Birth vs. Battle
By David Corbett | April 12, 2016 |
Photo by Garry Knight
Let me kick things off with blasphemy: Conflict is not the engine of story.
Allow me to explain.
The longer I teach, the more writing texts I seem to read, if only to find out if someone else has a clearer, simpler, or more insightful way of presenting the material. (To my chagrin, that’s often case. Fortunately, I’m not too so old a dog that I’ve forsaken new tricks.)
In some of my recent reading, though, I’ve detected a bit of an uproar over the supposed centrality of conflict in our stories.
Ursula Le Guin, for example, in Steering the Craft, takes serious issue with the “gladiatorial view of fiction” that the seemingly obsessive focus on conflict has nurtured. She considers this a kind of tunnel vision that minimizes depth and complexity, “just the stuff that makes a work of fiction memorable.”
Le Guin herself noted that though Romeo and Juliet revels in conflict, that isn’t what makes it tragic. “Conflict is [just] one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing.”
Though Romeo and Juliet revels in conflict, that isn’t what makes it tragic.
Debra Spark, in Curious Attractions: Essays on Writing, chimes in by noting that the centrality of conflict has been with us since Aristotle—the terms protagonist and antagonist both derive from the Greek word for conflict, agon, which the Greeks considered a fundamental aspect of existence—“but it doesn’t account for the emotional power of fiction as much as its forward motion.”
Spark adds that even Janet Burroway, who in her widely read and hugely influential Writing Fiction stated baldly “a story is a war,” nonetheless qualified this statement in later editions, noting that it’s a story’s “pattern of connection and disconnection between characters” that provides “the main source of its emotional effect.”
Rosalie Morales Kearns, in her essay, “Was it Good For You? A Feminist Reflection on the Pleasure of Plot,” revealed that Burroway in the third edition of Writing Fiction actually identified birth as an alternative metaphor to battle for story structure, and that though birth also suggests struggle, “There is no enemy.” Rather the story’s forward movement resembles a “struggle toward light”—understanding, experience, wisdom.
But if conflict doesn’t drive the story, what does?
As noted above, Debra Spark remarked that conflict, despite its limitations in providing emotional power, does largely account for a story’s forward motion.
I respectfully disagree.
Conflict, instead of creating movement, actually impedes it. Rather, desire creates movement.
Desire creates movement.
Desire emerges from a sense that something is missing or out of balance. This prompts the character to act, which puts him, figuratively if not literally, in motion. And unless the desire is easily gratified—in which case it’s dramatically trivial—that motion will generate resistance.
This interplay between movement and resistance creates dramatic tension: Will the character’s desire be gratified or not? Even if the desire creates only expectation, the sense that something will or should happen creates tension between what’s hoped for and what might instead occur.
It’s in this sense, and this sense alone, that conflict is central to story. Conflict is desire meeting resistance.
Whether the metaphor guiding your story is birth or battle, a movement toward light or a fight to the death, this principle of movement meeting resistance applies.
And as the resistance intensifies and the prospect of defeat or loss or failure looms, the character becomes obliged to ask himself: Why continue? Why not compromise or surrender or go back?
The answer lies in how intrinsic the goal is to the character’s understanding of himself, the way of life he wishes to lead, and the people he wants to share it with. He may not be clearly aware of those longings at the story’s outset, but as the prospect of failure, in any of its forms–loss, humiliation, ruin, abandonment, death–comes nearer, the sense of what’s truly at stake clarifies, intensifies.
This means there are typically three plot lines in any meaningful story:
- The desire line, which tracks the protagonist’s efforts in the “outer” terrain of the story world to achieve his objective, reach his goal, claim what he wants: rescue the miners, marry the loved one, claim the crown, hold off the attack, bring the killer to justice.
- The yearning line, which tracks the “inner” arc: how the character’s understanding of himself deepens or clarifies as he contends with the resistance he encounters in trying to achieve his goal: find love, secure freedom, establish one’s identity or authenticity, live with honor, achieve justice, come home.
- The connection line, which tracks how the character’s interactions with others impedes or facilitates his movement along the other two plot lines. (If the object of desire is a relationship with another—as in love stories, reconciliation stories, and the like—then the desire line and connection line are joined, with the understanding that other relationships beyond this main one will still offer opportunities for encouragement and support on the one hand, temptation and resistance or even open opposition on the other.
The most compelling stories unify these plot lines.
The character’s outer pursuit engenders a deeper understanding of who he is, who he cares for, and what world he can accept. Regardless of what form the outer object of desire might take, overcoming the resistance required in its pursuit presents the character with a transformative opportunity: to face himself and his life more honestly, muster the courage to strive for that life and sense of self, open his heart to the love necessary to make it meaningful.
The more I reflect on all this, the more I realize that it’s in the recognition of connection and disconnection as key to a story’s emotional impact, as Janet Burroway and Debra Spark point out, that an emphasis on desire over conflict potentially yields its most gratifying results.
People are driven by two equal and opposite instincts: the avoidance of pain and the desire for growth. It’s one of life’s more bitter ironies that the perfectly reasonable desire to protect ourselves from pain often limits our willingness to take the risks necessary to be truly happy. Growth, like birth, is painful.
People are driven by two equal and opposite instincts: the avoidance of pain and the desire for growth.
Yearning, by daring a character to pursue a healthier, wiser, more complete understanding of herself and the world, inevitably runs smack into the counterforce of avoiding the inevitable pain that healing wounds and overcoming weaknesses, limitations, or flaws will entail. Growth isn’t just painful. It’s work.
But it isn’t solitary.
Something I learned long ago from a friend, and something I use as a refrain in The Art of Character, is this simple observation: We don’t know ourselves by ourselves. (In my novel The Mercy of the Night, my hero’s mother puts it differently: A lone wolf is a lost wolf.)
The character’s world is populated by others either encouraging her, knowingly or unwittingly, to move forward toward that better self-understanding and the fulfillment or wisdom it promises, or contributing to her staying stuck in a way of life that’s non-threatening, comfortable, deluded, or even self-destructive.
And it’s entirely in the richness, subtlety, and complexity of those relationships that the story unfolds, with some characters nudging or kicking or flinging the protagonist forward, others holding her back—if not dragging her back—or steering her off-course, each with his or her own motives for wanting the character to remain the same or go back to the way she was before.
This is where the full complexity of the drama plays out. We may be born alone and die alone but we grow through our engagement with the world—specifically, other people.
We may be born alone and die alone but we grow through our engagement with the world—specifically, other people.
It’s a truism that everyone likes a fight, just as everyone slows or stops at the scene of an accident. But the deeper meaning of any battle isn’t tactics and strategy, but what the adversaries are fighting for, what it will mean to lose, and who will bear that price. Similarly, the accident is just a tangle of metal until we learn where the driver was hoping to go, and who was waiting for him to arrive.
Gin up as much conflict as you want, without desire to generate movement, yearning to create meaning, and other people to provide emotional richness and texture, all you have is sound and fury, and we all know how that phrase ends.
Which metaphor for story best applies to your work in progress: Birth? Battle? Both?
How have you allowed desire, yearning, and connection to drive your story forward?
How has the struggle to achieve the outer object of desire prompted a deeper understanding by the protagonist of who she is, what way of life she wants to live, and who she wants to share it with?
Which secondary characters have been crucial in providing assistance in achieving the protagonist’s goal or a deeper self-understanding? Which have impeded, opposed, or openly fought that movement? Why and how?
Note: I will be traveling part of today. I’m teaching a workshop (Beyond Good and Evil: Using Moral Argument to Develop Plot & Character) tomorrow at the RT Booklovers Convention in Las Vegas. If I don’t respond to your comment, it’s because I’m in transit. But you’re a pretty savvy group. Feel free to talk among yourselves.
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
*sigh of relief* Thanks for a masterful analysis of what makes a story satisfying. Constant conflict creates curiosity, but satisfaction comes from the discovery, albeit subtle, of our y characters’ “why” and “what for.”
Thanks, Mia. Agreed.
Thank you for this David:
“The character’s world is populated by others either encouraging her, knowingly or unwittingly, to move forward toward that better self-understanding and the fulfillment or wisdom it promises, or contributing to her staying stuck in a way of life that’s non-threatening, comfortable, deluded, or even self-destructive.”
This exactly describes what I’m trying to do in my story and I keep questioning myself, asking if I have enough tension, enough stakes to draw a reader into the story.
But, I do want to take issue with your use of the word resistance. And that perhaps says more about me than about your intention. I LIKE the word resistance and, here, it seems like its used in a negative sense.
Somewhere I’ve read that the primitive reaction of a person to a particular situation is to flee or fight. But there’s also a non-primitive way to deal with a situation. And that is to respond rather than react, to be thoughtful rather than hasty. And I’ve often thought of that 3rd way (or maybe I’ve read it too) as resistance. Resistance can be positive. Especially when there is a status quo moving in a dangerous or a selfish direction. Then we are called to resist.
When you use the word resistance, I think of barrier.
Just some of my thoughts. Again, thank you, David for this wonderfully articulate and thought-provoking column.
Hi, Lisa:
The opposition to the desire may or may not be value-laden. The resistance to the mountain climber’s desire consists of all the things that put reaching the top in question.
The Resistance is “resisting” something — the power of the regime and its desire to extend that power.
The opposing force need not be negative — and it typically doesn’t view the matter that way. “The villain is the hero of his own narrative.” In a love story, the reluctant lover may provide the resistance — simply by saying, “No,” or “Not Yet.”
Does that clarify things?
What an interesting perspective – thanks for offering a fresh way to look at the elements of effective storytelling.
In trying your concepts on for size, I’d have to say my first novel fits your “birth” model; my second one was definitely a “battle.” And my current WIP looks like it wants to be a bit of both – I hope that’s a good thing.
It’s very much a good thing in my estimation. If the battle doesn’t “give birth” to a deeper understanding of the self, the cause, the people, etc., it’s just a bloody mess.
Thank you! This was so fascinating today, David. Desires. Connection. Movement. Battle. Birth. Not to reduce it too simply, but those words really jump out. I’ve not been so “consciously” aware of these essentials for story. During the process of writing, in my novel Greylock, these things appeared to happen in the course of the writing through my character Alexei (I tend to get character and place simultaneously and often before I even begin to write page one). So, at the source, in discovering these story essentials of desire, yearning, connection, this is all about character gestation/development and performance on the page for me. BTW, loved Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft.
Thanks, Paula. I very much like the inclusion of “gestation” in the notion of character development.
its an interesting distinction. You could have character A meet character B and one says yes and the other says no. Did that help your story engine? But if you have character A wanting something so badly that he or she can’t stop and character B wanting something different so badly that he or she can’t stop, its not going to create a one off quick conflict, it will inspire a series of moves and counter moves, until one succeeds and the other doesn’t. So Stein talks about putting your characters in a crucible.
Thanks, Joseph. I don’t believe I’m away of “Stein.” What’s the book you’re referring to, if I may ask?
Regardless, I very much like the image of a crucible. A new understanding is forged in the pressure of conflict. Sometimes though the discovery is more like tearing down a wall, or turning away from the abyss, or simply surrendering to a difficult but unavoidable truth. Even birth and battle don’t adequately address all the ways a character can come to the insight that leads to change. But that’s the crux of the matter.
BTW, a friend of mine who turned his life around in prison referred to his confrontation with his criminal self his crucible moment.
You are NOT born alone – in fact, that’s the one time you can guarantee you have your mother with you. Sheesh.
And it takes a very long time before you can do anything on your own that doesn’t involve survival. A baby without a caretaker doesn’t make it very long, a toddler can’t do anything… Even Romanian orphans in institutions had someone feed them.
Life does not start when a character is a grownup; characters are not born like orcs in the LOTR.
It seems a trope to pick only those characters to write about who have conveniently had all their family members – and most of their friends – excised from their lives.
Yes, it’s messier otherwise. And solitary characters can act differently than those with family and community ties. But humans only show who they really are and find out what they can do when in relationships.
And those relationships can’t be smooth. We are born wanting to be the center of the universe, and the rest of the universe doesn’t cooperate – they are not here for us, they are here for themselves.
We – and our characters – spend the rest of our lives trying to get back to that place where we are part of the center.
Hi, Alicia:
I see your point. However, though I agree that the mother is with the infant at birth, that’s not the baby’s experience, certainly not at first. The baby is forced out of the blissful womb through violent contractions. It is pushed out and away from the mother, and for the first time in its life experiences separation. Its first sounds are typically cries of fear and pain– thus the term birth trauma, which normally takes the form of abandonment anxiety in later life.
Similarly, there may be a great many people in the room when one dies, but no one slips away except the deceased.
(BTW: The phrase “we’re born alone and die alone” is from Orson Welles.)
And I’m not sure I understand your point about characters beginning in adulthood. I wasn’t saying that. And didn’t mean to imply it.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding. If so, I apologize.
Intriguing. When you open with the “blasphemy” you do, I hoped it was to reposition conflict slightly, and this does it.
I’ve sometimes broken “conflict” down into “potential change that matters”: it’s the character’s desire combining with the uncertainty of some change in his life, leading him to struggle to make that change or prevent it or just to cope with it.
Under it all, like you said, there has to be a core of that desire to make even the conflict matter. Otherwise it’s only the now-familiar tools of conflict trying to build up a weak foundation.
Agreed.
Excellent comments, David. Thank you!
For those of us who are struggling to use those principles in our WIPs, I would suggest looking into an online class by Lisa Cron (called Story Genius) and available through authoraccelerator.com. I’ve just finished an 8-week course with Lisa in which she’s driven us again and again to find our protagonist’s inner yearning, to connect it to every scene in the story, and to have that inner yearning dominate the novel from beginning to end. She calls that yearning the “third rail” of a story (think streetcars, where two rails guide the wheels and the third rail provides the electricity that powers the car). It’s a powerful and clarifying experience that has deepened my story.
Which is what your post is all about: the depth and complexity of the human spirit, and the yearnings that cause us finally to choose the painful route of change and growth.
Hi, Edith. That sounds like a great course with Lisa, and I love that third rail metaphor. I first learned about yearning from Robert Olen Butler, and it’s changed the way I teach desire. I laid out my new methodology in a post here at Writer Unboxed, titled “The Tyranny of Motive” — you can find it here: https://staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud/2014/07/28/the-tyranny-of-motive/ — and also in an article titled “The Machinery of Desire” in the January 2016 edition of Writer’s Digest. I agree with Lisa — it’s the core of the character, and needs to be on every page.
It’s all about balance, isn’t it? There is no magic formula or one-size-fits-all mold, it’s a subtle combination a reader FEELS reading a particular piece of work.
Wonderful post, David, giving us lots to think about.
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Thanks, Denise.
Isn’t “desire” just a conflict between what you want and what you currently have?
They two do not need to be in conflict. Our lives are made of many strands; wants and desires are not necessarily the same. The wonderful character driven plots thicken. Maybe a crisis or learning and they disperse.
Hi, Scott. Conflict implies struggle. There isn’t a struggle between what we have and what we want. There may well be a sense of dissatisfaction or limitation or lack, and that may indeed give birth to a desire for what’s missing, but to say that desire is just a conflict between what we have and what we want is kind of like saying the second floor and the first floor are in conflict if I’m climbing the stairs.
David, thank you so much for this much needed perspective. We read so much in writing craft books and articles on the role of conflict in a story and the cycle of conflict and resolution without much thought to desire. My current WIP short story starts out with battle when in reality it is the desire of this early protagonist to simply get from point A to B in a taxi. I know where I want the story to go I just don’t know how to get there. I will have to give your perspective much more thought.
Sometimes getting from point A to point B is a real battle. But the journey is moot without the desire to make it.
Christ, I sound like a fortune cookie.
“Conflict is desire meeting resistance.” That went up on my wall this morning. Thanks, David, for much to chew on!
You’re most welcome.
Thanks for this look into more effective storytelling. For me, it’s always been about the why. Why do people behave the way they do; why does a good person make bad choices; etc. So in a sense, I always start with a character in a pickle and I try to understand how and why.
That sounds like an excellent approach, Vijaya. Being in a pickle automatically suggests wanting to get out of it, otherwise it’s not a pickle, it’s just a situation.
Uh-oh. My fortune cookie alert just went off again.
This article is a keeper. It clarifies many things I haven’t quite been able to articulate. Thanks so much, David
Most welcome. Glad it was helpful.
Engaging!
I will print this out to post on my wall for the content (fantastic, timely, and thought provoking!)
AND I am bookmarking this as an example of EXCELLENT formatting techniques ideal for web-friendly reading.
I loved your use of the inset block quotes. They served not only to briefly reinforce the material, but worked as a sub-heading: a visual landing-place to encourage me to move forward through the text.
And thank you so much for the blank space, breaking the text into blocks of no more than five lines!
Someone who puts this much thought and technique into a blog post definitely gets added to my to-read list.
Makes my day.
(And encourages me to improve my own postings!)
Thanks! :-)
Hi, Elizabeth. What a kind note, thank you. I’ve surrendered to the realization that we live in an Add world, and even very smart people appreciate prose broken down into easily digestible units.
“Conflict is desire meeting resistance.”
It’s tempting to shrug this off as semantics. I mean, desire versus yearning? We could circle around endlessly. But the core issue is real: conflict outside versus conflict inside.
Plot versus story. Outer versus inner. What we can see versus what we can feel. That which anyone might do for us all versus what only one person can do for themselves. Different kinds of conflict.
And yes, best of all is when they coexist and merge.
To me it’s more useful to think of change. Change inside, especially, has emotional power. The conflict you are talking about is good yet to me it is the prelude (desire) and struggle for (resistance) to an outcome (change).
Thus, I like your semantics and agree with your definition of conflict, quoted above. But that is only what puts a story in gear. It describes the gasoline that drives the story engine. It doesn’t tell us our destination.
A journey is just a wander around in circles unless there is a destination and to me that is change.
Hi, Benjamin. I agree that stories address change. But the change is motivated by a discovery — about the character himself, his world, or his relationship(s) with (an)other(s). And that discovery usually results after an arduous struggle in pursuit of a desire. I think we’re just analyzing the issue from different ends.
Yep. You egg, me chicken. Or…wait…the other way around? Either way we’re cooked, it seems.
Seriously, good post, as you can see from these comments.
Indeed. That’s why Debra Dixon’s book is called “Goal, Motivation, and (finally) Conflict. (Finally is my added comment.) It’s easy to get hung up on details of construction and forget that you’re writing a story for people to read. My advice is: don’t do that!
Well said.
Thank you for this post, David! I’ve always been uncomfortable with the battle metaphor in the term “conflict”. Desire, yearning, connection, resistance: these are far more fruitful ways for me to think about story.
It’s no earth-shattering surprise to realize that the writers who find the conflict-centric paradigm lacking tend to be women. David Jauss feels the same way, but he basically just reiterates Le Guin’s points,
David, this is freaking brilliant! Blanche Hartman, former abbess of San Francisco Zen Center always used to ask one question in her talks: What is your inmost request? I used that question on my WIP to find my protagonist’s desire, and it wasn’t easy. I could come up with any number of answers, as I always used to for myself when Blanche would ask the question. Dropping deeply enough to find the one answer that underlays everything else is as essential for my protagonist and her story as it was for me in my own.
You knock me out with the way you put things. Suddenly I see the same old questions from a fresh perspective, and it brings my own work to life in a new way.
Safe travels today…
“What is your inmost request?” I so love that. I’m going to put that on my writing wall as well.
Some wonderful food for thought, David. I don’t have time to digest in detail this morning, but I will certainly be going back to this post with great expectation.
Thanks for sharing!
Be careful of great expectations. If a woman named Miss Haversham invites you over, politely decline.
This emphasis on conflict is why I had such trouble learning to write fiction. Also, my work life focused on reducing conflict and helping others find peaceable answers, which made for tough times creating fictional conflict on the page. Later, from one of your Reno workshops on character, I began to understand the need for character motivation driving the action. Since then I’ve been using a formula I developed to visualize: Backstory (psychology plus physicality) encountering Circumstances creates Motivation which leads to Action.
That reads like a complicated explanation when written without symbols and arrows. It seems to me the stuff of life, which is why it satisfies us in fiction.
That’s the long way of saying I agree with you that desire drives story. You’re on it.
Hi Paula/P. Jo):
I remember that workshop in Reno! Good for you for working out your own approach. I think the real goal of teaching is to say just enough so the students feel inspired to figure theings out for themselves.
I’m teaching a workshop tomorrow on moral argument, which means a war of ideas, or visions on how to live. And it’s at a romance writers convention. Love stories always involve struggle, but end in reconciliation. I think the Unity of Opposites approach, where the conflict is a zero sum game and my win means you lose, though capable of producing great stories, cannot account for ALL great stories. And seeking peace instead of victory is a great theme.
I liked this very much! My blog post on it:
https://www.sandragulland.com/the-heroines-journey/
How kind of you, Sandra. I liked your post very much. And I’m humbled by the company you’ve put me in. Thanks so much.
I am so pleased you liked it. I’m now reading two other WU blog posts by you. The Broken Arc especially speaks to what I’m grappling with in my WIP. Thanks!
Amazing flip of an old idea; thanks for the new perspective. It changes storytelling.
You’re quite welcome. Thanks for the attaboy.
Couldn’t agree more, David. Great piece.
This is the problem: we have no better word than conflict at the moment to encompass “goals in opposition,” or, as you put it, “desire meeting resistance.” I wish we did — we wouldn’t have to belabor over it and waste much time defining exactly what we mean by “conflict.” Maybe gegentsehnsucht
But yeah, physical confrontation is only a minor province in the realm. I would say that Le Guin’s “relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing” all imply goals in opposition (or desire meeting resistance), which I would call “conflict” or, as my wife says, “feeling conflicted.” Resolution, after all, can only follow some state of disarray that lets us begin unresolved.
Love this. Thanks man.
David,
I’ve just come from a weekend conference, Lights Cameras Action, sponsored but the Author’s Coalition and Sisters in Crime here in Hollywood. The theme was how authors can better present their works to Hollywood. Perhaps because it’s all fresh in my mind, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to what you wrote to what good screen writers do and that fir which HOLLYWOOD is looking.
Time and again I heard how authors works were shifted through by literary agents searching for scenes suitable for the big scene. CONFLICT – dramatist action scenes. But it’s the emotion ( the internal conflict) the actor brings to the scene; the emotion we see on his face, that connects to the viewer and the payoff (the external emotion) that viewers see at the story wraps that makes for such memorable stories.
In answer to your question, birth or battle? My new series, the Carol Child’s Mysteries are a combination of both. The physical challenges Carol faces, the discrimination and the threats only highlight the internal battles and demons we all face. And the payoff? Growth.
Nancy Cole Silverman
Hey, Nancy:
Nice to hear from you. My first reaction to what you said was: Bingo.
I’d add that the climactic scene should also reveal decisions and actions that the character would not have made — or not as made as clearly and devotedly — at the beginning of the story. And that leads back to your emphasis on growth.
Great post!!! Personally, i found the hospital staff kind, the room fine, and the epidural way more empowering than the pain it alleviated. Thsnks.
Excellent! It’s true that Romeo and Juliet is full of conflict, yet it’s the impossible love that fuels the tragedy. In Hamlet, the tragedy is in the words and ideas–take your pick. (I prefer the de-humanization and loneliness of life, or the inability for one person to make a difference, even to himself.) Tragic stuff, that. Even the definition of tragedy doesn’t make his stuff feel tragic to me anymore: If there’s absolutely nothing you can do to control your own life, where’s the tragedy in that? If you couldn’t possibly make anything go right, how can anything go wrong? Too much of conflict is mixed with plot, which doesn’t have to be–Shakespeare’s greatest plays are essentially plotless. (Remember the pirates who return Hamlet to Denmark for Act V?) But you’ve got to be a genius of the highest order (like Shakespeare) to create tragedy without tragic conflicts today.
Thanks for disabusing the popular concept about conflict. Most of the writers insist conflict is the essence and core of the novel. I’m in the process of writing my seventh book, and I find your piece very encouraging.