Internal Conflict vs. External Conflict: The Shift From Projection to Agency in Character Arc

One of the easiest mistakes in writing is assuming stories are about the external action of defeating the antagonistic force, when in reality they are about what the protagonist must become in order to face that conflict. Internal conflict vs. external conflict reveals how your story’s character arcs operate beneath the plot. The tension between these two forces is what moves characters away from projecting responsibility onto external circumstances and into the difficult journey of claiming personal power.

Most stories frame conflict as something external. It’s something happening visibly in the plot, most obviously an antagonist to defeat, an obstacle to overcome, or a problem to solve. This can, however, be a bit of a misdirection away from the deeper psychological purpose of external conflict—which is to create a theater for the protagonist’s inner conflict.

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Often, what begins as external conflict is actually displaced inner conflict that the characters have not yet recognized. At a deeper level, the difference between internal conflict vs. external conflict is really the difference between projecting responsibility outside of the self vs. claiming personal responsibility and agency.

Sometimes stories unintentionally frame the antagonist as the sole source of the plot’s problems, which can subtly place the power for resolution outside the protagonist. When stories shift the focus back onto the protagonist’s own choices, growth, and capacity for change, it strengthens the character arc. Now, the inner conflict is not just about defeating external opposition, but about moving characters out of projection and into agency, where they can reclaim responsibility for who they must become in order to resolve the conflict.

What’s the Difference Between Internal Conflict vs. External Conflict?

External conflict and internal conflict function as interdependent layers of story. The outer struggle creates the visible plot events; the inner struggle creates contextual meaning for why the plot matters.

• External conflict arises from the intersection of the protagonist’s concrete goal and the obstacles (often created by an antagonist) that stand in the way.
• Internal conflict arises from the character’s competing desires, misconceptions, or emotional needs, which are often framed as the tension between what the Thing the Character Wants (which is based on the limited perspective of the Lie the Character Believes) and the Thing the Character Needs (in order to grow into harmony with the story’s greater thematic Truth).

Resonant stories braid these together so that the external conflict pressures characters into confronting their inner conflict, while the resolution of the inner conflict allows for a satisfactory resolution of the outer conflict (morally, practically, or both).

Depending on genre, stories may place greater or lesser emphasis on external conflict vs. internal conflict. What’s important to realize is that, first, most stories require both to some degree. There should not be a question of “plot vs. character” in the sense that one is more important than the other. Both are required to create a forward-moving narrative.

Generally, we might think of plot as “proving” a character’s arc. Plot dramatizes the consequences of the character’s internal moral struggles. It proves how functional the character’s internal belief systems and virtuous capacities are by demonstrating their causality in the external world.

An action-heavy story can demonstrate a character’s inner conflict without ever directly referencing it, simply by showing us how well the character’s actions (resulting implicitly from the character’s choices, which result implicitly from the character’s internal perspective and capacity) are operating in the external conflict.

Even the most plot-heavy stories can still function as resonant and penetrating external metaphors of a character’s inner struggles. Likewise, even the most plot-light stories still generally require at least the trappings of some external action—which, in turn, offer causal proof and consequences for the character’s internal ponderings.

The Danger of Treating External Conflict as the Whole Story

So far, so good. But here’s where writers may run into a subtle problem that can unintentionally strangle the life out of a story. It doesn’t matter whether you intend to create a story that showcases the external conflict (i.e., the plot) or the internal conflict (i.e., the character arc and/or theme). In either case, an easy pitfall is allowing the story to over-emphasize the antagonist’s responsibility for the conflict.

Let me say that again.

The easy mistake here is making the antagonist responsible for everything.

But, what? Isn’t the antagonist the bad guy? Isn’t the antagonist the one responsible for the conflict?

Well, yes, but… it takes two to tango, right?

Although stories are often reduced to the simple formula of “the hero defeats the villain,” the deeper note of satisfaction that audiences seek is the hero’s journey toward moral capability. To the degree the story overemphasizes the antagonist’s responsibility for the conflict, it can ironically weaken the protagonist.

However subtly, this stance frames the protagonist as a passive victim. Even when the protagonist seems particularly active in the plot (e.g., rushing about to put an end to the nefarious antagonist’s devilry), the character’s internal landscape can seem, at best, flat and, at worst, shallow and even hypocritical. The strongest stories aren’t so much about whether the protagonist defeats the antagonist, but whether the protagonist becomes someone capable of that victory.

How Projection Shapes External Conflict

The underlying problem with overemphasizing the antagonist’s culpability in the external conflict is, in a word, projection.

In psychological terms, projection is a process in which people unconsciously displace difficult qualities or emotions onto others. Rather than recognizing certain thoughts, impulses, or fears as our own, our minds instinctively externalize them, allowing us to experience them as coming from outside rather than from within. In this way, projection functions as a protective mechanism that helps preserve a stable self-image by relocating inner tension onto the external world.

To one degree or another, we all do this. We could say it is often a necessary starting point for maturation. I would even argue that much of character arc (centering as it does on the movement from a limited perspective–i.e., the Lie—to a comparatively more expanded perspective–i.e., the Truth)—is ultimately a reclamation of projections. The broadening viewpoint afforded by a successful character arc all but demands a corresponding broadening of awareness around the traits (both desirable and undesirable) that the character has projected outside of the self.

Writers often ponder how to link the external conflict and the internal conflict so they seem part of a cohesive whole. Once again, we can return to the idea of the external conflict as a sort of thematic metaphor for the character’s internal conflict (and, again, this remains valid whether emphasis is placed on the external or the internal conflict).

To the degree the protagonist projects undesirable qualities onto the antagonistic force, the protagonist will also likely be projecting responsibility for the conflict onto the antagonistic force. In short, they’re thinking, “It’s all the antagonist’s fault!”

Practically speaking, this may be true.

For example, in a mystery story, the detective (usually) wasn’t the one who prompted the murderer to kill. In a romance, one lover is probably not directly responsible for the other lover’s insecurities and dysfunctional attachment styles. In an action-adventure, the spunky hero might not even have been born when the immortal tyrant-king started enslaving countries. In a generational drama, the children did not prompt the sins of their parents. In a survival story, the protagonist has no power over the dangerous natural elements.

Mirabel cannot fix her family’s generational trauma by blaming her problems on the circumstances. Instead, the conflict resolves when she helps bring awareness to the family’s hidden wounds—shifting the story from blame to responsibility and healing. (Encanto (2021), Walt Disney Pictures.)

So why does it limit a story to project all blame onto the plot’s external obstacles (however implicitly)?

For this simple reason: projecting responsibility for the conflict onto the antagonist weakens the protagonist’s practical agency and, more importantly, weakens moral responsibility.

This is not because the antagonist is necessarily any less dangerous, evil, or culpable (depending on the story). It is because stories are not about antagonists.

Stories are about protagonists—and specifically agentic protagonists with the potential to enact external change because they have first proven their capacity to enact internal change. This internal change is only possible to the degree protagonists can expand their personal capacity for responsibility.

Character Arc as the Reclamation of Agency

Even if your plot ends with a victory, it can feel empty if it overemphasizes the culpability of the antagonists over the evolution of the protagonist’s personal responsibility.

But, I hear you saying again, what if the protagonist wasn’t responsible for, you know, the wars, the murders, the trashed relationships, the hurt feelings, or whatever else?

Then, I would say, you’re missing an opportunity to deepen the cohesion of that magic triangle of plot (aka, the antagonistic force), character (aka, the protagonist), and theme (aka, the deeper connection between the two).

The best stories, in my opinion, are more interested in the protagonist’s culpability than the antagonist’s, even when the protagonist’s culpability isn’t, in fact, greater than the antagonist’s.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (affiliate link)

For Example: Consider Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, which features as one of its main characters a young man serving in the Nazi Army during WWII.

Is he more culpable than the regime that essentially enslaved him and forced him to participate in atrocities? Certainly not. But the poignancy of the story is largely based on the fact that he must still grapple with the complexities of his own culpability.

Even though the culpability of a truly evil antagonist provides the backdrop, it is not this greater evil that interests us so much as the struggle within this young protagonist—which not only embraces the complexity of human morality, but also emphasizes, by its very struggle, the capacity for agency, responsibility, and sovereignty even in the midst of limited practical efficacy.

Werner is not responsible for the war he is born into, but his character arc gains its emotional weight from his struggle to take responsibility for his own choices within it—illustrating how powerful stories emphasize agency even when external circumstances cannot be controlled. (All the Light We Cannot See (2023), Netflix.)

The danger of simplifying antagonism and making “others” responsible for moral failures is that it necessarily limits the protagonist’s capacity for personal power. Although this may be obvious in stories such as All the Light We Cannot See, it is perhaps even more important in stories in which the “heroes” triumph over the “evil” bad guys.

In overtly heroic stories, it can be comparatively easy and even unintentional to overemphasize an external conflict in which villains must be defeated because they “deserve” it and/or simply as a means of removing obstacles to an otherwise happy ending. Even if the heroes must ostensibly sacrifice in some way (e.g., the best friend dies or they lose a limb), these stories tend to lack the deeper resonance of true psychological transformation.

This is important not just because transformation is dynamic and interesting, but because true transformation is only possible when someone is willing to grapple with the deeper personal issues of one’s own responsibility as the most important catalyst within a conflict.

Moving From Projection to Responsibility in Character Arc

Shadow Archetypes Course

When characters become overly focused on the bad guy—on what he’s doing and what a terrible person he is—they can fail not only to look at themselves, but to recognize their own weaknesses and foibles (which, at some level, are the very things that give them the potential to become antagonists, either to themselves or others). Projection often operates through the strange resonance of fixating on the very traits in others that we are most resistant to examining within our own shadows.

Just as importantly, unclaimed projection can cause characters to displace power onto the antagonist. They fixate on the antagonist as the one who needs to be fixed and the one who needs to change. If the antagonist won’t fix himself, then he becomes someone who must be fixed.

This perspective can blind characters to something much more important than their power to change external circumstances, which is their capacity to change their internal circumstances. In some stories, this might look very practical—for example walking away from a destructive relationship or gaining the skills necessary to succeed at their job. At a deeper level, this is about learning how to evolve beyond the antagonist’s ability to affect the protagonist’s internal state in the same way.

Jane Eyre’s defining moment comes not from changing Rochester or her circumstances, but from claiming sovereignty over her own inner life, demonstrating how powerful character arcs are built on agency rather than control of external conflict. (Jane Eyre (2006), WGBH/BBC.)

Again, this is particularly resonant when we view story as metaphor. Meaningful change in the external conflict occurs in concert with changes in the protagonist’s interiority. Protagonists cannot overcome the antagonist’s evil without gaining full sovereignty over themselves. We see this mythically in stories about “the Kingdom,” in which the realm symbolically represents the entirety of the self. These old tales are less about the defeat of the external Tyrant or Dragon than they are about the protagonist’s ability to claim dominion within.

Stories that miss this mark often show up whenever the protagonist’s legitimacy comes simply from opposing the “bad people,” rather than from demonstrating inner alignment or earned authority (i.e., the hero is right just because the villain is wrong). These are usually stories more concerned with exploring why “someone else” is to blame rather than with the meatier questions of personal autonomy.

Why Strong Stories Recenter Power Inside the Protagonist

The subtle difference between stories that place all responsibility—and therefore all autonomy and agency—external to the protagonist is implicitly problematic. In focusing on what the antagonist is doing wrong, they project more than just responsibility onto the antagonist.

This is true in stories in which the protagonistic characters have traits similar to the antagonist’s that need to be confronted and overcome. It is, however, especially true in stories in which the protagonistic characters must confront areas in their lives where they are failing to take personal responsibility.

This hyper-focus on external problems prevents them from overcoming what is basically a thralldom to the antagonist. This thrall may be actual and literal because the antagonist is hurting, controlling, or blocking the protagonist in some way. Or it may be more incidental, in that the fixation on the problem sucks more energy into the problem than into the solution.

Harry’s growing fixation on Voldemort and the injustices of his life begin to shape his choices and emotional responses. His arc highlights how protagonists must learn to take responsibility for their inner lives, even when they cannot control the antagonistic forces they face. (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Warner Bros.)

Although some of what is projected onto the antagonist may point to very real problems, true power is still found in the protagonist’s ability to recognize those projections. Only then can the protagonist create inner transformation and reclaim power from the antagonistic force.

By reclaiming responsibility, we reclaim agency. By reclaiming agency, we reclaim sovereignty. By reclaiming sovereignty, we reclaim power. And by reclaiming power, particularly within the world and metaphor of story, we are then able to enact change from the inside out.

9 Questions to Help You Identify Projection in Your Story

If you’re unsure whether your story’s conflict is strengthening your characters’ agency vs. causing them to project responsibility outward, these questions can help you evaluate how well your characters’ arcs are integrating internal conflict and external conflict.

1. Is your protagonist primarily reacting to the antagonist’s actions? Or is your protagonist making progressively more conscious choices that shape the direction of the conflict?

2. Does your protagonist believe the story’s problems exist entirely because of the antagonistic force? Or will the protagonist be forced to confront how personal limitations are affecting the outcome of the conflict?

3. Is your protagonist trying merely to defeat the antagonist? Or is the protagonist being asked to change in order to resolve the story’s central conflict?

4. Does the conclusion of the story’s conflict happen solely because the antagonist is removed? Or does the conflict resolve because the protagonist develops the inner capacity to create a different outcome?

5. Where might your protagonist be giving away personal power by focusing on what cannot be controlled instead of developing what can be controlled from within?

6. What personal responsibility might your protagonist be avoiding by focusing exclusively on the external conflict?

7. In what ways does the antagonist expose personal weaknesses, fears, or misconceptions the protagonist would rather not confront?

8. Does your protagonist earn moral authority through growth and difficult choices? Or is the protagonist gifted legitimacy simply by opposing the villain?

9. Where does your protagonist need to reclaim agency in order for the ending to feel earned?

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Enduring stories are rarely about the elimination of darkness so much as they are about the growth of consciousness (although, of course, they’re really just the same thing). When we understand conflict this way, we begin to see that the real movement of character arc is always away from projection and toward the reclamation of responsibility. Even when implicit, this profound shift allows a story’s ending to feel not just satisfying, but true.

Want More?

If this idea of moving from projection to agency resonates, then you might enjoy exploring one of the underlying questions: what if the antagonist isn’t just an external obstacle—but also a symbolic reflection of the protagonist?

This is what I’ll be exploring in my upcoming Story School class The Villain as an Aspect of the Hero’s Psyche. In the class, I’ll be looking at the deeper symbolic pattern underneath the protagonist-antagonist dynamic and how understanding it can help you design more meaningful antagonists and more cohesive conflict. We’ll be looking at some fascinating ways of thinking about antagonists not just as obstacles, but as structural mirrors that can reveal exactly what the protagonist must integrate in order to grow.

If that sounds interesting to you, I’d love to have you join us. We’ll be talking about how the polarity between hero and villain functions as one of the deepest engines of story, and how you can use an understanding of the deeper psychological symbolism when designing your own plots and character arcs.

The class will go live April 15. It’s pre-recorded, which means I get to join you live in the chat for the whole thing!

(I’m also offering this class in a discounted bundle with the previous class, Ego-Driven Character Arcs vs. Soul-Driven Character Arcs. If you’d like to grab both classes, I’m offering a 15% discount for the bundle.)

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How are you currently using internal conflict vs. external conflict to shape your protagonist’s character arc and agency? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, or Spotify).

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