Does a story really need a villain?

[Bearman1]

So in my WIP I have realised that there is not really an overall bad guy.

There are problems for the protaganists to overcome and they are caught up in a war and there are even villainous people who oppose them. But I don't have an actual bad guy running the show. No Sauron type characters.

I'm not sure if I need one to keep the story focused and a tighter experience or if a main villain really is not needed.

What do you guys think? Do you have a main villain? What do you think are the difficulties in writing a story without one?

Thanks!

 

[Gurkhal]

There is little to no reason to why a story must have a villain and I personally appreciates grey stories far more than black-and-white stories.

For myself I don't have any villains or at least anyone that I myself identify as a villain. I have characters who are in conflict with each other and I view that conflict from one side which may or may not be better or morally superior to the other.

 

[Gryphos]

There are problems for the protaganists to overcome and they are caught up in a war and there are even villainous people who oppose them. But I don't have an actual bad guy running the show. No Sauron type characters.

Well there's never been a rule that said there needs to be one main villain. You could by al means have a story with a variety of villains for the protagonists to struggle against. So it sounds like you already have villains.

For myself I don't have any villains or at least anyone that I myself identify as a villain. I have characters who are in conflict with each other and I view that conflict from one side which may or may not be better or morally superior to the other.

See, in that context I would see whichever side doesn't have the moral high ground as the villains (at least within the context of the story). A villain doesn't have to be evil incarnate to be seen as one, and of course the best villains have some kind of redeeming quality.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

You don't need a villain.

Some may debate the need for conflict, but I believe conflict is necessary to have a story. In that light, you could have a cast of characters who are all good people with competing interests. None of them have to be villainous.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

No, the conflict, trials and struggle for the protagonists is the main thing, I don't think you need a single figurehead to be the main antagonist. So long as the story isn't a walk in the park for the characters you should be alright. An example where I think it works great would be Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In both stories Alice overcomes obstacles but there isn't really a single antagonist out to get her, though at various times the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen could be seen as taking on antagonist functions (though this is more temporary and changeable).

 

[Shreddies]

I agree with what has already been posted. I don't think you need a villain (or antagonist) for a story to have conflict.

The setting itself can be a source of conflict too. Such as war, survival in the wild, and so on.

 

[Penpilot]

No, you definitely don't need a villain, but you do need obstacles for your character to overcome.

There's a line of thinking that there are three basic stories.

Man vs. Man
Man vs. Nature
Man vs. Himself.

In two of these there's no villain.

But take note, these are very broad labels and it's just a tool to organize thoughts. Depending where your story focus is and how you execute it, you could fit almost any story under each of the labels. For example, if you had a story about a person fighting the system and the system had a figure head, then it might be the first type of story. If the system is faceless it might be the second. And finally, if the system is a reflection of the protagonist, it might be the third type of story.

A good example of a novel that has no villain is Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, which if memory serves is a Man vs Nature story.

 

[Asura Levi]

Every time I read the post title I remember of Kiki's Delivery Service from Hayao Miyazaki.

The story has no villain at all. Just an incident, yet is really catching (it is one of my favorites).
Albeit it is not exactly the type of story you're writing I think it illustrate it well. So no, you don't need a villain for a story to be good. All you need is conflict.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Try Shipwreck by Charles Logan. An excellent read until the bad ending. This is (save for the ending) a well written engaging tale of a man surviving on an alien world after crashing. It has no villains at all. It has no other characters than the MC. So obviously there's no conversation etc. There's not even that much of plot - certainly no plot twists, no mysteries to unravel. It is purely a story about the struggle to survive. And it's good - save for the afore mentioned ending.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[wordwalker]

Another recent example: Frozen. Apart from a fairly small number of scenes (powerful, but also disposable), there's no villain at all. And like Kiki's Delivery Service, it does a great job of building a story where people are simply making their own choices and pushing through the physical and emotional cost of it.

If you have a story of characters surviving with no central threat, not having a main villain makes it harder to sell, but not harder to enjoy.

 

[Mythopoet]

Another recent example: Frozen. Apart from a fairly small number of scenes (powerful, but also disposable), there's no villain at all. And like Kiki's Delivery Service, it does a great job of building a story where people are simply making their own choices and pushing through the physical and emotional cost of it.

If you have a story of characters surviving with no central threat, not having a main villain makes it harder to sell, but not harder to enjoy.

Honestly, I think Frozen would have been A LOT better if they'd lost the stupid power hungry prince (it can't be that hard to think of something else the sisters can argue over) and spent that wasted time focusing more on Elsa and her internal struggle.

 

[Steerpike]

I don't even know about conflict. There is Japanese and Chinese literature that doesn't have conflict. There's a specific name for it, but I can't remember it.

 

[Jabrosky]

I don't even know about conflict. There is Japanese and Chinese literature that doesn't have conflict. There's a specific name for it, but I can't remember it.

I believe you have kishōtenketsu in mind. At least there have been people characterizing it as potentially conflict-free.

Kishōtenketsu reflects the structure and development of Chinese and Japanese narratives. The Kishōtenketsu model looks similar to the Dramatic Arc, but consists of just four basic stages: Introduction, Development, Twist, and Conclusion. Stories using the Kishōtenketsu structure convey seemingly disconnected events that are tied together by the conclusion of the story. The distinguishing feature of Kishōtenketsu is the element of surprise brought on by the twist. The twist seems disconnected from the introduction and development of the story until the conclusion, at which point the audience begins to make connections to the crux of the story, often reframing earlier interpretations of the events. The narrative is typically left open-ended, with partial resolution. Good examples are the films Rashomon (1950) and Inception (2010).

 

[Steerpike]

Yeah, that's it exactly. I read something about it that mentioned the stories could lack conflict and I wanted to read an example but never did.

 

[Helen]

Kishōtenketsu reflects the structure and development of Chinese and Japanese narratives. The Kishōtenketsu model looks similar to the Dramatic Arc, but consists of just four basic stages: Introduction, Development, Twist, and Conclusion. Stories using the Kishōtenketsu structure convey seemingly disconnected events that are tied together by the conclusion of the story. The distinguishing feature of Kishōtenketsu is the element of surprise brought on by the twist. The twist seems disconnected from the introduction and development of the story until the conclusion, at which point the audience begins to make connections to the crux of the story, often reframing earlier interpretations of the events. The narrative is typically left open-ended, with partial resolution. Good examples are the films Rashomon (1950) and Inception (2010).

Those films are certainly not conflict-free.

 

[wordwalker]

No conflict? Not possible, if you look closely enough at what you want to write about.

The way I define it, conflict is any change (or possible change) that the characters and readers care about. A Kishōtenketsu "surprise" works just as well as an enemy. If there isn't a person who caused it, the story still becomes about how people react to it: can they see it coming? can they change it back? should they? A story might also have nothing "going wrong" at all, but just the hope and uncertainty over something getting better: did I win the lottery?

The rest is just building the story to be sure we do care about what's at stake. Life/death stakes and human enemies are easy ways to orient us in a story, but they aren't the only ones.

Maybe we should retire the word "conflict" in favor of "uncertainty" or "suspense." Anyway, there's more than one variation on the overall theme.

 

[Mythopoet]

The way I define it, conflict is any change (or possible change) that the characters and readers care about.

I'm sorry, but this makes no sense. There is a definition for conflict already. You can't just say "well, I'll define it this way because I like this definition better".

Conflict in literature is defined thus:

In literature, the literary element conflict is an inherent incompatibility between the objectives of two or more characters or forces. (wikipedia)

In literature, a conflict is a literary element that involves a struggle between two opposing forces usually a protagonist and an antagonist. (Literary Devices)

Conflict aka "the Hook": A struggle between two opposing characters or forces (Mrs. Welty's Guide to Literary Elements)

Is that enough references?

Look, if you're not looking at conflict as a struggle between opposing forces, then you're doing it wrong. That is the meaning, the nature of conflict.

 

[Steerpike]

No conflict? Not possible, if you look closely enough at what you want to write about.

I'm always leery of saying thing are not possible. The article I read on Kishōtenketsu was, I believe, an analysis written by people who study literature. It is difficult for me to believe that after going on at length about how the literature doesn't require conflict, in contrast to western literature, the authors were just so clumsy and ill-informed that they didn't understand their subject. It's possible, I suppose, but it doesn't seem likely. I'll have to seek out that article and see if they cite to some examples, since I can't really make up my mind until I read some of the work for myself. I don't think they were saying all Kishōtenketsu is without conflict, but they were pointing out that some of it has no conflict and their thesis was that conflict as a necessary part of a story is a western concept, which has since come to dominate most of literature but isn't the only way to look at things.

I don't think a change is necessarily a conflict. If I write a story about a man walking down the street at noon and he keeps walking until midnight, there has been a change (e.g. it was light, now it is dark). That's not a conflict. You could certainly tie elements of that change into a conflict (e.g. the night brings danger, for example, or the man knows he will die before the next sunrise so he's dreading the darkness, or whatever), but the fact of change alone doesn't give you a conflict.

 

[Penpilot]

The thing I always wonder about Kishōtenketsu is if conflict is implied by the situation. Eastern cultures are high context vs. Western cultures which are low. Don't understand what I'm saying. Check out this article High- and low-context cultures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basically, it says that in a high-context culture, a situation carries certain implied expectations that are never verbalized.

For example, in the west, when a dad demands to meet the boy taking his daughter out on a date before they leave. They'll chit-chat, but regardless of the surface level conversation, the implied conversation is basically this. "I know what you look like. Hurt my daughter and I'll find you."

This sort of thing applies to a greater range of social situations in Eastern cultures and can carry a larger array of implied baggage. At least that's my understanding.

 

[Devor]

I think previous discussions here of Kishōtenketsu mentioned that the conflict was between the story and the reader's expectations. Whether that's really a literary conflict is a matter of semantics - the important thing is to consider the technique. I don't know about a novel, but you can use it to great effect for a chapter.

As for a villain, I think it's pretty clear that you can have a good story without a villain. Just, why. Why. Villains are awesome. That's all I have to say.