: Re: Character, plot, and setting conflicts I'm working through the Sanderson youtube classes on writing fantasy and he discusses the idea that conflict can arise between any two (or three) of the

@Mendez196

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I don't agree that all story conflicts are moral; I think that is a strange position. Here is how I understand Sanderson's theory. First, that each of the pairings can be used to create conflict. They do not necessarily have to be a direct opposition to each other.
Disclaimer: I don't know what Sanderson would think of this analysis, it is just the way I personally understand these interactions. If someone has better information that what I remember from the BYU courses, Provide a link, I'll watch it again.
Character & Setting.
This can be direct conflict: A character can have a non-moral conflict with setting, because the setting is the "villain", and the character is not (IMO) making a moral choice by trying to survive. If my pilot's plane is struck by lightning and crash lands at sea, I don't consider it a "moral" choice to try and swim ashore and survive on a desert island, and then work to return to society. Yes, she is making choices, but it is a stretch to say they are choices about who she wants to become; she just wants to see her husband and kids again and eat a cheeseburger, she wants to escape this prison and be free to be that person she already considers herself to fully be.
I DO consider that a story. Likewise, a climber that gets his arm wedged behind a boulder and must choose to amputate it in order to survive (to escape his prison). It is a hard choice, but not a choice of whether it is morally right or wrong to live without an arm. Or an astronaut left behind on Mars, and chooses to go on a starvation diet and grow and eat potatoes in his own waste to survive (and escape his prison).
I don't consider these moral choices; i.e. between right and wrong, or being a killer or not, or being brave or not, or betraying principles or not. Any non-sentient thing (mainly the environment, sometimes disease) that threatens to destroy the MC or someone she loves is a villainous setting, that must be tamed or escaped or defeated (like a disease), and I consider it a story even if the MC is not required to make any moral choice to succeed.
The same is true for less dire environments: The stranger touring a strange land of magic and wonders, and returning home.
Character & Plot
This is more obvious; the plot consists of some events, and those events can cause conflict with characters. The MC's house burned down while she was at work, it burned the neighbors houses, with major losses. The fire investigator says the fire began in her kitchen, but can't narrow the cause further than that. Her neighbors claim the fire is her fault, and sue her for actual and punitive damages to their houses.
Plot & Setting
The plot and the setting together can create conflict. The hurricane hits, and washes away our home. Services everywhere are disrupted, the roads are out, police won't come, the phones are down. The plot: My MC must find replacement meds for her son, or he may have a status seizure that would kill him (a seizure lasting more than 5 minutes; a continuous epileptic seizure can cause brain damage, stroke, heart attack, and death.) This is similar to Character & Setting, but in this case, the setting would not be deadly for all characters, and is not particularly lethal for our MC, but the plot (every hour without meds increases the lethal risk to her son) interacts with the setting to create conflict.
In this kind of circumstance, unlike the "figure out how to escape the environment" plot, moral choices may apply: Will she steal an unattended rubber raft? Will she hold a stranger at gunpoint to take by force half their supply of the necessary meds? But I don't think they are absolutely necessary in order to make a compelling story.

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