict and the stakes get lost in the constant twists and turns? Yeah. Not good. You want to distinguish each conflict and pace it so that the reader has a chance to breathe after each major twist.
Pacing like this is often a problem in video games, since designers think players just want to fight enemies. And yeah, that’s true, but there need to be breaks for the player to regroup. Even in wave games where wave after wave of enemies approach, there are breaks between the waves. In games like Tetris where it seems like the action happens continually since there aren’t breaks between blocks appearing, there are breaks between levels and puzzles. And in successful games of any genre, there’s always a pause after major action before moving into the next conflict. If there isn’t, players will get burned out. They might feel pressured to keep playing if there isn’t the option to pause, and if you just keep piling it on without a break to save, players will eventually give up or rage quit. If there are save breaks but the story itself doesn’t allow for a chance to regroup, players might save, quit the game, and take a break on their own time until they’re ready to return. You don’t want that happening! Keep them in your game! To do that, you need to build in breaks, and the same is true in stories of all kinds.
So if you pile on too much conflict too quickly, the conflict itself gets muddied, the audience gets overwhelmed (Vivian: and bored), and they’ll leave your story one way or another. I know it’s easy to get excited, and I know it’s tempting to want to keep your audience engaged with back-to-back action scenes, but it gets old really quickly.
Too Little Conflict
Okay, I’ve persuaded you not to dump your action in huge extended clumps. But you do need it, because without conflict, you’ve got nothing! Remember, conflict is the engine of your story. If you just have chapters of quiet, happy, conflict-free story, the reader will lose interest. They’ll leave your story. Again, you don’t want the audience leaving the story! For any reason!
After you have a major conflict, it’s good to take a quieter beat to help the audience recover and regroup. Often, you can show the consequences of the conflict and how its resolution impacted your characters, their motivations, or the plot. There are so many things conflict can create that you can show afterwards! Even in this quieter scene, though, you do want some sort of conflict. You just want smaller stakes and less loaded language.
For example, I’ve been writing about the action-packed scene above, totally invested, pouring out words–I want to write everything, but my hands don’t type fast enough! I get into this quieter scene and sure enough, my cat decides it’s time to climb on my lap. Right now, she’s sitting on my arms as I type, but in a second I’m going to stop writing entirely and just pet her for a while. She definitely deserves it. Actually, just a minute.
Ah, that was nice! Now I’m nice and relaxed and happy. A good, quiet beat after the action of writing frantically. But even then, there was conflict. I wanted to work on this blogpost, but my cat wanted attention. The stakes for this are so low, though! What happens if my cat’s want trumps my want? Nothing bad, that’s for sure. I love giving her attention! No loss to me. So even though there’s inherent conflict that drove the interaction with her, it wasn’t the type of conflict that would give rise to major problems. This is a great type of pause after a major conflict.
Now let’s say I decide that instead of coming back to writing, I take a nap. You, the audience, are just waiting. First I paused to pet my cat, which was a refreshing break. Now I’m taking a nap, and there’s not much conflict in that. I’m just sleeping. Then I get up, maybe make some dinner, watch some tv, all fairly passive, conflict-free activities. If I’m writing all of this in a story, you’re bored out of your mind by this point. You’re wishing for the random zombies now, aren’t you? This is how a good pause can stretch out too long and turn into boring, aimless scenes where the audience is just desperately waiting and hoping for something to actually happen.
(Vivian: Calm times are important as they create situations for great characterisation and showing relationships and their evolution. It does not however mean you can rely solely on it.)
Just Right
So basically, build up to your major conflicts, then give your audience a pause with a quiet scene that has low-stakes conflict and usually shows the aftermath of the previous major conflict. Then start building up to the next conflict. Include little conflicts and build towards those major conflicts gradually, and try to match the Three Act Structure where the biggest conflict comes at the climax towards the end. If you’re using a more detailed dramatic structure, try to match your conflicts to that to ensure good pacing. And just know, some people really struggle with pacing in first drafts, so don’t worry if you always need to go back and rearrange things. That’s what revisions are for!
Determining Conflict Types
So far, the examples of conflict I’ve given are pretty much external, physical conflicts. Car crash. Zombies. Cuddle-inducing cat. But did you know that other types exist? 🤯 I know! Shocking! While some genres are perfectly fine sticking with external, physical conflict, a good story will have variety. No matter your genre, you really want to delve into other types of conflict if you want to keep your audience engaged (which I’ll talk more about later!).
External vs Internal
This has to do with the relationship between the conflict and the character. Is it happening externally to them, or internally? External conflicts are, quite frankly, easier to write. At first glance, there’s more variety. In the section on themes below, I’ll outline some conflict types, six of which are external, only one of which is internal. However, you can’t neglect internal conflict! If your characters don’t face some sort of internal struggle, they’ll be flat and lifeless. Sure you might defeat Vivian the Evil Sorcerer (hopefully not via banana peel!), but if that’s all that happens, then why does it matter? It has to mean something to your character and resolve something within them.
One fun thing that happens in some stories is that an internal conflict gets reflected in the external world. You’ll see this in horror sometimes: a character’s fears take on a life of their own. Or your characters might hallucinate and see their inner dilemmas as real, physical, external things. Blurring the line between internal and external can work really well sometimes, and your characters may or may not know that the seemingly external conflict they face is actually an internal one. Either way, when you’re writing your stories, try to balance external and internal conflicts. Both are good, and both deserve some love.
Physical vs Non-Physical
This is closely related, since physical is almost by definition external. It’s, well, physical. A fight. Violence of some sort. 💣 This type of conflict is common because it’s easy for the audience to follow (well, usually…). Visual and interactive media especially take advantage of this because it’s so easy to visualize and fun to play. However, there are plenty of non-physical conflicts that are equally important.
The first and most obvious is internal conflict, though as mentioned above, this can take on a physical element sometimes. This often happens, well, internally, though inner (or outer) monologue or a conflict between actions and emotions. A key type of external but non-physical conflict people often underestimate is dialogue. This is more than the villain monologuing before the final physical fight begins! Options include shouting matches, barbed comments, sarcasm, two characters smiling sweetly and deliberately baiting each other, or of course characters engaging in a battle of wits. There’s a pretty big range depending on the intensity and scale of the conflict, but dialogue is a great way to do conflict. Dialogue is your friend, and there will be a post on it later in case it isn’t your strong suit.
Overarching Conflicts
I referenced the dramatic question above, and that question leads to the overall conflict in your story. It’s important to figure out the major conflict so that you can make sure everything else fits and helps build up to it. Even your side stories should relate in some way. Cohesion is important, and cohesive conflicts are part of that. So how do you get this? Well, the first thing you want to do is identify what exactly you’re trying to say with your story.
Matching Your Theme
Themes are recurring or pervasive ideas in stories, and it’s a good idea to figure out your themes. Often this is deliberate: what are you trying to say? Love overcomes all? Good will always triumph over evil? Power corrupts? There are so many possible themes that I’m not even going to attempt to list more than those three I came up with off the top of my head. Some people go into a story knowing exactly what they want to say. Some people even write stories as a way to express that theme, using media to illustrate something they feel is vital for people to understand.
Other people just write, and figure out themes later. One thing to keep in mind is that you can’t control your audience. You never know what themes they’ll find or what meaning they’ll draw from your stories. People are weird, both you and the audience, and they might find something you didn’t even realize you were doing. So if you’re not the type to consciously think about themes when writing, don’t worry. They’re there, even if you’re not aware of them. But when you revise, you absolutely want to identify those themes to make sure your story is consistent and cohesive.
I gave a couple of examples of themes, hopefully enough that you get a feel for what they are. Just some idea about the world that drives your stories. And what else drives stories? Conflict! Yay! We’re back on topic. Because each theme relies on conflict, and those conflicts can be loosely grouped in the following categories. (I should note that all conflicts fit into these categories, not just the overarching conflict!)
Character vs Character
Ah, the classic interpersonal conflict! It’s one person against another, with one person striving to overcome the other in some way. This might be something big like a hero trying to utterly vanquish a villain, or something more personal like one friend trying to one-up another. And of course this isn’t limited to people if you have non-people characters! If my cat jumps on my lap and baps me to make sure I’m giving her attention, that’s a nice little example of this.
Character vs Society
Instead of one person, now our character is up against an entire society. You’ll see this a lot in stories where a character is trying to change the status quo, making them an outcast from the people who like the status quo. Anytime a character is an outcast, you’ll usually have this conflict to some extent, whether the character is trying to fit in or stand out. Either way, there’s conflict between them and the society. There are other variations of this, but those are the most common.
Character vs Nature
Imagine you’re spending a leisurely afternoon by a pool. The weather is perfect, you’ve got a cool drink–and an ant crawls on your leg. SQUASH! It was you versus nature, and you won! That’s the basic version, though it’s usually much bigger, obviously. If you think of something like Moby Dick, you can see the immense scale that these stories can take on. It’s Ahab versus not just the whale but everything the whale represents. Humans evolved in tune with nature, but also opposed to it. We instinctively fear snakes and insects for a reason! So the conflict between character and nature is an excellent one and is often used to highlight how powerful nature is regardless of whether the character wins or not.
Character vs Technology
Humans evolved to have conflict with nature, but technology is new and shiny. And dangerous. Whether we’re dealing with weapons capable of mass destruction, artificial intelligence that decides humans are superfluous, or simply the addictive power of social media, the conflict between characters and technology is powerful and can take on many forms. Often these stories are done as a way to push back against uncontrolled technological advancement and give warnings of what might happen.
Character vs “Fate”
Fate works differently in different stories. Oedipus was doomed from the start, and the audience knows it. Romeo and Juliet never stood a chance. Adherence to one’s fate is common in older stories, largely because of the religious influences on literature. If the gods say something, it’s gonna happen. As people began moving away from religion in the Enlightenment in the West and various other movements around the world, fate became less set in stone. It became a challenge, not a prophecy. Today’s media tends to show characters overcoming their fate instead of falling prey to it. Minority Report is a great one for this, as precognitive characters predict that the main character will murder someone. That’s his “fate.” The movie follows his fight to overcome that fate. Whether or not he succeeds, the main conflict is character vs fate. And because (spoiler) he succeeds, it’s about overcoming or outsmarting fate, which modern audiences like. Of course, there are plenty of classic stories from various religions about outsmarting the gods and/or fate! We tend to like these, too.
Character vs Supernatural
Vivian refers to this as “Character vs The Beyond,” which works really well because it’s essentially a conflict between the character and anything beyond understanding (beyond human understanding usually, but in scifi it might be beyond alien understanding). A whole subgenre of horror is dedicated to this, though it shows up all over the place.
(Vivian: ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, Rise great slumbering one from beyond in the depths!)
Character vs Self
This is actually my favorite, and it can be paired with others so that there’s external and internal conflict. Basically, a character is at war with themselves. So much fun! This can be as a result of their actions, like if they’re forced to act against their morality and kill or steal if they’re a good character, or a result of the world around them shifting, and part of them wants to adapt but part wants to hold on to the past. That conflict between past and present can show up in other ways, too, especially if a character was abused as a child in some way. Characters fighting their instincts, fighting to overcome deep-seated prejudices, fighting against guilt over their actions, all of this is just great, and I enjoy it. Probably mean of me to enjoy the most deeply personal conflict that can inflict the deepest wounds on a character, but maybe I’m just an evil person. 🤔 Can I live with myself if that’s true? This contradicts my mental image of myself as a good person… What if I really am evil?!
(Vivian: The evil was within her the entire time.)
Character vs Clusterfuck
And then of course sometimes your character is against everything all the time. It’s common to have a primary thematic conflict, then multiple little conflicts, in the same way you’ll have a main dramatic question that gets broken up into multiple little questions. Mix and match depending on what your story needs!
Making Audiences Care
Now that we know the general types of conflict and why conflict is so necessary, it’s time to talk about the impact on the audience. You want your audiences to have an emotional investment in your story and your characters. Even if you have good, carefully chosen, well-paced conflict, there’s a chance it’ll fall flat just because your audience has no reason to care. There are four basic things you can do to improve audience engagement.
Tangibility
Vivan always brings this up as a key component in making people care, and I absolutely agree. If you have intangible goals, no one will really care. Good versus evil is great as a theme, but if your character is just fighting some vague concept of “evil,” the audience won’t really be invested. I’m going to give two American examples of why vague antagonists don’t work, because obviously everyone understands American politics 😉 In the 80s, the US government started a “War on Drugs.” Now, I think everyone can agree that drugs aren’t great. But a war against them? Doomed to fail. Way too broad. (Technically this was targeted against black Americans and anti-war protestors, but that’s another story). America clearly didn’t learn its lesson because after 9/11, we decided that a “War on Terror” was totally achievable 🙄 Again, too broad, not possible, boring objective. If you have a conflict like that, and you’re making a point about how impossible and boring it is, sure. But if that’s supposed to be the driving conflict in your story, audiences will zone out because it’s so vague and broad as to be meaningless.
(Vivian: We at this blog have a war on bad worldbuilding/writing!)
Win/Gain/Do Something/Someone
One nice, tangible goal you can have if for a character to have an objective of winning, or gaining, or doing something or someone. (Vivian: hehe, doing someone) It needs to be clearly defined, of course, not just “winning true love” or something. Winning/gaining/doing needs to be specific and have concrete steps, and the something/someone also needs to be specified. “Sacrificing your voice and gaining legs where it feels like daggers shooting through your feet at every step in order to earn marriage with a specific man or else you turn to sea foam” is a much better conflict (and by the way, if you haven’t read the Hans Christian Anderson version of “The Little Mermaid,” do so, it’s way more tangible and the conflict is infinitely better than Disney!).
Retrieve/Rescue Something/Someone
Oh noes, something is lost and needs to be found! But it’s not just that a princess has disappeared (not tangible), it’s that Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach and now you have to fight your way through different levels in order to find her! That’s a tangible conflict with concrete characters and specific, tangible ways that the conflict will unfold.
Escape Somewhere
Again, if you want your readers to care, get into tangible information with this common conflict. Where are you and why is it bad, and where exactly are you trying to go and why? What exactly is causing the escape? Is it a slow-building conflict where reasons to escape add up over time, or does something dramatic happen? Again, get tangible. If your character is trying to escape a volcano, eh, it’s interesting, but if your character narrowly avoids being a human sacrifice to the fire gods and is being pursued by fire demons as they dodge lava pelting from the sky and flowing in their path, your audience is going to be on the edge of their seats!
Stop Something/Someone
Ah, the classic conflict! But as you’ve probably figured out, you don’t want a “War on Evil.” You want your character to have a concrete reason for stopping a particular thing or person for a specific reason. In Hunger Games, Katniss is at some level fighting against the injustice of the entire system and trying to stop the status quo from continuing. But at each step along the way, she has concrete enemies. “Evil,” instead of just being an amorphous blob, gets concentrated in specific people who represent different elements of it. Rage, revenge, maliciousness, sadism, voyeurism, greed… they all get embodied in the story in various ways (not necessarily as people, see list of conflict types above), and she acts against those things in concrete ways. That’s why the audience gets involved in the story. It includes and then moves beyond the “character versus society” and “character versus character” by making the conflict tangible and real.
Stronger Antagonists
So that’s tangibility! Make your audience really feel that you have concrete, specific actions and goals. The next way to really engage your audience is to strengthen your antagonists. Your antagonist is the second part in the themes above, so it might be character, society, nature, technology, etc. Whatever your antagonist is, first, make them tangible and real (even if internal!), and then make them as strong as possible. If you think of video games, one thing many games do is scale opponents so that instead of always being at a set strength and defense, it moves up as your player character improves. That maintains the challenge and makes the player more involved and engaged, as they’re constantly on their toes (note: obviously not all games do this, and there are definite disadvantages in terms of gameplay when scaling opponents, but it definitely increases engagement!). If you’re aiming for your character to win, you don’t want the antagonist to be completely insurmountable, but the strong the antagonist, the stronger the character. This is true even if they lose.
Higher Stakes
(Vivian: MORE EXPLOSIONS! BIGGER EXPLOSIONS! END OF THE WORLD! THE UNIVERSE! THE MULTIVERSE! THE OMNIVERSE!)
Yes! MOAR STAKES! Increasing the stakes is a surefire way to increase audience engagement, but watch out! A very common way to do this is to make the fate of the world at stake. That’s usually a tangible stake (if you do it right), and it feels big and important and worthy of your attention as the audience. But that’s not the only way to do it! (Vivian: And if it is sufficiently large, the readers will call your bluff and be disengaged because they know you will not pull the trigger. So you have lost the tangibility aspect.)
So many good stories with smaller stakes exist. Some genres are defined by the use of small stakes! These are usually described as “cozy” (as in cozy mystery, cozy fantasy, I’ve even heard of cozy horror). A simple whodunnit in a small British village with no impact on the greater world, or a missing family heirloom that doesn’t change anything except one character’s ability to embrace their heritage. A cat wants some attention and will jump on laps and gently bap people to get it. Little, quiet things.
The key thing is to make your stakes distinct so that your audience cares. No matter how small your stakes, do things to heighten them. Make your characters really feel that there’s genuine danger if they don’t succeed (and then make sure to follow through on that when they make mistakes!). Make the stakes costly, even if it’s just that you get a mournful look from your cat that makes you regret every choice you’ve ever made. So while you always want to heighten your stakes, you DON’T need to make them bigger.
Every story is different. Personally, I like (and I write) stories with big stakes. I want to feel like my character’s every action could send the entire world into chaos and destruction. Vivian tends to enjoy smaller stakes. They’re both totally valid. It just depends on what your story requires.
Personal Growth
Conflicts need to lead to personal growth in some way. There has to be an impact on the person, or else why does the conflict matter? Again, if you look at video games, when I’m grinding (repeatedly doing small conflicts to gain wealth, items, or experience), I don’t care about that conflict. I’m not invested, because it doesn’t impact my character at all. In your stories, there will be conflicts that matter to your character more than others. They don’t all need to result in a life-changing epiphone. But you need to have at least a few that dramatically impact your character or else the audience will feel cheated and that their investment was wasted.
The long-term impact of this character growth depends on the style of story. In a standalone piece of media, you generally want to have good personal growth where the character has changed in a way that reflects the main conflict and dramatic question. In a series, each book will advance the character’s growth in a different and specific way. In episodic media, however, you do want to have personal growth within each episode, but you don’t want to dramatically change your character between episodes. So while they do need to learn something from the conflict within each episode, it shouldn’t be the kind of thing that changes who they are at their core. Regardless of how the growth lingers, having that change keeps your audience interested in the conflict, and interested in your story.
Summa Summarum
Basically, conflict is essential in a story because it’s what drives everything forward and keeps the audience involved. There is such a thing as a conflict-free story, but those are definitely the exception to the rule. Stories thrive on conflict. What do you think, my trustworthy beloved cat?
Cat: ≥y iu
Excellent point! That honest-to-goodness contribution from my cat walking on my keyboard earlier in the writing process sums it up perfectly. I want to write this blogpost, but my cat wants attention. And in all things, the cat wins. Conflict resolved.
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