I’ve discovered that my Bromeliad blooms when I deprive it of water. 

I’m not a horticulturist.  I actually have a black thumb when it comes to plants.  I discovered this fact because I just forget to water the darned thing sometimes.  Well, a lot actually.  Anyway, too much drought and it will die.  Regular consistent water and it won’t bloom.  It will have lush green leaves, it will be comfortable and happy, but it won’t bloom.  It takes deprivation, pain, conflict to force the plant to bloom.

That’s true with our characters.  Transformative growth doesn’t happen when everything is going along peachy keen.  The kind of growth that creates heroes, entrepreneurs, or works of art requires change.  Not little tiny change, like substituting non-dairy creamer for milk in your coffee, big change.  The change that causes heart palpitations and sweaty palms.  Not many are willing, like the Fool in the tarot deck, to walk blithely over the edge of that cliff, we need a push.  And that push is conflict.

When I draw my conflict grid for my novel, I’m outlining the opposition of desires in my protagonist and antagonist.  What do each of them want?  What stands in the way of achieving it?  The clash of competing desires is what supports the entire book, what drives the story forward to resolution.  But how does this conflict affect the characters?  Do they bloom?  Are they severely damaged, withered and brown?  Do they remain green and lush in the face of conflict?   

Sometimes the protagonist remains unchanged by horrific conflict; it’s the antagonist who is changed, perhaps even redeemed.   In a more depressing scenario, the protagonist can be so traumatized by the conflict that they are changed in a terrible way.  More commonly, the protagonist blooms.  He finds those undiscovered strengths and talents deep within, triumphs over the conflict, and ends the story a better person than he began.

So in addition to my conflict grid, and my base outline, I’ve started putting together a change flow chart for my characters.  (Yeah, I know, it sounds very MBA.)  This flow chart shows my characters at the beginning of the novel, how they change as the conflict presses upon them, and who they are at the end of the novel.  It’s not set in stone.  I’ve had characters do unexpected things halfway through the book and wind up a different person than I originally intended them to be.  I let these characters grow, but update my chart to reflect the new them.  And at the end, I see get to see the blooms.  What a reward!