What Editors Mean When They Say “Conflict Feels Manufactured”

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Maya Bairey is the founder of Lingua Ink Media, a hybrid press for underrepresented authors. After publishing her own novel, she unexpectedly fell in love with the process. With 30 years of experience in corporate digital marketing, she found the skills transferred, and the mission inspired her. Today, she helps other writers bring their stories to life through real publishing and real partnership.

Quick Answers

What does “manufactured conflict” mean in fiction?
It means the obstacles in your story feel imposed by the author rather than arising naturally from character and situation. Readers sense the puppet strings.

Why do editors reject for manufactured conflict?
Because it breaks immersion. When readers can see you engineering problems to stretch the plot, they stop believing in the story. That’s fatal for emotional investment.

How do I know if my conflict is manufactured?
Ask whether your characters could resolve the problem easily if they just behaved reasonably. If the answer is yes, and the only reason they don’t is because you need more pages, that’s manufactured.

Can the miscommunication trope ever work?
Yes, when the inability to communicate stems from character. If your protagonist can’t have the honest conversation because they haven’t transformed enough yet, that’s earned. If they just don’t because it would end the book, that’s manufactured.

The Real Problem Behind the Note

Let’s be clear about what “manufactured” actually flags. It’s not that you invented conflict. Of course you did, fiction is invention. The problem is that the seams are showing. The reader or editor can feel the author’s hand moving the pieces rather than watching characters struggle against obstacles that genuinely block them.

In my reading for Lingua Ink, I see a few manuscripts that trigger this note. Here’s what’s usually going on.

The Easy Fix They Won’t Take

This is the miscommunication trope done badly. Characters who could resolve everything with one honest conversation but don’t, for no reason rooted in who they are. The problem isn’t the trope. It’s the missing why.

Compare that to a character whose inability to speak is the wound. A woman who learned to make herself small doesn’t just suddenly advocate for her needs. A man who’s never had to listen won’t hear the first time someone asks. That’s not manufactured. That’s the whole story. I explore this distinction in depth in my companion post, Not Every Miscommunication Trope Is a Plot Device.

The Convenient Interruption

Characters are about to have the crucial conversation when the phone rings or the car alarm goes off. Once, okay. Repeatedly, and readers feel cheated. The interruption isn’t earning the delay. It’s just stealing pages.

The fix: make the interruption matter. If something external stops the conversation, that external event should have its own consequences. It can’t just serve as a pause button. The phone call should bring news that changes everything. If your interruption could be deleted without affecting anything else in the story, it’s filler.

The Secret Kept for No Reason

A character withholds information that, if shared, would resolve the plot. But there’s no believable reason for the secrecy. They’re not protecting anyone. They’re not ashamed. They just… don’t mention it.

I recently read a submission where the entire third act hinged on a character not mentioning she’d already met the hero’s mother. There was no reason for the secrecy. She just didn’t bring it up. That’s the secret doing plot work instead of character work.

Secrets land when the keeping of them reveals something. What are they afraid of? What does the silence protect? Maybe the secret isn’t shameful, but admitting it would require a vulnerability they’ve spent their whole life avoiding. If you can’t answer why they’re hiding it, the secret isn’t earning its place.

The External Obstacle That Vanishes

A big external problem creates tension: the loan is due, the rival is threatening, the storm is coming. But then it resolves too easily or just stops being mentioned. This usually means the external conflict was standing in for internal conflict you didn’t want to write.

The fix: internal and external obstacles should connect. The external problem pressures the internal wound. The internal growth enables solving the external problem. They’re not separate tracks running in parallel. They’re the same story, told on two levels. When external stakes vanish without internal consequences, readers notice the scaffolding.

What Earned Conflict Looks Like

Earned conflict arises from character. The obstacles exist because of who these people are, what they fear, what they’ve learned to do to survive. Resolving the conflict requires them to become someone new. That’s the shape of a story that lands.

One test I use when reading submissions: can the writer complete the sentence “My character can’t get what they want until they ___”? If the blank fills with something the character will resist, something that costs them, you have real conflict. If the blank fills with “waits long enough” or “gets more information,” you’re looking at manufactured obstacles.

Erin Halden, writing on Jane Friedman’s site, names lack of clarity on conflict as one of the most common problems she sees as a developmental editor. The Mythcreants analysis of contrived conflict in popular stories is worth reading, if only to see how even professional productions get this wrong.

Moving Forward

When we read submissions at Lingua Ink, we’re looking for conflict that costs something. Obstacles that come from inside the characters. If you’re working on a manuscript and wondering whether your conflict is earning its place, we’d love to take a look.

And if you’ve gotten this note before and felt stung by it, know that you’re in good company. Most of us have written the convenient interruption, the argument that a single sentence could solve. The question isn’t whether you’ve made these moves. It’s whether you’re ready to dig deeper.