Quiet conflict

We're always told that stories must have conflict, but we're not as often told that conflict can come in many forms. It doesn't need to be  high-octane battle scenes, it can be much quieter in nature.

I'm thinking about this in the novel I'm currently editing.  Its central premise is a character going on a riddle quest to prevent another character gaining knowledge that would wipe her family out.  And a lot  of the conflict in the novel is either internal to the characters, or quite quiet.

In my book the defining conflict between characters  exists in the form of my main character pushing to find the riddle objects first to deny the antagonist their knowledge.  But my protagonist has many quiet conflict scenes where she and other characters are disagreeing in their discussions.  

A lot of these disagreements are about her brother.  He left his family two years ago, joined the antagonist's criminal gang, and got addicted to drugs.  He threatens my protagonist with a knife to her throat at the start of the book, and she isn't willing to forgive him for that.  She has several heated discussions with people who think she should forgive her brother, examples of quieter conflict.

Turning to the brother's story, the conflict there is mainly within him.  He is a talented artist, but his military father refused to recognise his talent and tried to force his son into military service.  Father and son rowed constantly during the year before the son left.  This conflict is what drives the son to leave home.  He is an easy target for the antagonist, who quickly gets him hooked on drugs.

Later the brother escapes from the antagonist's gang.  He wants  to be reinstated into his birth family,  but convinces himself that his sister will never forgive him for putting that knife to her throat.  He constantly beats himself up about the mistakes he's made.  That internal conflict eventually drives him to enroll on a security training course, in an attempt to acquire skills which would be useful to his family, and might persuade his sister to let him come home.

Identifying my characters' conflicts in this novel has shown me that a lot of them are quiet conflicts.  It's also shown me that quiet conflict can be as effective for moving the story on as the biggest battle scene.