In the short stories, “The Good Corn” written by H.E. Bates and “The Great Leapfrog Contest” by William Saroyan techniques such as characters, point of view, setting and structure work together to explore the issue of personal conflict and establish tension between the main characters in each story. An examination of these techniques allow a more enhanced reading of the texts and in turn evoke a particular response from the reader. In the short story “The Good Corn” there are three main characters which are portrayed in such a way as to allow a tension and personal confli