What Can We Learn From Encanto?

As writers, what can we learn from Encanto? 

There is a reason why Encanto is so popular and well-loved. It has beautiful animation, great music, and it tells a very compelling story. Today, I’m going to look at Encanto and see what new writing skills we can learn from it. 

After watching Encanto for the fourth (or was it the fifth?) time, I dug up some of my old writing projects. I found one story that was accompanied with an outline. Looking at the outline, the story looked like it would actually be pretty good. There was a character who had fears and desires. I’d used K.M. Weiland’s Creating Character Arcs book to divvy out an arc for this character. 

But when I wrote out the story, something got lost in translation. My character went from dealing with internal struggles and growing to simply staying the same. The story was slow and boring. Nothing happened. The plot was made up of day-to-day life, with the character hardly growing as the story progressed. 

What went wrong? How did my well rounded outline turn into a slow, boring story? 

Imagine what Encanto would be like without the candle fading and Mirabel trying to figure out why. Imagine if it only depicted day-to-day life, with no inciting events or obstacles. Encanto would be really boring, right? 

In my early story, I was missing a few important pieces, the main one being conflict. I had plenty of internal conflict, with a nice character arc mapped out, but I needed something different. My story flopped because I needed external conflict. 

But first, why don’t we clarify what internal and external conflicts are? 

Internal Conflict 

• Internal conflict happens on the inside. 
• It might be something that a character struggles with or tries to overcome. 
• Character arcs, whether they are positive, negative, or flat arcs, are all really good examples of internal conflict. 
• Internal conflict could also be a character’s backstory or past. 
• Or even a character’s internal thoughts about the people surrounding them. 
• Internal conflict can help drive the theme, along with making your story emotional and meaningful. 

External Conflict 

• External conflict happens on the outside. 
• This is usually a big group of events that make up your story’s plot. 
• It affects side characters too. 
• It could be a conflict between two warring kingdoms. 
• Or a certain battle a character needs to win. 

External Conflict and Internal Conflict Work Together 

External conflict and internal conflict are two very important, but very different parts of storytelling. You need internal conflict to add an emotional connection to your story. Real life humans struggle with many different things, and so your characters need to struggle too. External conflict helps move the story. It can also help put your character in situations where they grow and start to work through their internal conflict. Without external conflict, your character can’t push past their comfort zone and change. 

In my story, I was missing external conflict. Without external events happening, the story was slow and boring, and my character couldn’t change. 

Conflicts in Encanto 

• Encanto begins with little Mirabel, who doesn’t get a gift. (External conflict) 
• Years later, she grapples with being less special than everyone else in her family, almost in denial. (Internal conflict) 
• Mirabel’s close friend and cousin, Antonio, gets a gift (External conflict) 
• She struggles with feeling different than the rest of her family even more. (Internal conflict) 
• Mirabel sees cracks start to form in her family’s home, and embarks on a mission to figure out why. (External conflict) 
• She learns more about her family history and her long lost Uncle Bruno, eventually finding one of his visions. She decides that she wants to bring Bruno back into the family (Internal conflict) 
• Mirabel messes up her sister’s proposal (External conflict) 
• And then Mirabel and Abuela get into a big fight, causing Mirabel to run away. (Internal conflict) 
• The Casita starts to crack and fall (External conflict)
•  Mirabel and Abuela apologize and forgive each other (Internal conflict) 
• The house is rebuilt (External conflict) 
• And the Madrigals’ relationships rebuilt tool. (Internal conflict) 

Inside, Mirabel grows past her desire to have a gift like the rest of her family. She finds acceptance and repairs the wounded relationships in her family. 

But she couldn’t have done that without the external events pushing her towards that change. 

So the next time you are struggling to show internal change and conflict, try using external conflict to make it clear.

What kinds of things have you learned from Encanto? Do you have any favorite examples of external and internal conflict? Thanks for reading, have a great rest of your day! 

-Hannah

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