: Re: Does a novel require a conflict? Unless a better writer can dissuade me I am minded to say no. The 'essential' 'conflict' is cultural. It is part of the western 'Human Condition' - Eastern

Putting aside what makes a novel specifically, I don't believe every story needs a conflict.

I think we can all agree the phone book is not a story. But this is not for lack of conflict, but for lack of possibilities.

What makes an account into a story is the possibility for something to change. And that change must be visible before it happens. The reader must understand that "It could go like this or it could go like that" without needing to be told. (For the best stories it is usually both or neither).

The story is over once whatever it is comes to a head. Of course that story might just be a single chapter/paragraph/line of a longer story or novel.

"Me and Mommy in the Park" becomes a story when the writer is separated from Mommy and gets lost. Suddenly two possibilities spring up. Does the writer get back to their Mommy or not? I think it would be hard to phrase this story in terms of a conflict. There is certainly no antagonist.

What a conflict is, is a way to make two possibilities visible to the reader, by incarnating each possibility as a person. I want things to go down like this, but he wants things to go down like that. Bingo bango you have your possibilities. The story cannot end before one possibility asserts itself over the other. And one way to make this obvious is for one person to assert themself over the other.

Comedy routines like you mention carry a story but it is not the story as written. The story is "is this the punchline or is that the punchline?" And these stories rely on the fact you know it is a comedy routine to function. So very young children might regard the routine as "stupid" because they don't know what to look out for.

Monthy Python routines tend to carry a story as written but no punchline type of story. Those routines don't exactly have punchlines. This makes the little sketch transitions more important than you might think. It would feel incomplete for that sketch to end just before "Let's look at that handshake in slow motion".

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: Re: Does a novel require a conflict? Unless a better writer can dissuade me I am minded to say no. The 'essential' 'conflict' is cultural. It is part of the western 'Human Condition' - Eastern

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