Is it Red or Is it Blue?...Basing Conflict on POV

My husband and I are in the middle of fixing up our house...painting, re-flooring, taking out a wall here or there.  And as a finishing touch in one of the rooms, we needed to dig out a long-stored Turkish rug that neither one of us had seen in years.  I was trying to communicate to him which one I wanted in front of the new door...

"You know, the blue one.  It will fit perfectly here."
"I don't remember a blue one," he said.  "What about the red one?"
"Red?  What red carpet?  We don't have a red one.  But I'm sure the blue one will work great."
"No, the red will be better.  Hold on, let me go find it and show you."

Can you tell where this is going?  Can you spot the ending a mile off?

So, my dear husband returns with the exact BLUE rug I'd been talking about in his hands.
"See," he said.  "Red."  He pointed to the geometrical and floral designs woven in red.
"No, look," I pointed to the border and background throughout surrounding the design.  "It's blue.  There's more blue than red."

Blue rug / red rug.  Blue states / red states.  Blue character POV / red character POV.

My husband remembered the design.  I remembered the background.  My husband tends to focus on aesthetics, whereas I tend to focus on function.

To me, this simple dialogue demonstrated so clearly to me a simple difference between me and my husband.  Because of our background and cultural differences, we have a different way of viewing the world.  And quite often, as with the rug, the way we see things, while different, is not...wrong.  (Though shhhh, don't tell him I said so).

In life, real conflict between people is rarely simple or easily solved.  Quite often, true differences in opinion stem from a deeply based belief system that is neither right nor wrong, just different.

Well-developed characters have strong POVs.  These POVs should be informed by their cultures, their personal history, their beliefs, their backstory.  And to create an intense read, your characters' POVs should conflict with each other in a way not easily solved.

How much more interesting will it be to your reader if you build up a complex conflict between characters that has no clear good guy or bad guy but rather a deeply differing level of seeing and understanding their world?

So, you tell me -- is the rug red or is it blue?

Who Really Cares About Harry?

Continuing in our First Chapter Series of posts on the beginning of Harry Potter, today we're talking about stakes.  Who really cares about what happens to this young boy? What's at stake for him in the coming story?  These are questions which must be answered from the beginning.  And they must be presented in such a way as to make your reader identify with and care about what happens to your main character.  Otherwise, why bother to continue?

JK Rowling, from the start, even without going into the POV of her hero, gives the reader three main reasons to care:

1. He's an orphan, his parents killed by an evil wizard
2. He's off to live with an aunt an uncle who certainly don't want him, but have also been shown to be snoopy, petty, and intolerant.  They are also the exact opposite of Harry's true family.
3. What happens to Harry affects a large community around him.  We're shown this from the very beginning with the celebration of the wizarding world because of Harry's survival and Lord Voldemort's departure.

With these three set-ups, JKR gives us some heart-tugging backstory, hints of the upcoming conflict, and the wider view of how Harry's situation will greatly affect a larger community around him -- all components that will entice a reader to pluck down her time and money to invest in the upcoming story.

The heart of grabbing your reader's attention at the beginning of your story is to make them care.  And the catalyst that sparks care is what's at stake.  Something has to be at risk for your hero and his community or who really cares to read more?

Then, in order to increase the stakes, you must have a high level of conflict.  The two are simply inseparable.  If everyone is getting along in blissful utopia, there's nothing at risk and there's no tension.  Conflict is your hero's push to obtain a crucial item and the forces pushing back to keep him from obtaining it.  So this is how the flowchart works:

care <-- stakes <-- conflict

For the reader to care, there must be something urgent at stake to a sympathetic character, and this will be the result of significant conflict.  Or to reverse this for the writer: to make your reader care, you must start with emotionally true conflict that increases the stakes for your hero and those around him.