Conflict/Headscratchers


 * Why exactly does every story have to force constant conflict all the time? You can get as much interest and even Character Development from a simple Seinfeldian Conversation then to bring out the Conflict Ball. More importantly I don't see how you really need a conflict at all. Slice of Life stories sure don't need it for example. Despite what literature majors may say, conflict isn't the most important part of a story. It's important to do SOMETHING to move a story along, but conflict is only one way to do it.
 * What other way would you use to have character development? Conflict is everywhere, and even Slice of Life stories use it to deepen and broaden the characterisation- a character gets hungry but isn't able to pay for food (Man vs. Environment), a character tries to gain the notice of another character (Man vs. Man). If characters are not in conflict, either with each other or with a third thing, there is no reason to read the story. Most Seinfeldian Conversations are based around some form of conflict- one character trying to convince another one of their viewpoint, or the two characters struggling to come to grips with something that is difficult to grasp- in both of those, there is conflict, either between the two characters or between the characters and their own inability to comprehend something. In other words, Man vs. Man and Man vs. Self. If you can give me an honestly conflictless story, I will listen.
 * That is true to an extent, but how many Seinfeldian Conversations create lasting and meaningful conflict in the overall story? Slice of Life-style shows often deal with conflict but not as a driving force. What is the central conflict driving, for example, Lucky Star? I am not trying to say conflict is bad or that it should never be used, I am saying it is not necessarily a overall driving force. Conversations are used as often for World Building then direct conflict. Conflict may make something interesting, but it doesn't make something a story. You don't always need to burn the hero's hometown or something to get the story going is the point I am trying to make. Forcing a conflict just to drive a story just leads to bad plots and is a distraction to stories that want to focus on other things. I guess my point is simply that if you have a story to tell, you don't always need to focus on a conflict as much as you may think.
 * But again, there is no story that has no conflict. Perhaps Lucky Star has no overarching conflict, but each episode will have conflict which will resolve by the end. That's what a story is.
 * This is why The Cosby Show was one of the best shows IMHO on TV period, for its ability to craft entire engaging episodes around characters just sitting around and talking, debating interesting subjects. Nobody had to be the hero or villain (or the always-wrong husband shown the way by the always-right wife).
 * Of course The Cosby Show has conflict; they're just everyday family conflicts and disagreements rather than the more melodramatic types of conflict. The very fact that they're 'debating' interesting subjects suggests as much -- a debate suggests at least two people with opposing or contrasting viewpoints. As for the fact that there's no 'hero' or 'villain', conflict doesn't necessarily have to be simplistic; there's not necessarily a 'right' or 'wrong' side. That's what makes it interesting.
 * Real life writes fiction, and there's always conflict in real life. Also, it's kind of hard to think of a story without conflict that isn't a children's book.
 * Conflict doesn't have to mean violence, or even deliberate antagonism. That's easy to miss. Nor does a story need to be all conflict all the time; especially longer ones arguably should schedule some breaks so as not to wear out the reader. But if there isn't any conflict or challenge at all...well, you may have a narration ("Dear Diary. Today, this, that, and the other thing happened..."), but probably not a story as such.
 * Conflict is important because it's the driving force of the story. As mentioned above, it doesn't have to be aggressive conflict or violent conflict or antagonistic conflict. However, if the characters had everything they wanted with no desire for anything else, had no kind of disagreements with the people around them, and were perfectly and completely content, then there would be nothing for them to do and no real point to the story; it would just be a description / depiction of how content and happy they were. And that, frankly, would most likely be pretty boring; you could possibly get a Slice of Life narrative out of it, but it would be a very short story. To take one example, look at My Dinner with Andre. It's the very epitome of a plotless story, it's basically two guys sitting around having dinner and chatting. And yet even here there's conflict -- specifically, the fundamental conflict between the life-philosophies of the two characters, which they discuss over the course of the movie. It's a polite, calm, friendly conflict, no doubt about it, but it's conflict nonetheless -- and one of the primary reasons we watch is because we want to see who, if either, will prevail and convince the other to accept their point of view. If it was just a movie about how much they agreed with each other, it's unlikely anyone would find it interesting enough to watch.