Quiet conflict

 This week I received a rejection for a short story where the editor felt there wasn't enough conflict in the story.  I really, really, don't agree with that opinion.   The story doesn't have shoot-out conflict in it.  It has quiet conflict.

The main character is the project manager of a team building a hypergate above a planet settled by aliens. The gate keeps getting sabotaged, and it turns out that the person doing the sabotaging is the alien the project manager thinks is a good friend.  That's one source of conflict in the story.

A second source of conflict comes from the alien.  He has been ordered by his superiors to sabotage the gate.  Some female aliens have been raped by the humans, and the female aliens on their council have ordered the sabotage to keep their women safe.  This puts the alien in conflict with his human friend.

A third source of conflict is between the project manager and his superiors back on Earth.  His project is falling behind schedule, and he is under pressure to finish the gate in time - or be fired from his job.

So there's quite a lot of conflict going on in the story, it just isn't the big fight type of external conflict.  It's quiet conflict: people betraying their friends' trust, or being subjected to impossible demands they can't meet.

I think quiet conflict is just as important - and powerful - as outright shooting matches.  Carolyn Wheat in her book How to Write Killer Fiction says: "scenes involve conflict.  Not necessarily shove-a-gun-in-someone's-face conflict, but at the very least a sense of the characters being at odds in some way.". Is there that kind of conflict in my story?  Why, yes, there is.

Scott Meredith, in his book Writing to Sell, says "The conflict may be external... and it may be inward, as in man's mental struggle against himself." This admits the possibility that a quiet struggle, maybe of the character in conflict with himself, is enough to drive a story forward.

So no, I really don't agree with that editor's assessment of my story.  This story has been edited several times and rewritten twice, and I am confident that it works just fine as it's written.  What this reader's comment means is that they didn't like the story.  Fair enough, but I wish they'd just send a bland rejection rather than trying to justify their decision in a way I really don't think is valid.

I will keep my quiet conflict in this story, thank you, and submit it elsewhere.