In addition to characters, every story must have a plot, or events that occur. Think of your favorite book. What if none of the events in that book happened? Take away the plot, and the characters would just be sitting around doing nothing. Would it still be your favorite book? Of course not, it would be the most boring read ever! Every story needs a plot or events that give the characters something to react to. Usually, the plot consists of five components: the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
One of the most important components of a story is the conflict. A conflict is any struggle between opposing forces. Imagine a story where there were no problems. The characters simply lived their happy lives with no troubles and nothing difficult to deal with. Would that story interest you? Probably not. Conflict is very important to creating interest in stories.
Usually, the main conflict is between the protagonist and the antagonist, but that is not always the case. The struggles can exist between society, within a character, or even with acts of nature. There are two basic types of conflict: internal and external. Internal conflicts are the struggles that occur within a character, and external conflicts are the struggles outside of a character. These can occur between two characters, between characters and society, or between characters and natural events