You're three chapters in, and your manuscript feels like it's moving at a crawl. You know conflict drives stories forward, but every scene where your characters argue, fight, or confront each other head-on just... sits there. The tension feels forced. The pacing drags. You've added obstacles, raised the stakes, and thrown in a betrayal for good measure, but readers still complain about the "slow middle section."

Here's the problem: you might be using too much direct conflict.

I know that sounds counterintuitive. Aren't we supposed to torture our characters? Make things harder? But Robert McKee's Oblique Approach to conflict reveals why confrontational scenes often kill momentum rather than create it—and more importantly, how to fix your pacing by approaching conflict sideways.

What Is the Oblique Approach?

In his seminal work Story, Robert McKee distinguishes between two types of conflict delivery: direct and oblique. Direct conflict is what most writers default to—characters pursue their goals, hit obstacles, and clash openly with the forces opposing them. Character wants A, antagonist blocks A, they fight about A.

The Oblique Approach works differently. Your character pursues their goal, but the conflict emerges from an unexpected angle—a tangential problem, a secondary relationship, or a seemingly unrelated complication that indirectly prevents them from getting what they want.

McKee argues that oblique conflict often creates superior pacing because it generates surprise, complexity, and the feeling that the story world is alive and unpredictable. When conflict comes from where readers don't expect it, scenes move faster because audiences lean in to figure out the connections.

Why Direct Conflict Slows You Down

Before we dive into application, let's understand why head-on confrontation often creates pacing problems:

Predictability kills momentum. When your protagonist wants to rob a bank and immediately encounters a security guard, readers know exactly what's coming: a confrontation about robbing the bank. There's no mystery, no discovery—just an expected obstacle being expected-ly addressed.

Scenes become repetitive. Direct conflict tends to produce similar scene structures: character attempts goal → antagonist blocks → argument/fight → temporary resolution → repeat. After three or four iterations, readers feel like they're reading the same scene with different window dressing.

Emotional beats flatten. When characters always fight about the central issue, emotional variety disappears. Every scene hits the same note of frustration or anger, and that monotony reads as slow pacing even when objectively "stuff is happening."

The Oblique Approach Technique: Three-Step Redirection

Here's how to apply McKee's principle systematically to fix dragging scenes:

Step 1: Identify your character's scene goal

Write down what your character wants in the problematic scene. Be specific. Not "Sarah wants to save her relationship" but "Sarah wants Tom to admit he lied about where he was Tuesday night."

Step 2: Redirect the conflict source

Instead of blocking the goal directly, introduce conflict from a 90-degree angle—something that makes pursuing the original goal impossible or transforms it entirely. Ask: "What unexpected problem could emerge from a different part of this character's life that makes the original goal unreachable, irrelevant, or more complicated?"

The new conflict shouldn't be random—it should connect thematically or emotionally to the underlying dramatic question, even if it seems unrelated on the surface.

Step 3: Let the original goal mutate

Don't abandon the initial want. Let the oblique conflict force your character to pursue it in a completely different way, or realize they actually want something else entirely. The scene ends somewhere unexpected, which propels readers forward.

The Technique in Action: Before and After

Let's look at a concrete example from a mystery novel:

Before (Direct Conflict):

Detective Maria needs to question suspect James about the missing funds. She corners him in his office. He denies involvement. She presents evidence. He gets defensive. They argue back and forth about his guilt. He lawyers up. Scene ends.

This is competent but predictable. Readers know exactly where it's going from sentence one.

After (Oblique Approach):

Detective Maria needs to question suspect James about the missing funds. She arrives at his office to find him frantically packing boxes—he's been fired for an entirely different scandal involving workplace harassment.

Now Maria faces unexpected conflict: James is too distracted by his immediate catastrophe to focus on her questions. She can't officially question him about the harassment (different jurisdiction). The office is chaos—HR is escorting him out, colleagues are gossiping.

Maria's goal mutates: instead of extracting a confession, she must convince James that helping her with the financial investigation is his only path to redemption. The scene becomes about negotiation and manipulation, not interrogation. We end with an unexpected alliance—James will help find the real embezzler to prove he's not completely corrupt.

Notice what happened: the pacing accelerated because readers couldn't predict the shape of the scene. The emotional texture changed (desperation and bargaining replace defensiveness). And we learned more about both characters than a direct confrontation would have revealed.

Practical Applications for Your Manuscript

For sagging romance scenes: Instead of another fight about commitment, have your commitment-phobe discover they need their partner's help with a sick parent. Now the commitment question gets explored through action and sacrifice, not another circular argument.

For stalled thriller scenes: Your spy needs to steal documents from an office. Instead of guards or alarms (direct), she discovers the documents are written in a code that her ex-husband invented—the ex she's spent three chapters avoiding. Now personal and professional conflicts collide obliquely.

For repetitive fantasy quests: Your hero needs the wizard's help defeating the dark lord. Instead of "I won't help you" (direct refusal), the wizard is in the middle of a magical crisis that's slowly transforming him into a tree. The hero must solve the wizard's problem first, learning crucial skills that will matter in the final battle.

When to Use Which Approach

The Oblique Approach isn't superior in all situations. Use direct conflict for climactic scenes, when delivering on built-up tension, or when you need brutal clarity. The final confrontation should probably be head-on.

Use oblique conflict when:
- You're in the middle sections and pacing drags
- You've had several direct confrontations in a row
- The emotional dynamics feel stale
- You want to reveal character through pressure from unexpected angles
- You need to complicate the story without introducing random new plot threads

The Payoff

McKee's Oblique Approach isn't about avoiding conflict—it's about making conflict less predictable and more revealing. When you attack your character's goals from unexpected angles, scenes become discovery processes for both character and reader. That sense of "I don't know what happens next" is what makes pages turn.

Next time you're facing a scene that drags, don't add more direct obstacles. Redirect the conflict. Come at your character sideways. You might find that the fastest route through your story isn't a straight line—it's a surprise turn that makes readers speed up to see where you're taking them.