Helen
Inkling
It has a place in a debate about scene conflict, whether every action, event or scene needs conflict. But it's not a story in the sense everyone means - a novel or film.
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Do you need conflict?
- Thread starter Steerpike
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It has a place in a debate about scene conflict, whether every action, event or scene needs conflict. But it's not a story in the sense everyone means - a novel or film.
Ophiucha
Auror
As I said, a rather simple example.
I have read short stories, at least, that managed that same structure quite effectively for ten to twenty pages. I don't think it is easy, perhaps even possible, to write a story where no conflict could be concocted by the reader, filling in blanks that the writer never meant to leave on the page. And certainly a novel-length work without even the rarest, minor conflict of 'getting cut in line at the grocer's' or something equally mundane would be a challenge I'd leave to the lit fic writers.
But I don't think it is impossible. Particularly if you structure the novel in a way that obscures truths from the reader. For an idea of a fantasy novel, one could tell the story without revealing aspects of the worldbuilding that are essential to understanding the situation. A story with some mystery to it that only comes together once you tell the readers, at the 'climax', "as you know, in Galitorna all dogs can read minds if they drink their owner's blood" and it just makes everything that came before it make sense. Maybe not telepathic vampire canines, specifically, but you get my drift.
I have read short stories, at least, that managed that same structure quite effectively for ten to twenty pages. I don't think it is easy, perhaps even possible, to write a story where no conflict could be concocted by the reader, filling in blanks that the writer never meant to leave on the page. And certainly a novel-length work without even the rarest, minor conflict of 'getting cut in line at the grocer's' or something equally mundane would be a challenge I'd leave to the lit fic writers.
But I don't think it is impossible. Particularly if you structure the novel in a way that obscures truths from the reader. For an idea of a fantasy novel, one could tell the story without revealing aspects of the worldbuilding that are essential to understanding the situation. A story with some mystery to it that only comes together once you tell the readers, at the 'climax', "as you know, in Galitorna all dogs can read minds if they drink their owner's blood" and it just makes everything that came before it make sense. Maybe not telepathic vampire canines, specifically, but you get my drift.
Feo Takahari
Auror
I've been thinking some more about what people actually mean when they ask this question, and I'd like to reverse course a bit.
On another writing site, an author posted that if your character's afraid of dogs, you can't just have the conflict be that she's dating a guy who owns a dog; she needs to face down an attack dog. According to her, conflicts need to be tense and in-your-face. I commented that I prefer subtle, understated conflicts, and she replied that, while there's nothing inherently wrong with subtletly, stories without an obviously tense hook aren't marketable in today's short-attention-span society.
It's not just that I think this idea is misguided. I think this idea is actively harmful.
The author outlined her attack dog idea in detail, talking all about how she would build tension before allowing the protagonist to triumph, but it just didn't seem like a story that said much. It was pure sound and fury, with no deeper concept behind it. I wouldn't go so far as to say that a meaningful story needs to be low-tension, but I think the scenes that create meaning for the characters' goals tend to be lower-tension than the scenes that test the characters in their progression towards their goals. If you try to make your story all tension all the time, people will read through it in a rush, then forget about it five minutes later, and I don't think that's what art is really about.
I think that's why people keep asking this question of "Do you need conflict?" What they really mean is "Do you need attack dogs? Or is a boyfriend with a dog a big enough conflict for a story?"
On another writing site, an author posted that if your character's afraid of dogs, you can't just have the conflict be that she's dating a guy who owns a dog; she needs to face down an attack dog. According to her, conflicts need to be tense and in-your-face. I commented that I prefer subtle, understated conflicts, and she replied that, while there's nothing inherently wrong with subtletly, stories without an obviously tense hook aren't marketable in today's short-attention-span society.
It's not just that I think this idea is misguided. I think this idea is actively harmful.
The author outlined her attack dog idea in detail, talking all about how she would build tension before allowing the protagonist to triumph, but it just didn't seem like a story that said much. It was pure sound and fury, with no deeper concept behind it. I wouldn't go so far as to say that a meaningful story needs to be low-tension, but I think the scenes that create meaning for the characters' goals tend to be lower-tension than the scenes that test the characters in their progression towards their goals. If you try to make your story all tension all the time, people will read through it in a rush, then forget about it five minutes later, and I don't think that's what art is really about.
I think that's why people keep asking this question of "Do you need conflict?" What they really mean is "Do you need attack dogs? Or is a boyfriend with a dog a big enough conflict for a story?"
Okay, so if I get you right, what you want to ask is really "how much conflict do you need?"
I can see where the argument about low key conflict not being marketable comes from. I don't like it, but I can see where it's coming from.
Almost all books I've read in recent years have had some kind of spectacular action as part of the conflict (Harry Dresden riding an animated T-Rex skeleton through downtown Chicago comes to mind). I think that as far as marketing goes that may be what's needed.
The one book I did read that did not have spectacular action (attack dogs) was one I'd never have bought on my own. My sister sent it in the mail for some reason and asked me to read it:
It was a nice and pleasant little story about two sisters going to a wedding and picking up their brother and his annoying wife. They then proceeded to convince the brother to run off with them (just for the weekend) and go see a favorite old uncle or something. There was no action whatsoever, but it was still a pleasant read with appealing characters and a friendly feel. I liked it a lot.
Trouble is: I have no idea how anyone would market a book like that to someone like me.
EDIT: It was this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Away...8&qid=1386624078&sr=8-9&keywords=Anna+Gavalda
I can see where the argument about low key conflict not being marketable comes from. I don't like it, but I can see where it's coming from.
Almost all books I've read in recent years have had some kind of spectacular action as part of the conflict (Harry Dresden riding an animated T-Rex skeleton through downtown Chicago comes to mind). I think that as far as marketing goes that may be what's needed.
The one book I did read that did not have spectacular action (attack dogs) was one I'd never have bought on my own. My sister sent it in the mail for some reason and asked me to read it:
It was a nice and pleasant little story about two sisters going to a wedding and picking up their brother and his annoying wife. They then proceeded to convince the brother to run off with them (just for the weekend) and go see a favorite old uncle or something. There was no action whatsoever, but it was still a pleasant read with appealing characters and a friendly feel. I liked it a lot.
Trouble is: I have no idea how anyone would market a book like that to someone like me.
EDIT: It was this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Away...8&qid=1386624078&sr=8-9&keywords=Anna+Gavalda
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GeekDavid
Auror
For what it's worth, one of my favorite sci-fi series has very low conflict in most of the books.
The "Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper" is a series of six books that follow a young man through the world of interstellar shipping. There are no space battles (large or small), no weapons are mentioned that I recall, and in most of the books, not even a fistfight.
Yet this coming-of-age tale has (as of this time) 220 five-star reviews for the first book, Quarter Share. While there are those who've said things like:
...you also have reviews like:
In other words, low-conflict stories can be worthwhile and successful, though like most things not everyone will like them.
However, I hasten to point out that low conflict is not the same as no conflict.
Snowpoint
Sage
I think we are talking about dozens of different genres, each with different needs.
Literature can go to a museum, look at paintings, feel sad, and call that conflict. And while that is a legitimate thing in Literature, it would be cut from the theatrical cut of Lethal Weapon 2. Because LW2 has a different genre, different audience, different goals.
Now, I write fantasy stories with magic protagonists. I also read books in that narrow field. Going to a museum to look at paintings is not something I would keep in the final draft. Accidentally setting fire to the museum WOULD be interesting -especially if the character DID go to the museum to look at paintings. Accidentally destroying the things you love is a great conflict for a book.
Literature can go to a museum, look at paintings, feel sad, and call that conflict. And while that is a legitimate thing in Literature, it would be cut from the theatrical cut of Lethal Weapon 2. Because LW2 has a different genre, different audience, different goals.
Now, I write fantasy stories with magic protagonists. I also read books in that narrow field. Going to a museum to look at paintings is not something I would keep in the final draft. Accidentally setting fire to the museum WOULD be interesting -especially if the character DID go to the museum to look at paintings. Accidentally destroying the things you love is a great conflict for a book.
Benjamin Clayborne
Auror
I think it's possible to have a story about someone simply changing as they get older, without encountering any particular form of conflict, aside from those ordinary types we encounter on a daily basis. I just don't usually find such stories particularly interesting. Occasionally such stories can contain pearls of wisdom, or some insight that I find meaningful, but they aren't what I want to fill my days with.
As LeGuin puts it:
Stories with abstract, arcane plots, or musings on the meaning of life, are probably not what beginning writers should be attempting to master. Start with the easy stuff first. You wouldn't expect a novice architect to design a skyscraper. Write a one-room building before you start writing a skyscraper.
As LeGuin puts it:
Stories with abstract, arcane plots, or musings on the meaning of life, are probably not what beginning writers should be attempting to master. Start with the easy stuff first. You wouldn't expect a novice architect to design a skyscraper. Write a one-room building before you start writing a skyscraper.
Feo Takahari
Auror
Then maybe I'm not writing in the same genre?
I guess I have to get personal for this one. My book Kids These Days has a fairly straightforward division between raids against monsters (which advance the plot) and strategy meetings (which are more about character-building.) There's certainly plenty of death-defying action in the raids, but the strategy meetings felt more interesting to write. Three personalities bouncing off each other, arguing and pranking each other and slowly developing a mutual understanding, felt more like something people would want to read than just scenes of killing monsters. In fact, even in the monster-killing scenes, the parts I most enjoyed writing were the parts that reminded me of the strategy meetings.
Maybe no one else is interested in this book--after all, I haven't been able to publish it yet. But I don't feel like I would have made it more interesting if I'd amped up the tension and cut out the strategy meetings.
This might be a stupid question, but wouldn't epic fantasy be the skyscraper? I've never fought in a battle for the fate of the world, and I don't really know how to create meaning or interest on that scale. It feels so much easier to me to write on a micro level, dealing with the passions of mostly normal people who've been pushed into slightly abnormal lives. (A bit like me, although my tensions are more along the lines of "I have a hard time thinking like a normal person" than "I've suddenly sprouted wings.")
Maybe there's such a thing as grass root fantasy?
Jokes aside. There might be.
My WIP, is far from what you'd call action packed. Admittedly, I struggle a lot with the tension as I have/had a limited grasp on it, but whether I'm succeeding or not isn't the main thing. The main thing is that I'm trying to create a pleasant and laid-back, escapist reading experience without involving grandiose schemes or spectacular heroic deeds.
It's still a fantasy story. It's taking place in a fantasy world with elves and magic and mysterious dancing monks, but the story isn't about that; it's about a guy who goes on vacation and who eventually meets a girl. I'm trying to bring the world to life by showing it through the eyes of one of its regular inhabitants.
There's conflict and there's tension (or at least there's meant to be once it's actually done), but Enar is more worried about the locals making fun of him than about the witch turning him into a goat.
I don't know who will want to read this book and I'm not sure I'll be able to sell it to more than friends and family (yeah, I'll probably give them free copies), but I'm quite convinced that there are people out there who would enjoy it if they just got started on it.
Helen
Inkling
Conflict is a function of change.
Look at ANNIE HALL. There are no attack dogs. It's about her changing. And the story is riddled with conflict.
To say that a story has no conflict is to imply that there is no change, no escalation, no stakes, no difference of beliefs, no obstacle, no problem, no resistance, no opposition, no meaningful goal, no arc, and so much more.
AnneL
Closed Account
The way I've always taken Le Guin on conflict is that the conflict can be quiet, not bombastic Hollywood style explosions. Her book Tehanu is a good example of quiet conflict, where a lot of the story is women doing domestic things (e.g. cooking, caring for children) instead of warriors cutting off heads. I think a lot of her thoughts on story and conflict are based on her sense that women's actions are not valorized the way men's are, and that thinking differently about conflict opens up a space for a different story that is not MAN vs. Something. That doesn't mean it has no tension.
Snowpoint
Sage
Strategy meetings are conflict. Look at Game of Thrones. 70% of the series is Political Science. People planning to do terrible things, then doing them. Ideas and plans are being weighed against each other. Hard choices are being made.
The problem is when a book reads like a diary. It is just a history of things that never happened.
Feo Takahari
Auror
I guess I shouldn't be picking a fight with someone who mostly agrees with me, but I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with the gendering of that argument. I mean, it's not like nonviolent conflict is off limits for male characters.
You're right of course. Men too are capable of non-violent conflict. I think it's more of an exaggerated argument to make a point.
Edit: let's try not to put too much emphasis on the gender/diversity side of things. It'd be real easy for the thread to derail into something else from that.
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Jabrosky
Banned
I plead guilty that the conflicts that come most naturally to me are blatantly external, especially the kind of violent and physical confrontations that you expect from an action movie. Anything subtle, psychological, or internal just doesn't have that gut appeal to me. My best guess is that this is because physical conflicts are easier for me to visualize than internal, psychological ones since I have a hard time reading and understanding other people's thoughts anyway.
AnneL
Closed Account
Not saying I agree with the gendering, but that's where I see Le Guin coming from. I agree it's not necessary or desireable for this particular thread to go down that path.
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wordwalker
Auror
Everything is conflict.
"Smaller" stories just try to focus in tighter, but "can he get used to retirement?" is as valid a form of conflict as "can he save the world?" The only stories with no conflict are the ones with nothing at all to care about or no uncertainty about how it'll come out-- or the ones that have them but muddle them.
The only problem here is that Lady LeGuin is the latest person to talk about her taste in writing terms as if certain things were separate, not different points on an organic continuum.
"I define plot as a form of story which uses..." --no. Just no. In fact, even among the many people who always find ways to denigrate plot, that's more idiosyncratic than most. I'm all in favor of fine subtleties in stories (especially people who write ones like Tehanu), but I wish she wouldn't go into Humpty Dumpty territory and say "a word means what I say it means." Not when it directly contradicts how the rest of us use it, and not when there are real writers all too willing to believe there can be a qualitative, not just a quantitative, split between these styles.
Recently I advised a friend that his gentle tale of a family coping with loss had left its plot a bit unclear, and he came back with "But it's not about the war they died in, it's about the family." Of course that tale was about the family, but if we--as communicators--don't keep in mind how much "plot" and "conflict" really have room to include, how are we supposed to connect them together right in a story, let alone talk about them?
End rant.
"Smaller" stories just try to focus in tighter, but "can he get used to retirement?" is as valid a form of conflict as "can he save the world?" The only stories with no conflict are the ones with nothing at all to care about or no uncertainty about how it'll come out-- or the ones that have them but muddle them.
The only problem here is that Lady LeGuin is the latest person to talk about her taste in writing terms as if certain things were separate, not different points on an organic continuum.
"I define plot as a form of story which uses..." --no. Just no. In fact, even among the many people who always find ways to denigrate plot, that's more idiosyncratic than most. I'm all in favor of fine subtleties in stories (especially people who write ones like Tehanu), but I wish she wouldn't go into Humpty Dumpty territory and say "a word means what I say it means." Not when it directly contradicts how the rest of us use it, and not when there are real writers all too willing to believe there can be a qualitative, not just a quantitative, split between these styles.
Recently I advised a friend that his gentle tale of a family coping with loss had left its plot a bit unclear, and he came back with "But it's not about the war they died in, it's about the family." Of course that tale was about the family, but if we--as communicators--don't keep in mind how much "plot" and "conflict" really have room to include, how are we supposed to connect them together right in a story, let alone talk about them?
End rant.
Benjamin Clayborne
Auror
I don't know if there's any particular use in separating story and plot into two different things. People seem to use them interchangeably. You can find articles that define story one way and plot another, and other articles which give the same definitions but swap the terms. I think from now on I'm only going to refer to story and just ignore the word "plot" altogether, or maybe just use them as completely interchangeable synonyms.
I'm not going to bind conflict to story, even though almost all stories I enjoy have intense (usually violent) conflict in them. You could have a story about a woman who goes swimming at the beach and enjoys herself, then goes to the store, then goes home and makes dinner. It's not a very interesting story, but it's a series of events, which (to me) is all that's fundamentally necessary for a story.
I think we all agree at this point that "conflict" can mean any time someone is prevented from getting what they want, even if that's relatively quiet and low-key (a man who can never quite get over having gone to business school instead of art school, like he really wanted) or violent and bombastic (mutant space lizards invade Lunar Base Alpha).
Also, I think that Spielberg nailed the basic kinds of stories:
I'm not going to bind conflict to story, even though almost all stories I enjoy have intense (usually violent) conflict in them. You could have a story about a woman who goes swimming at the beach and enjoys herself, then goes to the store, then goes home and makes dinner. It's not a very interesting story, but it's a series of events, which (to me) is all that's fundamentally necessary for a story.
I think we all agree at this point that "conflict" can mean any time someone is prevented from getting what they want, even if that's relatively quiet and low-key (a man who can never quite get over having gone to business school instead of art school, like he really wanted) or violent and bombastic (mutant space lizards invade Lunar Base Alpha).
Epic fantasy is difficult only because of the scale and the amount of detail involved. Epic fantasy stories tend to be about pretty straightforward conflicts (evil overlord wants to rule, heroes want to stop him), although they don't have to be. I agree with GRRM that "epic fantasy" is more about the window dressing than the actual story itself. What's the fundamental difference between A Song of Ice and Fire and any other large-scale story of political intrigue and war?Feo Takahari said:
Also, I think that Spielberg nailed the basic kinds of stories:
- man vs. man
- man vs. nature
- nature vs. nature
- dog vs. vampire
wordwalker
Auror
You know, I take the opposite approach about the words "story" and "plot." To me, plot is still the general course of whatever happens, but "story"... that's the word everyone uses so differently, I've decided it means "the whole shebang, and therefore it just means Something In The Story Worked (or didn't), but he just isn't clarifying what until he's ready to." Everyone does have their own idea for what the word is and what it's contrasted to, but as long as they spell those out, it's no problem. If they don't say it, I figure it means the plot.
It's too easy to say "story" and never get around to which level we have in mind, so I hope we're careful there.
It's too easy to say "story" and never get around to which level we have in mind, so I hope we're careful there.
- Thread starter
- #40
E.M. Forster famously opined:
Story is “the king died and then the queen died.” Plot is “the king died and then the queen died of grief.”
By that view, the story is merely a sequence of events, where the plot ties those events together causally and gives meaning to them.
I don't entirely agree, but it's a well-known example and one that I see a lot of writers subscribe to.
Story is “the king died and then the queen died.” Plot is “the king died and then the queen died of grief.”
By that view, the story is merely a sequence of events, where the plot ties those events together causally and gives meaning to them.
I don't entirely agree, but it's a well-known example and one that I see a lot of writers subscribe to.
