Conflict and the End of Fiction
“…[I]f you don’t have a strong element of conflict inherent in your novel, you don’t have a novel worth reading…” (Lakin, 54)
Strong words! The typical view of conflict in fiction is that it’s the core of all storytelling, the thing that makes us care about a story to begin with.
This is a view shared by such people as Larry Brooks:
“…[T]he hero begins a quest … and then must square off with and ultimately conquer (or not) obstacles — this being the most critical element of storytelling: conflict.” (Brooks, 39)
And likewise by Damon Knight:
“Here are all sorts of incidents, but what has become of the story? There is none, because there is no conflict, no difficulty, no tension.” (Knight, 86)
Even Robert McKee of Story agrees:
“…[T]he protagonist … enters a world governed by the Law of Conflict. … Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.” (McKee, loc 3271)
Finally, K.M. Weiland insists conflict must exist from the very beginning:
“No conflict, no story. Conflict doesn’t always mean nuclear warheads going off, but it does demand your characters be at odds with someone or something right from the get-go. Conflict keeps the pages turning, and turning pages are nowhere more important than in the beginning.” (Weiland, 11)
Most writing craft books I’ve read agree with this general principle, that conflict is story. This agrees with the general form of Western storytelling described in the Monomyth, the Hero’s Journey, the Story Circle, the three-act-structure, and all other slight variations of “Reluctant hero is drawn into an unfamiliar world in which he engages in cyclical striving and failing until he either finds wisdom or fails once and for all.”
Contrary to this popular wisdom, Ursula K. Le Guin says:
“Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.” (Le Guin, 146)
Le Guin refers to external conflict between persons here, to zero-sum games in which all players are either winners or losers. She elaborates on this perspective in an interview:
“[T]o preach that story is conflict, always to ask ‘where’s the conflict in your story?’ — this needs some thinking about. If you say that story is about conflict, that plot must be based on conflict, you’re limiting your view of the world severely. And in a sense making a political statement: that life is conflict, so in stories conflict is all that really matters. This is simply untrue. … Conflict, of course, is part of life, I’m not saying you should try to keep it out of your stories, just that it’s not their only lifeblood.” (Le Guin)
Though she disagrees that “conflict” is the core of storytelling, she holds that “movement” and “change” fill that role.
Some writers scratch their heads at this. “Sounds like conflict to me,” they mutter. Here lies one of the evergreen problems of writing: We agree on a handful of aphorisms, such as “conflict is necessary,” but we mean different things by the word “conflict.”
My goal is to reframe the concept of conflict as a fundamental aspect of story, to show that conflict is one of the most useful elements of story, rather than the most important, and that when conflict is absent or only barely present, other elements such as wonder and beauty can create stories worth consuming.
The Axiom of Story
I hold the following to be self-evident: The two fundamental elements of story are contrast and shared experience. From these proceed all other aspects of story.
I further define conflict for the our purpose today: The difference, friction, stress, or tension between two disparate elements.
Writers who hold the affirmative position “conflict drives story” likely agree with this definition. I believe most writers agree with it in a casual sense, whatever their strict definition.
Yet that strict definition is frequently different. Often, these authors hold a more particular definition of conflict: The contrast between desire and its obstacle.
This is a view held (indirectly) by Matt Bird:
“Drama refers to interaction between characters, not conflict within a character, and drama is at the heart of great writing. Conflicted characters are great because they’re volatile, but that volatility only erupts when that conflicted character meets her match and is thereby challenged.” (Bird, loc 1177)
James Scott Bell and Christopher Downing agree with Bird. They both specify (the latter referencing the former) that a story must create the threat of total destruction — physical, professional, or psychological — of the main character, and Downing specifically urges writers to always answer the narrative question “What is the lead character’s passionate/ethical center that would provoke aggressive action if violated?” (Downing, 19)
Bird, Bell, and Downing all argue for what Le Guin argues against, that zero-sum, externalized, interpersonal conflict is the heart of story. In contrast, our active definition allows for valid internal conflict that is not necessarily dramatized/externalized.
I go to these lengths to clarify what I mean by conflict and to establish a survey of what a few of the most prestigious writers of books on story craft mean when they refer to conflict. I was inspired to do so by one resounding theme from Story Trumps Structure by Steven James:
“When in doubt, add conflict.” (James, 114)
After years of reading similar proclamations in craft books and hearing the same from the mouths of writers far more accomplished than I’ll ever be, this was the point of exasperation at which I said “There’s more to story than that!”
Again, my axiom of story: The two fundamental elements of story are contrast and shared experience. Conflict plays into this, to be sure. Since systems tend toward equilibrium, we must introduce change into the system of a story world before we have reason to follow any particular event — we need to find the day everything changed. This results, yes, in friction, stress, or tension before the synthesis of the original system with its new element.
Yet, as we’ll soon see, we should focus on creating contrast and shared human experience, not conflict itself. To fixate on conflict is to look at a patient and see only their symptoms, not the human who hosts the disease or their underlying medical history.
Conflict
Contrast and shared experience are the building blocks of story, and it’s easy to see how conflict relates to these and why so many intelligent, thoughtful storytellers believe conflict to be the heart of story.
Conflict almost wholly implies contrast — between what a character wants (that is, what they think they need) and what they truly need, between comfort and calling, between fear and courage, between passivity and activity.
And conflict does change characters. Internal conflict forces a character to change who they are — there is tension between two aspects of themselves, and they must either discard one, synthesize the two, or roil in a perpetual fugue. If this internal conflict resolves, it creates contrast between the pre-and-post-conflict selves.
Likewise, external conflict often creates visible and dramatic contrast, whether between an old, comfortable state to which there is no returning and the new world of that character’s reality, or between two characters with clashing desires for whom one must become a winner and the other a loser. These transformations illuminate the involved characters over time, giving the reader a sense they are coming to know the characters as they wade through diverse conflicts.
Because of this truth, that conflict is valuable, two claims often appear when authors write about conflict’s place in fiction. First, the repeated application of conflict is a powerful story engine. Second, the repeated application of conflict is necessary for any story to function, perhaps to the extent that story is defined by the repeated application of conflict.
The first point, that conflict is a powerful tool, cannot be denied. Both internal and external conflict clearly contribute toward contrast and, as we’ll see, toward shared experience. We will later examine how the second point, that conflict defines story, lacks universality.
Shared Experience
Shared experience is a difficult aspect of storytelling to define. We can define contrast with a single example — A bright desert and a dark tomb, a cheerful birthday party and a boy sitting alone on an orphanage bed.
Shared experience is trickier.
Modern storytelling descended from ancient oral traditions. Stories were once a way of sharing the wisdom of the family, the community, the tribe. A story said “These people came before us. Learn from them, from their mistakes and their triumphs. See how they were just like you and me, how they still live on through us.”
Robert McKee says,
“As our faith in traditional ideologies diminishes, we turn to the source we still believe in … the story arts have become humanity’s prime source of inspiration, as it seeks to order chaos and gain insight into life. Our appetite for story is a reflection of the profound human need to grasp the patterns of living, not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience.” (McKee, loc 212)
Damon Knight agrees.
“There is an implied contract between the author and the reader that goes something like this: Give me your time and pay your money, and I’ll let you experience what it’s like to be • a trapper in the North Woods • an explorer in the Martian desert • a young woman in love with an older man • a dying cancer patient…” (Knight, 51)
When a reader shares the experience of a character’s life, they empathize with, identify with, grow fond of that character. As the reader shares a character’s experience, the reader grows more tolerant of exposition related to that character — sometimes even eager to experience more.
Granted, not every reader will cherish the experience of every character. In my experience, this arises — when it doesn’t come from the general failure of suspension of disbelief in the story’s internal consistency — from the reader disapproving of a character’s actions or reactions, whether that be dissonance with a character’s moral choice or that character’s incompetence or petulance.
Shared experience is present in all stories, for it exists whenever a single character is present for any length of time. The closer we are to a character, the easier it is to share their experience. This is a particular strength of stories told in the first person and/or from a single viewpoint, for they put us as close as possible to our principle character throughout the story. Conversely, stories told from a drawn-back, omniscient point of view, disassociated from any single character, may find difficulty in connecting readers to their characters.
It’s important to note that shared experience demands authenticity. A reader consumes the story of a shipwright because they want to share the experience of a shipwright — if the author has no idea what it’s like to be one, they’ll disappoint their reader and fail to create the sought experience.
We’ll now examine how, when contrast and shared experience come together, they have the power to create meaningful stories with redeeming value which don’t rely on conflict. In particular, we can find this value by moving away from the quasi-Western framework of linear “road map” structure which requires “roadblocks” of conflict to create engagement.
East vs West
Imagine you and your alternate universe self each visit an ancient, lovely European city — perhaps somewhere in France or Italy.
The first “you” follows your tour guide through a curated tour of the city. First, you pass a selection of historical landmarks which describe how a certain king once owned an estate here or how a famous musician was born in a hut at this very spot.
This tour culminates in a visit to the city’s capitol building, a stunning piece of architecture you’ve been bursting with anticipation for hours to see. Here and there your guide forces the group to stop while he explains something no one cares that much about — they’re all staring at the more desirable land mark only a few yards away. This careful pacing makes arrival at the anticipated location much sweeter than if you had rushed from place to place.
As the sun sets, you retire to a fancy restaurant, the reservations made for you ahead of time. You have not only delightful musical entertainment and rich food, but also a framing view of the capitol for you to admire as you dine.
The second “you” steps into the city without a guide. Having a fair grasp of the local dialect, you make your way through streets not curated for tourists’ eyes, seeing some beautiful and some pitiful sights.
You give coins to snot-nosed children and pat walleyed dogs and see the birthplace of the aforementioned musician. Having no guide to explain things, you chat with the locals. An elderly couple, proud to show their culture to an interested visitor, make you a few recommendations. You listen to them and climb an old, disused church tower. At the very top, you look out upon the city in its rings of old and new, clean and dirty, happy and sad.
You gain a new perspective of all that came before, and as the sun sets, you join your impromptu guides for a simple, hearty meal which seems to reflect the city in every way.
These exaggerated examples describe typical differences between Western and Eastern storytelling. Western storytelling demands a thesis and then an inexorable march toward it. Eastern storytelling often meanders through varying situations and ideas which culminate in a way often synthetic and unexpected. Western storytelling grips its reader by the throat and does not let go until the promised journey is complete, while Eastern storytelling is often an invitation along a journey for which the destination is not the most important aspect.
Of course, both traditions allow for our axiom of story. Both are about contrast and shared experience. In the Western tradition, the contrast often comes through the conflict between want and need, between a character’s desire to be at rest and external forces which demand that character move or be crushed, between deep-seated longing and three or more obstacles standing in the way.
Contrast in Eastern storytelling often comes from the difference between two disparate elements which might not seem connected until the story’s conclusion, between one state of being and another, between different ideological answers to the same question.
Both traditions say “This is what it means to be human!” In the Western tradition, to be human is primarily to overcome. Whether one overcomes a corporeal foe, inner fear, physical weakness, or one’s sin and vice, one strives and is opposed and seeks to overcome.
In the Eastern tradition, to be human is primarily to experience. It may sound flippant or tautological, but the Eastern tradition is one that often describes the facts of life and says “So it goes.” This does not preclude a message or narrative destination, however. Dostoevsky’s narrative philosophy, for example, tends more toward this Eastern mindset than the typical Western one, yet his novels are thematically rich and promote strong moral viewpoints. The Eastern tradition is not necessarily one of postmodern or nihilistic fixation on the meaninglessness of objective reality.
I should note that we can’t define every non-Western storytelling style at once, for they vary considerably more than the storytelling traditions of the West. South African, Japanese, Polish, and Saudi traditions may be in ways more similar to each other than to the Western canon, but that does not by any means unify them. This detail passes outside the scope of our discussion.
As we’ll see in describing one example of Eastern storytelling, while both Western and Eastern traditions rely on shared experience as a primary narrative component, the Eastern tradition leans on it at a more fundamental level.
Kishōtenketsu
The single most famous Eastern story structure is Kishōtenketsu, the Japanese story structure which likely originated in China’s Qiyan Jueju poetic structure and which can also be seen in Korean storytelling. It is closely related to the Japanese aesthetic concept of Johakyū, which describes events that build slowly, break or tear or scatter, and then conclude urgently or rapidly. (Boylan)
The Kishōtenketsu structure is named for elements which don’t look much different to an act-based Western structure:
Ki — Introduction
Shō — Continuation/Development
Ten — Twist
Ketsu — Conclusion
Meanwhile, an expression of the Western story structure could be described thusly:
Act One — Exposition/Introduction/“Once Upon a Time”
Act Two — Rising Action/“Then One Day…”
Act Three — Climax/“Until, finally…”
Act Four — Falling Action + (Denouement/Resolution/“And so, they lived…”)
There are a few key differences. The Western structure relies on conflict, while Kishōtenketsu doesn’t. In Kishōtenketsu, Ki can be any situation, including a woman setting off on a mountain hike. The Western structure would demand the woman have some twist, reversal of fortune, or moment of danger (to borrow from Jane Cleland) as early as possible, though no later than the end of the act, while in Kishōtenketsu we may simply follow the woman’s journey. This is taboo to the Western structure, and is the most important difference between the two.
A second important contrast appears between Shō and Act Two. In Kishōtenketsu, Shō simply continues Ki. It progresses Ki in that it moves forward, but this does not imply it moves to a different location. If our Ki was that a woman sets off on a hike, Shō encompasses all the locales and wildlife she encounters on that hike.
In the Western Act Two, we almost necessarily see twists and changes as plot points force characters to act and react to unfamiliar or unexpected circumstances. We likely see at least two shifts in perspective in the first and second plot points which bound Act Two. These are not necessary or even expected in Shō.
The twist of Ten, however, is imperative — Not specifically a plot twist in the ordinary sense (though we’re not excluded from one) but a twist in perspective, sensibility, character, or setting. The important thing is something shifts. In our hiker’s story, Ten might involve a scene break that shifts its perspective to a desolate graveyard, very different to the prior scene. It’s not immediately connected. Contrast draws between the pre-Ten and post-Ten perspective.
And of course, the Western Climax (which you may consider its own act, or perhaps the scene immediately between Acts Two and Three in Three Act Structure. We consider it an act here to compare and contrast with the similarly placed Ten) often involves the protagonist making the choice whether to sacrifice their want to attain their need and overcome the final obstacle or to cower/retreat/die tragically, unable to relinquish their deepest flaw. Contrast is drawn by recontextualizing the failures in the Rising Action in light of the protagonist’s epiphany.
Ketsu synthesizes all the prior elements of Kishōtenketsu. Our hiker appears at our graveyard and sits on a bench beside a tombstone, talking to her grandmother’s gravestone about how the tree they planted atop the mountain is bearing fruit for the very first time. There is often little to no equivalent to falling action or epilogue in Kishōtenketsu, a practice derived from the kyū or “rapid conclusion” of Johakyū. The final moment of Ketsu most often exists as a prompt to the reader to contemplate the journey and ask themselves if seeing the whole changes their perspective of its constituent parts.
Act Four, the falling action and resolution of the Western structure, show the transformed protagonist more able to deal with the unchanged world of Act One. Contrast is drawn once more between each of the story’s extremes, in character, emotion, setting, and situation. The triumph of the protagonist validates their worldview.
I hope this example of Eastern story structure illuminates how millions of people for thousands of years have used an entirely different story structure to those typically found in the West to describe the meaning in their lives. Now that we’ve shown how stories can be created which aren’t centered on conflict, we’ll examine some elements found in both Eastern and Western storytelling which provide redeeming value outside of conflict.
Beauty and Wonder
More elements than simply “Story with a capital S” (as Steven James puts it) contribute to making a work of fiction worth reading. Two of the most powerful elements are beauty and wonder.
But these are subjective and difficult to define! They rely on the reader’s artistic sensibilities and are, likely, less universal than other story elements. Yet, they can be some of the most powerful elements in fiction. Wonder invokes the reader’s awe of things greater than themselves, of the divine or of the unimaginable vastness of space or of looming mountains and impenetrable jungles.
Beauty is simply aesthetically pleasing prose, words which are delightful to speak and to hear and to see upon the page.
Many Japanese books in the Kishōtenketsu tradition hang upon beauty and wonder for their artistic merit, as did many of the revolutionary fantasy writers such as Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Books which rely on these elements, when they find an audience capable of appreciating them, can often get away with little conflict — not to say Tolkien, at the very least, ignored conflict in his writing!
Take, for example, this passage from The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany:
“Nobody can tell you about that sword all that there is to be told of it; for those that know of those paths of Space on which its metals once floated, till Earth caught them one by one as she sailed past on her orbit, have little time to waste on such things as magic, and so cannot tell you how the sword was made, and those who know whence poetry is, and the need that man has for song, or know any one of the fifty branches of magic, have little time to waste on such things as science, and so cannot tell you whence its ingredients came. Enough that it was once beyond our Earth and was now here amongst our mundane stones; that it was once but as those stones, and now had something in it such as soft music has; let those that can define it.” (Dunsany, 4)
The book has little conflict. A king of men ventures to Elfland and takes its princess back to marry him, and then her father spends a while trying to take her back, and a man wanders futilely in search of Elfland, and the people of the land can’t make up their minds if they want a magic lord or not. None of that is, frankly, very interesting — yet, the words pull a certain kind of reader in with their sheer beauty, with their constant evocation of an unseen Eden mankind may no longer touch (though Dunsany might not have appreciated that comparison).
Perhaps the book would be better with a stronger plot. I still hold that its beauty and wonder alone make it worth reading.
Similarly, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss has little conflict or plot progression relative to its length. However, its prose is so beautiful, its sense of wonder so carefully cultivated, and we spend so much time sharing the experience of its narrator Kvothe that it’s one of the most beloved works of modern fantasy. Its opening line, for example, has become a modern classic:
“It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.” (Rothfuss, 1)
A certain objection arises: “Is a bunch of pretty language without much conflict really a story? Even if it is, is it an interesting story? Isn’t it closer to a poem?”
Perhaps. Every art form has its particular strengths over the others — film combines the audible and the visual in a way impossible for fiction to replicate, while fiction allows a more personal connection to a character’s inner world than film can provide. The single frame of a painting invites detailed study of every brush-stroke in a way the standard film experience — that is, not pausing every frame — allows. The physical dimensionality of sculpture, its presence in the real world, cannot be approached by any other visual form.
Some writers, such as John Gardner, argue that one of the prime strengths of fiction is its ability to deliver character-and-event-driven narrative (that is, adhering to the Western tradition) which fails when “…interrupted … by some … conscious ploy on the part of the artist.” (Gardner, 98) When only wonder and beauty remain, Gardner argues, the art form does not play to its strength.
This is an argument especially suited to genre fiction, where readers demand more than simply beauty and wonder. The more a story is a product, rather than a work of art, the more it must rely on conflict and the Western, conflict-driven try-fail cycle to reach its audience. The James Bond books are beloved, but for neither their beauty nor their wonder. Beloved for their contrast and shared experiences, yes, but Fleming never skimped on the conflict, and the conflict created his audience.
This raises an important question: Can popular (that is, “ones which serve the people”) fiction exist without relying on conflict above and before all else? I argue they can, and will examine four examples which show this.
Case Studies
Case Study 1: The opening of Up by Pixar
The opening portion of Up is one of the most powerful introductory sequences in recent filmmaking. As of this writing, if one types “opening of” in the YouTube search bar, “opening of Up” is the sixth result, and the only result referring to a movie.
The sequence opens on two children with contrasting personalities, Ellie and Carl, agreeing to go adventuring when they’re older. They marry, buy a house, fix it up, decorate it. They discuss their dreams for the future. Ellie dreams of exploring, which Carl passively shares, while Carl dreams of starting a family, which Ellie actively shares. Their till-now idyllic life strikes a discordant note as they learn Ellie can’t carry a child.
Seeing Ellie depressed, Carl reassures her of his love, and the two grow old and happy in each other’s company. Eventually, Carl remembers Ellie’s old dream of adventure, and, saddened by the realization that Ellie left her dream behind, determines to surprise her with plane tickets so he can fulfill the promise they made as children. Unfortunately, Ellie is struck down by illness before this can happen, and she soon passes away, leading to the situation of the beginning of the movie — Carl is a disillusioned and bitter man who wants to be left alone after the love and light of his life has vanished.
Up conveyed that in less than ten minutes and with only a few lines of dialogue at the very beginning. Its power comes from the contrast in personalities and desires of its characters, of the emotions of joy and sorrow, of color and light, of physical framing in the scene — elements of beauty which are the strength of the film medium. Its power comes from following two people throughout nearly their whole lives and seeing them bloom and fade, shining in the prime of youth and the glory of old age.
Aside from the twist that the pair can’t have children which breaks the continuation of their happy lives, and from Ellie’s eventual death which is the turning point in the “once upon a time” which allows the story to take place, there is little to no conflict in this sequence.
Yet few people would look at this and say “What a terrible story. There’s nothing here of interest!” By contrast, the portion of the movie which follows a more traditional Western structure afterward is cute, but is generally less memorable.
Case Study 2: Calvin and Hobbes — Jan 14, 1990 comic strip by Bill Waterson
This work relies on the reader’s prior shared experience with the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Waterson. Heavy contrast defines the dynamic between Calvin and his dad, as Calvin is a hyperactive troublemaker and his dad is a straight-laced businessman frustrated by Calvin’s antics.
A typical interaction between them involves either Calvin asking about some scientific fact, only for his dad to give him a deliberately wrong but amusing answer which Calvin tries to logically unravel, or Calvin performing some annoying or destructive act which prompts his dad to scream at Calvin to stop, sometimes punishing him with chores, a spanking, or the dire threat of cold anger. However, his dad has some tolerance for Calvin’s troublemaking — he doesn’t react immediately with fury unless Calvin destroys property.
Though the reader will likely come to this particular strip with the intellectual understanding that Calvin and his father share a loving relationship, the reader will likewise have seen mostly negative interactions between the two of them. We rarely see the ordinary day-to-day interactions between the two, but only those during which Calvin causes trouble. Our case study is a unique exception.
In the first few panels, Calvin dresses for snowy weather and asks his dad to join him outside. His dad points to his heavy workload and implies he can’t spare the time, which prompts Calvin to walk away with a look of disappointment. Over the next few panels, his dad continues working, though his expression is one of dreariness. He looks out the window, then back to his work, then grabs his coat.
We see a panel in which Calvin faces his dad, both expressing joy. The two build a snowman. In the final panel, Calvin’s mom lifts him up to plant a good-night kiss on his dad’s forehead — who is back at his desk, showing that he didn’t simply choose play over work, but gave up time he wouldn’t get back to spend it with his son.
This would be a cute vignette on its own if it involved arbitrary characters. In its proper context, in contrast to the ordinary scenes between Calvin and his dad, it expands and illuminates their relationship beautifully.
Though there is some conflict to the story, in that Calvin wants his dad to play and his dad must choose between work and play (and it’s true that without this element, the story wouldn’t be as strong), the reliance on contrast and shared experience is stronger and more thoroughly present. (I didn’t point out much wonder or beauty here, but any reader of the comic will know these are a mainstay of it)
Case Study 3: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
This novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami is a peculiar, polarizing book. It has very little conflict and an enormously passive main character. In fact, the opening scene finds unemployed protagonist Toru interrupted by an obscene phone call while making spaghetti. He politely hangs up, refusing to engage with the caller. When Toru’s wife comes home that night, they converse about horses going mad during the full moon, and Toru promises to talk to a psychic about finding their missing cat.
The next day, Toru discovers his wife has vanished without a trace. This does not prompt a wild investigation, as it likely would in a Western story structure, but a chain of increasingly surreal events involving the history of Toru’s marriage, his friends and acquaintances, and a dry well with which Toru thematically identifies.
The novel is filled with (beautiful and wondrous) literary flourishes, Dostoevsky-esque anecdotes punctuating each sub-book, and a battery of comparisons and contrasts between what Toru is and what he should or could be. It is, in a word, magical, and yet adheres hardly at all to requirements for proactive protagonists driven by yearning and opposed at every angle by an ever-mightier array of obstacles. Though a commercially successful book, it is, to be sure, not genre fiction, and does not serve as broad an audience as a family-focused Pixar movie or a syndicated comic strip.
Case Study 4: The Book of Ruth
This classic book of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles opens with tragedy: Ruth, a native woman of the nation of Moab, loses her Hebrew husband to illness, along with her brother-in-law. Soon after, her father-in-law also dies, leaving her Hebrew mother-in-law, Naomi, alone in a foreign land.
Naomi commands her two daughters-in-law to choose happiness and live among their own people, but Ruth refuses and proclaims she will go with Naomi to live in Naomi’s homeland of Judah. In this new land, Ruth collects alms from the field of a distant relative of her husband. This man, Boaz, hearing of Ruth’s identity, creates a situation favorable and secure for Ruth, allowing her to collect grain unmolested and even giving her an extra portion of grain.
Upon learning of Boaz’s desire to support Ruth, Naomi prompts Ruth to invoke the Hebrew tradition of kinsman redemption, through which Ruth can call upon Boaz to marry her. This would allow Ruth to retain the right of inheritance she would have otherwise lost through her husband’s death.
Boaz agrees to this, though there is another relative who has a more direct responsibility to redeem Ruth. The relative agrees to relinquish his right of redemption, and Boaz marries Ruth. The two have a son, who is the grandfather of King David — in the Christian tradition, the ancestor of Christ.
This narrative contains little conflict, but is nonetheless a beautiful story of devotion and mercy. There are only two real points of conflict. First, Ruth and her sister-in-law desire both to remain in their homeland and to remain devoted to the downstruck mother of their late beloved. Later, there is a brief complication before Boaz marries Ruth, for the more eligible redeemer must choose whether to take the sacrificial act of giving up his own inheritance to give Ruth hers. He keeps his, of course, and this immediately upon understanding the stakes.
On the other hand, the narrative is filled with not only the touching, human story of a woman giving up everything to support a loved one, but also with beautiful prose:
“But Ruth replied:
Don’t plead with me to abandon you
or to return and not follow you.
For wherever you go, I will go,
and wherever you live, I will live;
your people will be my people,
and your God will be my God.” (Ruth 1:16, CSB)
Despite its lack of conflict, the Book of Ruth is one of my favorite books of the Christian Bible, for its shared human experience and for its beauty, not to mention its thematic weight when considered as one part of a small whole: In my own Christian tradition, the redemption of Ruth the outsider into a Hebrew family is a picture of the later redemption of the Gentile church into a covenant with God by Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
We must address one final, vital truth: for many people, writing and storytelling are their trades, not simply forms of art. Story, to these people, puts meat on the table. You might ask “What does it matter if it’s possible to write a story without conflict at its core when that seems to be what everyone wants to read?” For certain, the authors and editors referenced throughout this discussion have written about how to create stories that will reach, hook, and capture audiences more often than they have set out to teach how to create good art.
For this point, I read through thirty writing craft books, as well as Alfred Hitchcock’s definition of story within his interviews with Truffaut, and a transcript of Kurt Vonnegut’s lecture on story structure. Within them, sixteen storytellers describe what they believe story to be, or, at least, what they believe a great story to be, or one worth reading. The remainder seem to take it for granted that a person reading a book about story-writing knows what a story is to begin with.
Five of these sixteen — Robert Olen Butler, Robert McKee, Julio Ortega, Deb Olin Unfearth, and Kurt Vonnegut — achieved scholarly or literary success, but no popular success that I could find — at least, none made a living by selling screenplays to Hollywood or by writing thrillers.
The remaining eleven — Hirohiko Araki, Larry Brooks, Deborah Chester, Jane K. Cleland, John R. Erickson, John Gardner, Alfred Hitchcock, Damon Knight, Ursula K. Le Guin, Brian McDonald, and Dennis O’Neil — are popularly successful storytellers who give an interesting array of aspects they considered to define story.
Hirohiko Araki and Larry Brooks lean on Western story structure in their definitions (and in fact the purpose of Brooks’ whole book is that Western story structure is to story as architecture is to buildings).
Deborah Chester describes story as providing poetic justice and the answers to dramatic questions.
Alfred Hitchcock and Jane K. Cleland hang everything upon suspense, though they likewise claim that sharing characters’ longing is vital.
Dennis O’Neal gives a practical and workmanlike definition — story is a structured narrative that serves purposes like revealing character or proposing a point of view.
Erickson, Gardner, Knight, Le Guin, McDonald, and McKee agree that shared experience, telling your human reader “this is what it is to be human,” is the core of story (and certainly Araki, Hitchcock, and Cleland put strong emphasis on this also).
The definitions from which I draw, and my brief interpretation of each, can be found in the appendix, along with the bibliography. Feel free to examine my judgments at your leisure.
At least six of these twelve popular creators, people who made quite a lot of money writing stories which ordinary people enjoyed consuming, put greater emphasis on shared experience than upon anything else. They, of course, add more nuance to their definitions through their works. We mentioned earlier how McKee believes story can’t move forward except by conflict, and outside of his particular definition above, Knight claims incidence without difficulty or obstacle is not story. As it turns out, complex human storytellers have complex views on storytelling.
What I hope I’ve showed is that there is more to storytelling than conflict. Moreover, a story can be worth consuming without being driven at every turn by conflict.
I do not believe that conflict is completely unnecessary to story. I can’t think of a single great story without some level of friction, stress, or tension. Yet I have never enjoyed a story purely for its conflict, never been gripped by thwarted desire. I, and many others, consume stories to make sense of a world that seems often senseless, to empathize with other humans and to see the beauty of the universe represented in the delightful way only the human mind can interpret.
I believe we can look at life transcribed, see loss and pain and joy and redemption, and call that story regardless of how many times and exactly when our guy lost before winning.
