miriam_e | do we need conflict?

I was thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and the fables we believe. It seems to me that conflict forms a central part of all of these. All the religious texts I've read worship psychopathic gods who seem obsessed with senseless destruction. All the top movies seem to center around conflict, often life-threatening. Books seem to be the same. It is weird... and somewhat depressing. What does that say about us as a species?

Even some of my favorite movies, Amelie, Little Man Tate, For The Birds, The Telephone, Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion, which don't have guns or direct violence, still use conflict as an important story element.

I love the Karin Kallmaker romances because they are lovely, light escapes, but even these generally feature a fair amount of conflict, with some of the later ones even tending to tragedy, and I find this upsetting.

A couple of years ago I tried to write a story that generally didn't have conflict. It was, by all accounts a resounding failure. I'm still largely proud of it, except the parts where I bowed to pressure and added conflict, and I'll fix that one day when I get time. Unfortunately when I do I just know nobody will read it, or if they do they won't like it because it will be too "nice". But that has me puzzled: how can being nice be a failure? What is it about us that lets us describe a tragedy as beautiful, or a violent action story as thrilling?

When was the last time you read a book or watched a movie that had no conflict at all?

What the hell is wrong with us?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

perhaps it overcoming the conflict aspect that is what makes the story keep it reality yet supply hope. I'm guessing here and writing as I think, however....

Life involves conflict - weather if be inside a person between what they want to do and what they are expected to/ have to do or weather it is overcoming the conflict that comes part and parcel with interpersonal relationships. I've never met or heard of anyone whose family life/ childhood didn't involve some form of conflict and pain.

So perhaps people want to read stories that show overcoming adversity and conflict - perhaps it gives them hope -
Or perhaps they read them to gain another perspective or to simply have that conflict to relate to.

Most people want to identify with a character. It seems hard to identify with a character that has not experienced conflict of one sort or another.

I agree with all that you said. This what all the books that I've read about plots and writing teach, and what all the speakers I've heard say.

The problem is, why? I love happy stories and I hate conflict and trauma, and violence positively disgusts me, yet even I write stories that have conflict and trauma, and even violence. Of the stories I have online only a couple (Lessons in Reversal (http://miriam-english.org/stories/LessonsInReversal.html), and Anti-sense (http://miriam-english.org/stories/antisense.html)) are generally happy, but even they feature some conflict. I don't know how to write a story that is unremittingly happy. And if I did manage to, I'm pretty sure readers wouldn't find it the heavenly, slice of bliss that it should be -- they'd more likely dismiss it as boring. Why?

We all want happiness, right? Are we so damaged that the best we can manage is at the end of the story "they lived happily ever after"?

Why is it that conflict makes something interesting for us? Surely we can create stuff that is interesting and happy. I have had periods in my life that were overwhelmingly happy and conflict-free; I'm sure we all have. Why do we so rarely reinforce them by using them as stories? If we could tell ourselves more happy stories perhaps we'd gradually teach ourselves how to be happy. If we had less fear in our stories perhaps we'd be less fearful (there is plenty of research to suggest that's so).

Why do we encourage -- even desire -- conflict?

True. There is plenty of research to suggest that the stories we see and read (and the news we see/hear/read) affect our perception of the world. And your right, surely, if we want to improve our happiness we should be reading and writing happier, more positive stories.

It's the old question of life imitating art or art imitating life.

I would be interested in reading stories that were happy - if they maintained an interesting plot. I'm just not sure how one would go about it. I often read stories without violence, but I've never come across one with out some sort of conflict that needs resolving. Thats the point - it's the plot. Who do you make a story go from A to B with out it?

Even a story of a child going to the beach for a day has conflict. Perhaps she finds a shell and wants to keep it, but is not allowed. She is upset, but comes to realise the reasons she is not allowed to keep it and instead draws an image of it. Happy ending, positive message about conservation. But the conflict in what the child wants and can't have is required to get the message across.

Let me know if you write any with out conflict at all, and what you as use instead. I'd be genuinely interested. You've got me thinking....

In my reply to Michael, below, I think I hit upon a story idea. I've started enlarging on it, in my usual obsessive fashion -- I think I can kiss goodbye to any chance of completing my programming work before the end of the month. :(

It also occurred to me that there is an entire genre that revolves around happiness and pleasure, often with little else but that in the stories. That genre is utterly reviled and not mentioned in polite company. It is porn. Gonna have to learn more about it. My exposure has been too limited, sadly.

We are some seriously warped creatures. We idolise death, destruction, and all kinds of conflict, even calling it beautiful, and upholding those qualities in our leaders and heros, while we do our damndest to outlaw and eliminate pleasure and happiness for its own sake.

How much better would we be if fear, hate, and violence were considered vile and disgusting, while heros had great sex and leaders helped everybody get maximum access to happy lives.

I guess the '60s counterculture began on that road, but it was cut short when the insane puritans screamed that it unleashed AIDS. Which, of course, was always absurd. AIDS came from the bush meat trade. So if we want to be picky it would be more correct to say capitalism and poverty unleashed AIDS. But it served the crazy puritans well in stampeding everybody with fear. [sigh]

Perhaps, Miriam, it is the word "conflict" that creates the problem for you.

People, being different, will often want different things - and sometimes these desires are not compatible with each other.

Is this a "conflict of desires" or just a situation where the gentle arts of "negotiation" and "compromise" can be practiced?

MFG

Hi Michael. :)
No. I mean conflict in the wider meaning. As you say, all kinds of conflict, even mild. But I am not making them all equivalent. Severe kinds of conflict involving arms and violence are an extreme. More gentle forms where a person's expectations are unfulfilled, leaving them less than happy -- that is some of the other extreme. It is all conflict.

What has me bothered is that we seem to find it so hard to make stories about simply happiness. There is this expectation that you can't have an interesting story without conflict. Why?

I can imagine a story about pleasure in which the story changes in numerous ways that seem to me would make it interesting. (I've been unable to get this damned problem out of my mind since yesterday. Am I obsessive or what!) Consider this:
A person is happily involved in research into a topic which they find intriguing. It brightens each day for them. When the weather is mild she enjoys the birds and the blue skies. When it rains whe loves the cosy indoors and how the plants are greened and the chorus of frogs. As she nears completion of her research she becomes more and more excited. At one point while gathering more data on one aspect of the work she meets someone who is a well-spring of information on the topic. This other person teams up with her and together they uncover wonderful implications for this research that none had suspected. When they complete the initial objective they celebrate both the fact that have done something truly wonderful, and the fact that now there are even more wonderful possibilities open to them, previously unsuspected... and they find they've somehow fallen in love. The delights of sex are heightened when they realise that they continue to pursue the research more quickly and easily now because they don't just work separately, but now over breakfast, in the shower, during midnight snacks, between bouts of glorious sex.

Wow! I find myself grinning right now, enjoying just the outline. I'd love to read this story! I might have a shot at writing it.

See what I mean? It should be possible to write a story that has surprises and interesting things without conflict. You could say that the desire to reach the research objective is a kind of conflict, and yes, it could be, but I think it could be written so that the character was drawn onwards by the joy of learning rather than being tortured by the frustration of not knowing.

So why can't I think of a single instance where someone has done something like this?

Actually that's not quite true. I did think of an entire genre of art that is based upon pleasure instead of conflict: porn. But that raises yet another question. Why is conflict and violence elevated to "high art" and pure pleasure sneered at, even to the point of being outlawed.

Why is it okay to make a movie about psychopaths callously joking about their murders (Pulp Fiction) yet unacceptable to document sexual bliss in exquisite detail? Not just in the puritanical west either, in India hindus bombed a theatre screening the movie "Girlfriend" because it was about two women who found pleasure in each other (pleasure is evil!).

I ask again:
What the hell is wrong with us?

do we need conflict?

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