Teaching Internal and External Conflict in Reading

Teaching internal and external conflict is more than just teaching the vocabulary associated with this reading skill. Successfully navigating and understanding the conflict within a story is essentially the reason for going on any reading journey. All stories require conflict, without it there would be no story to tell and it would be boring for the reader to continue.

Giving students the skills to identify internal and external conflict helps increase students skills as independent readers and viewers of any type of story. Read on for tips on how to engage students and introduce internal and external conflict in your next reading lesson.

Internal and External Conflict

Conflict is a struggle between opposing forces or characters. Those opposing forces could be:

a character who gets into a fight with their best friend
a person running away from a bear that wants to eat them
the conflict could even be in the characters head, which is why we have internal conflict in reading.

Internal and External Conflict Basics to Cover at the Beginning

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Without conflict a story would be boring. Tell this to your students on day 1. Without it, no story needs to be told. My life was perfect, the end. His life was perfect, the end. The rabbits life was lived with ease, the end. Boooooring!

A story can have multiple conflicts. There is no conflict law that states only there can only be one conflict per story. Sometimes when teachers teach about conflict in an isolated way, students (especially our struggling readers) might walk away with the thought that there can only be one conflict in a story.

Lives are messy and complicated and as students increase their text complexity, conflict and the number of conflicts in a story increase.

I also share with students that the amount of conflicts in a story, generally, coincide with the length of the text. For example a short story written at a third-grade reading level, might truly only have one conflict. Harry Potter, however, has multiple conflicts woven throughout each book and the entire series.

The main conflict of a story is central to the plot and will (usually) be resolved by the end of the story. Take the time to discuss the nuance of a book series, as this will be a confusion point for students.

Harry Potter Vs. Voldemort kind of is resolved at the end of Sorcerer’s Stone, but also kind of isn’t until the end of Deathly Hallows. Talk about this with the class, students will be confused by this but might not ask about it. Have students list out loud the names of different book series and discuss how there is a main conflict in each book, while there is an overall conflict threaded throughout the series (usually).

Talk about how some books might not have a central conflict– Tale Dark & Grimm, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Very Hungry Caterpillar to name a few do not, to my mind, have a central conflict. They are enjoyable stories for sure, but they are the stories that might come to mind for some readers when teaching the basics of conflict.

Struggling readers will not have as much exposure to story structure and will most likely base their understanding of conflict on what they have seen through movies and TV. When discussing conflict, make sure to include movie examples as well as the struggling readers will be more likely to connect and engage with these examples.

Unfortunately, in my experience teaching 5th grade students, many of the struggling readers are not independently experiencing rich examples of conflict as they are not often reading and completing texts independently. This is one of the many reasons why it is important to do a teacher read aloud with your class. If you won’t read that book on your own, I will make you listen to the book with me! Haha!

Internal and External Conflict Vocabulary Can Be Confusing

Recognize the vocabulary words when teaching reading conflict are constantly changing and this is confusing for students.

Internal Conflict Terms-

Man vs. Self, Person vs. Self, Character vs. Self. These are three of the most common was to phrase the main character struggling with their own thoughts. Let students know that they are exactly the same and they may see it worded slightly differently depending on their teachers from year to year.

External Conflict Terms-

Man vs Man, Person vs. Person, Character vs. Character

Man v Nature, Person vs. Nature, Character vs. Nature

Man vs Society, Person vs. Society, Character vs. Society

Again, let the students know that these are exactly the same and students might come across the naming of the type of conflict slightly differently, but that they all mean the main character of the story is struggling with something.

Also let the students know that vs. or v. is the word versus in abbreviated form. Some students will think you wrote the word us with a period (us. instead of vs. )and that you have messy handwriting. :)

If you are able, teach the types of conflict (as well as the elements of plot) at the beginning of the school year. This way you can go back and refer to this information as you read and experience new texts. Your students can then practice all year long.

Internal Conflict

This is probably the hardest conflict to teach and practice because it’s the hardest one to ‘see’.

Internal conflict takes place inside a character’s head and typically involves either a decision to be made or a fear that needs to be faced.

Video example for Teaching Internal Conflict

Tangled- Rapunzel’s Conflict

This is the perfect clip to show what internal conflict looks like. If you have trouble finding the clip, make sure to use one that includes Flynn Ryder’s response to Rapunzel’s up and down mood swings. Flynn’s words are the perfect words to show Rapunzel’s internal conflict:

“I couldn’t help but notice you seem a little at war with yourself.”
“Let me ease your conscience”
“You’re way over thinking this”

It is hard for reader’s to ‘see’ internal conflict and to do this we need to look for clues about these internal feelings. A character can have an internal conflict and still talk about it with other, just like Rapunzel is talking to Flynn.

Just because the conflict is the fear or decision to be made, does not require that the conflict can ONLY be thought about in the person’s head. Let students know these characters might talk to others about the problem and share what they are thinking. A character does not need to be by themselves in order for an internal conflict to exist, it is just where the conflict is located.

External Conflict

External conflict takes place between a character and some force outside the character. The outside forces include nature, event/situation or another character.

Video examples for Teaching External Conflict

Character versus character

This can look like a variety of things, physical attacks or arguments with words. Anything that causes a struggle for the main character that is created by another character in the story.

Despicable ME 3 Dance Fight– Gru faces off against Balthazar Bratt in a physical fight and a Dance Off! Students will love the absolute goofiness of Despicable Me, preview the clip as you won’t need to show the whole thing.

Character versus nature

Character versus nature occurs when the main character faces some type of struggle against a force of nature. Nature can be weather, animals, and sickness.

Man V. Nature Top 5 Tuesday– This clip has a brief overview of what Fandom Entertainment felt were the top 5 character versus nature movies (127 Hours, Alive, Jaws, Castaway, and Jurassic Park). They do a nice overview of what the nature conflict involves. This is a great overview of different types of conflict due to weather, animals, and geography, however you might want to preview the clip to make sure your class would be okay with the content being discussed as a few of these movies are rated R.

What is Human vs. Nature Conflict– This is a nice introductory video to show when introducing conflict. It only focuses on the character versus nature, but it is a nice concrete introduction.

I would really like to have a movie clip to show character versus nature with an example of sickness or health challenge, but couldn’t find one. Please share if you have one. Examples in literature include Fever: 1793, The Someday Suitcase and The Honest Truth. New From Here by Kelly Yang, published in 2022, it tells the story of a family that relocates to California from China due to the Pandemic. There are many conflicts woven throughout the story, but the Pandemic sets the stage for the entire book.

Character vs. Society

Rudy– This clip has been cut down to highlight specific points of the 1993 movie to show the challenges that Rudy faces as he wanted to play football for Notre Dame, despite not having the grades or money to attend the school.

Mulan– Mulan’s dad is called to fight in the army since there are no other men in the family. Mulan fights against society’s expectations and disguises herself to save her dad.

Examples of Character versus Society in literature include:

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow– Morrigan Crow has been the scapegoat of the society in which she lives. Having been born on the unluckiest day in an era, she is blamed for everything. There is a reason, though, that odd things seem to happen whenever she is around. If you liked Harry Potter, you will love this series!
City of Ember
Among the Hidden
Hunger Games, Divergent, Legend & The Maze Runner all have that post-apocalyptic, the world has fallen into a new order vibe.

Video examples for Internal and External Conflict

Types of Conflict in Literature– This is a great overview of internal and external conflict in literature.

Learn Types of Conflict Using TV and Movie Examples– The first minute of this clip is a little slow, but the second half has some great examples of conflict from TV and movies with a nice variety that may not have been used in other conflict YouTube clips.

Frozen- Accident in the Great Hall– This clip sets up the rest of the story in Frozen while also highlighting many different examples of conflict.

Character vs. Society- Elsa has to hide her power from the staff and town, in essence she is not free to be herself because of societies beliefs about magical powers and sorcery.
Character vs. Nature & Character vs. Character- Anna is taken to the trolls to get healed from an injury caused by Elsa’s magical powers.

Black Panther Reddit Deep Dive– Unfortunately this is not a movie clip, but does a fantastic job of detailing the different types of conflict in which the Marvel movie Black Panther covers every type of conflict possible. In my experience, most students have seen Black Panther and will be familiar with the conflicts if you discuss them with the class.

Internal Conflict VS External Conflict (Writing Advice)– This is a great video resource to use, EXCEPT for the Dexter clip as an example in the middle of this. This video was created as advice for writers looking to add depth to their own writing. The creator of this video does a nice job of going over internal and external conflict even if you don’t have any intention of writing a story. You could start the clip at about 38 seconds into the clip. He discusses Rocky, Dexter and Star Wars in that order.

Resources for Teaching Internal and External Conflict

I absolutely love the resources Lovin’ Lit has created and sells on Teachers Pay Teachers. She has some fantastic resources for teaching internal and external conflict in her Reading Interactive Notebook pack. I don’t receive and bonus for sharing the link with you, I just think it is that great of a product. Truly, Lovin’ Lit’s resources have really made me a much better reading teacher. The reason I am a fan of this product to help teach internal and external conflict are the student note pages. I like the way she has visually organized the information to help students make better connections for teaching this concept.

The only other thing I would recommend is download or making your own recording of the conflict videos. There have been a few times when I find a clip I love, only to find later that it has been removed from YouTube. I have pulled up some of my favorite clips for teaching conflict and have made a screencastify recording with my talking in the background. This is a nice way to ensure that I have exactly the clips I need and know that it will not go anywhere, while also having an amazing lesson all ready to go!