: Re: How does (or should) an inner conflict span a series of novels? I recently asked this question, about inner conflict. Mark Baker supplied an answer to that question which redefined how I saw

@Gail2416123

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I recently read a series of books in which the main protagonist is struggling internally with a crisis of identity. After discovering that she has incredibly powerful magical powers, she has to reassess who she feels she is with these powers, especially as her environment completely changes.

After coming to somewhat accept these powers at the end of the book, the second novel has her elevated to a much more powerful position, and she has to again reassess who she feels that she is, and tries to find a balance between her old life and her new, eventually coming to fully accept her place in the world.

The third novel, after having accepted who she now is, has her dealing with the consequences of the choice made at the climax of book 2. Each of the three books follows the same thematic conflict, but addresses it in different ways, to very good effect.

So you have the option of keeping the same inner conflict, but developing the conflict alongside developing the story and the characters, allowing you to progress the story whilst not changing its essence completely.

Obviously if every story in the series addresses the same inner conflict repeatedly in the same way, they will become stale, but allowing the seeds of an internal conflict to grow into plants, and then germinating internal conflict seeds of their own that develop into different but related conflicts is how to keep a series moving forward.

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