: Can a book be written without an antagonist? I have had this thought running through my head and wondered what your thoughts were on it. Can a book, a story I should say, be written without

The question can a book be written without an antagonist
My first thought was- yeah probably, but it won't be good if you're not an expert level writer
other people said- HELL NO! A story/book can't exist without SOME form of conflict or antagonist.
I dunno, man. 3 themes of conflict: man against man, man against nature, or man against self. Every single story has a conflict in it? Seems like a stretch.

Once upon a time. Not much happened. People did some stuff. Life went on. Everything eventually turned to dust. The end. (it's not entertaining, but is not a boring story still a story? And a good writer could probably make even that entertaining)

OK some of these examples below contain conflict, but I think some of them do not
These are books where "nothing happens"
If someone was trying to do a book without conflict- these might help. i dunno.

A Rebours aka Against Nature by J-K Huysmans is a book with no plot, it's really just a long description of the main character's taste in art, books, and interior decorating.

Room Temperature in which a man feeds his infant son and Box of Matches in which a man sits in front of the fire each morning before his family awakens, both by Nicholson Baker.

Beckett's Waiting for Godot is considered to be literally about "nothing". You might prefer to watch the play in addition to reading it. Its very different from anything I've read before and its quite short so it's hardly a commitment. But still, very interesting. I still think about it randomly every once in a while even though I read it years ago.

Stoner by John Williams. (maybe about a dude that gets high)

Catcher in the Rye. I've always considered it a book where nothing happens (Not sure if it counts. this might be man against self)

On The Road by Jack Kerouac, one of my favourite Beat books and about as chill as you can get without being boring. Also pretty much any Murakami book- try Colourless Tsukuru Taziki

The Slow Regard of Silent Things, by Patrick Rothfuss. Literally nothing happens and the main character is basically a nutter; from the preface by the author:
You might not want to buy this book. I know, that’s not the sort of thing an author is supposed to say. The marketing people aren’t going to like this. My editor is going to have a fit. But I’d rather be honest with you right out of the gate. I think it’s only fair to warn you that this is a bit of a strange story. I don’t go in for spoilers, but suffice to say that this one is ... different. It doesn’t do a lot of the things a classic story is supposed to do.

Although there's different events happening in Tao Lin's Taipei, it really feels like nothing important is going on.

Shopgirl (Steve Martin)

The slow regard of silent things (rothfuss)

A gesture life by Chang ray lee was very very chill.

Greensleeves, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw might fit the bill.

"Wherever You Go, There You Are", by Kabat-Zinn. It's a book on mindfulness, which is literally the philosophy of being "chill".

I'd recommend Island by Aldous Huxley. Pretty much nothing happens until the end, and it's a very chill book about a chill way of life.

Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger

The tartar steppe by Dino Buzzati, nothing happens but after reading it i felt really changed. Beautifully written.

You might like Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis.

I think it's Flaubert who famously wanted to write 'a book about nothing at all'. For that, try Sentimental Education or Madame Bovary.

A lot of Anne Tyler's novels leave me with the feeling that not very much happened, apart from the characters learning things about themselves. And sometimes each other.

And, this might be my bias against a novel I had to read, but did anything happen in the second half of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James? Anything at all?

White Noise, by Don DeLillo.

Anne of Green Gables

So little happens in Bartleby & Co that there isn't even a book, just the footnotes that would exist if there were a book. It's about writers who stopped writing.

I believe that nothing really happens in "Cider with Rosie" by Laurie Lee, however his descriptions of everyday things and life are wonderful.

The Windup bird chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Midway through I thought something was going to happen but no. Nothing happened.

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski (probably a book about a dude making a sandwich- someone might argue that the conflict was that he was hungry. but he wasn't- he was going for thirds (somebody might argue that the conflict was still in there, but I think the author just wanted to write about the sandwich making process))

(The conflict in this one is probably Man against Himself so it probably doesn't count) Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov, 1859. From the wiki: "Oblomov is a young, generous nobleman who seems incapable of making important decisions or undertaking any significant actions. Throughout the novel he rarely leaves his room or bed. In the first 50 pages, he manages only to move from his bed to a chair."
(But imagine a version of him that isn't incapable-he just doesn't care. That would be basically the same story and there'd be no conflict. of course the ending would probably be different if he never changes or improves himself)

Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec is about just that. A moment in the life of an apartment building where a man is trying to spend a lifetime and a fortune with nothing to show for it. Tons of things don't happen all at once. (the conflict in this one is probably man against himself, but imagine a similar character who just has a fortune and is spending it with no worries like that)

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The answer to any "can I write" question is always "yes." But antagonists do a lot of heavy lifting in a book, they provide a lot of intrinsic interest, and useful narrative conflict. Readers tend to like works with compelling antagonists, and find them interesting to read.

So, if you do want to write a book without an antagonist, you'll need to work that much harder to find a way to draw in the reader without one. It may be possible, but you'll be given the reader a much different experience than a typical novel.

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Can a book be written without an antagonist?

Yes, it can.

I'm answering late and have read the other answers. I had to look it up, but in every dictionary reading I have found, "Antagonist" is a person or "One who opposes ...", and in this context I think "one" is obviously singular, and refers to a person with intent to oppose (or in scifi or fantasy, a sentient being capable of such intent).

I don't think "antagonist" and "conflict" are synonymous, if anything it is closer to "antagonist" and "villain" being synonymous.

A book can be written without any specific villain or villains. A story like the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, marooned alone, needs no specific villain with intent. The pain is thirst, hunger, heat, isolation, medical emergency, the triumph is finding solutions to those problems. No villain with intent is required.

Another plot could b a woman coming to terms with her imminent death due to cancer. No villain with intent is required.

Or, a teen girl struggling with the realization she is gay. This needs no villain with intent, it can be her struggle with her own beliefs and expectations, her anticipations about how her parents, siblings and society in general will treat her. She simultaneously wants to be a conformist and fit in, and desires a non-conformist love life and sex life.

A book cannot be written without conflict of some sort; a disparity between what exists and what is desired, puzzles to be solved, physical or emotional pain, hardships. Irrevocable events, like a death, that demand adaption to a new reality.

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Absolutely, unequivocally no. There is absolutely no way to write a story without some kind of antagonist.
By definition, a story is a logical series of related events which resolve something and seem to have a meaning greater than the sum of their parts when strung together. You can't resolve something without an antagonist, because there is no problem without one.

What are the three classic types of plot in literature?
Man Versus Man -Obviously, Man is the antagonist (probably a bad man, but this can take lots of different forms).
Man Versus Nature -Nature is the antagonist. Nature can be cruel, it can be deadly, and it is unmerciful. Nature actually makes a pretty good antagonist.
Man Versus Himself -Man is still the antagonist! Now, he's just getting in his own way, which is very much in character for him.

Notice a pattern? It's the "versus". There must be a "versus" in order to have a plot. You can get very experimental and actually write a story with no protagonist (I wouldn't recommend it, but it can be done). What you cannot do is go without some kind of antagonist at all. This need not be a "bad guy", but a "bad guy" is actually more important to telling a story than a "good guy" is!

Your problem here is a philosophical/theological one, not a problem of storytelling. You want to write a story set in a place with no conflict of any kind? How about a realistic novel about the residents of a graveyard? The only way that people can have no conflicts at all between them is if their are either dead or no longer human. I might submit that the Christian view of heaven as being entirely without conflict is not necessarily supported by the text of Scripture, but that is a totally different argument. Conflict isn't bad per se, in fact it is part of our nature. Even God engages in conflict in the Bible... There are many types of interesting conflict beyond an apocalyptic clash between ultimate good and ultimate evil for the ownership of the world. In fact, that is a pretty boring scenario. People would much rather read about the difficulties of learning to live with your newly dead relatives who you keep having misunderstandings with when they move into heaven down the street from your own little personal piece of paradise.

I'd suggest that if you can't conceive of a "heaven" where some kind of conflict is possible, do not write about it unless you want to create something indescribably boring.

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You cannot have a novel without an antagonist. An antagonist comes in two forms:

A physical antagonist: a person with a grudge against your protagonist, who will do whatever it takes to overcome the protagonist e.g. Voldemort, the Joker, Loki.

There is also the abstract antagonist: An event or similar, something like a weakness that the protagonist must overcome to achieve his goals e.g. fear, poverty, a corrupt government.

Either way, an antagonist is an obstacle, designed to prevent the protagonist from achieving his goal. This is where the antagonist is critical: if there is nothing stopping the protagonist, if it is all smooth sailing, then the novel is not exciting, a must for any bestseller, and usually a must if you want to be published.

For your plot, why not bring hell into it? You could send some demons in to wreak havoc on the heavenly community.

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There are three basic conflict themes: Man against nature, man against man, and man against himself. If the story theme is "man against nature," you have no (human) antagonist. Unless you consider "nature" the antagonist.

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I know this is years late, but I disagree that books must have conflict and an antagonist to be interesting.

One type of book that seems relevant to this question is one that paints a picture of a time and place; the people living in a location and their relationships with each other. These relationships don't have to result in major conflict to be interesting, and I think the mood created by these books is special. I'd also argue that it two minor characters don't get along, that doesn't make one of them the antagonist of the whole book. I'm thinking of books like The Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett and The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. In The Country of Pointed Firs, the protagonist is an author who takes up lodging in a country town with the goal of getting some work done. No one interferes with this goal, and the book itself is a series of vignettes about the people of the town and how they live. Similarly, The Summer Book is a series of stories about the summer vacation of a small girl and her grandmother. I might classify Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan in this group as well. It certainly evokes the attitude of a time and a place, but I'm not sure I could tell you who or what the antagonist of this book is.

Another type of book that might fit the idea of exploring what Judeo-Christian Heaven would look like is the travelogue. Describing the physical journey of the protagonist can be interesting and even full of adventure without being antagonistic. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome has plenty of comic mishaps, but I don't think I'd be able to point to an antagonist. Even something like The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley might fit this. There are some conflicts during the travels, but most of the character growth is the narrator introspecting on events in their recent past. One might count this as self-antagonistic, but I also think you could argue this isn't so much conflict as just taking the time necessary to sort through some mental baggage. I guess having the character reflect on past antagonism and grow from that is a bit of a cheat, but one that might work for a book set in heaven. (Admittedly it has been a while since I read the Towers of Trebizond, so I might be misremembering it a bit.)

Finally, I think it is possible for a book to create a relationship between two characters that isn't necessarily one of conflict, but which can be interesting and lead to character growth. Tove Jansson has another book that fits this category: Fair Play. This is about two women who have been friends for years, and how they both live, relate to one another, and get on with their creative endeavors. Their relationship isn't all flowers and sunshine, and they do have disagreements, but they don't interfere with each other's main goals, so I don't know that I'd feel comfortable calling them antagonists.

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An interesting example of a movie without a "bad guy" is My Cousin Vinny. There is definitely conflict, but with the exception of a murderer who never appears on screen or is even named, every person in the movie is essentially a good person doing they best they can. The judge, the sheriff, the prosecutor, the lawyers, the (innocent) accused -- none of them is a villain

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An antagonist doesn't have to be a physical or internal entity, so i'd argue no. Any good story has a force of any description that opposes the hero, that in the long run they have to overcome. For instance, the "antagonist" in a psychological thriller might be the main character's mental illness and how it might inhibit them along the course of their journey. In Disaster movies, the Antagonist is usually the disaster itself, although this obviously doesn't have to be exclusive. In Post Apocalyptic stories showing how the main characters survive, often the antagonist turns out to be the apocalypse itself and how it turns mankind against itself.

An Antagonist is crucial for any story, because otherwise its not a story, its just a series of events that happen. Without an antagonist of any description there is nothing for the hero to overcome.

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You can't really write a story without an antagonist. Remember an antagonist could be anything from a person, to an internal conflict in the protagonist. It's what gives readers a reason to read your books.
www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html <-- gives more info than I intended but here goes..
www.slideshare.net/caitlingillmett/types-of-conflict-5478403 <-- this one is better (direct info)

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As many of the other answers discuss, conflict with an antagonist drives plot, and plot is something that a story is obviously heavily reliant on.

Keep in mind however, that an antagonist doesn't necessarily have to be someone with evil intent. You can still write a story in Heaven.

An antagonist can be someone whose views differ from the protagonist.
This can be as obvious as Satan who has clear evil intent, or as subtle as the protagonists best-friend. The best friend could be just as 'good' as the protagonist, but if his opinions differ slightly, or the reader is led to believe they are, then they become an antagonist.

Done correctly, this can be a hugely rewarding concept.
There will always be an antagonist, otherwise there is no story.

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I absolutely think it's possible for a novel to be written without an antagonist. So long as it's entertaining, enlightening, and the characters grow and change, then there doesn't need to be a "bad guy"... but I agree about conflict. Your characters must face and deal with/overcome obstacles for the plot to be interesting to /most/ readers.

Take children's literature and/or picture books as an example. Sure there are a lot of differences between novels for adults and stories for children, but that may be a place to start your research. A lot of books for small children don't have an antagonist. The situation becomes the "antagonist" or the obstacle to be overcome.

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Westerners, esp. movie goers, are conditioned to expect certain elements in a story eg protagonist antagonist etc. A goal must be set and the goals impeded somehow by an antagonistic force, whether darth vader or the weather in " a perfect storm". If there is no antatgonist, the story can still "exist" or "be written", but it may not be appreciated.

I accept a Short Story(eg 7 minute play) and poetry for example dont necessarily have time for a hero's journey and may not need an "antagonist" and they can still be "good" because they reflect on the depth of an issue rather than "plot".

But if you want to engage an audience for 2 hours and be liked (story/movie/novel), you'll need a goal and impedance, and audience to root for the hero. The tried and tru structures work. change them after ytou ahve mastered them. As a corollary any person can record music in their garagae, but whether 900/1000 will want to listen to it is another thing.

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Isn't there conflict in every story? If there's no conflict, there's no interest for the reader...what a boring story it would be! As far as an antagonist goes, I agree that it could play the part of anyone or anything, internally or externally, but there is almost always an antagonist to create conflict. By simple definition, it's that someone or something that opposes the protagonist or hero, which I think could extend to natural disasters, internal conflicts like drug addiction or depression, and divine intervention.

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All fiction must have conflict, but that conflict certainly doesn't have to spring from the existence of a personified antagonist. There's man-against-nature (e.g., any survival story), man-against-himself (any kind of addiction-recovery story), and even conflicting protagonists (i.e., two characters have incompatible goals and struggle to defeat each other but the reader isn't invited to root for one over the other). Even in traditional man-against-man stories, sometimes the enemy doesn't exist as a character, the protagonist is struggling against the villain's malign influence.

There are even weirder cases. In the Sherlock Holmes short story, “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, there's no antagonist, no villain, and no crime, although I don't think Conan Doyle could have stretched it out for a whole novel without enraging his readers. Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Rendezvous With Rama similarly lacks any kind of negative character (although you could argue it lacks a plot altogether). My wife is reading Eat, Pray, Love -- I bet there's no antagonist there, but I can't be troubled to check.

An interesting example from the movies (it's much easier to talk about movie plots because they are so much simpler and because there are so fewer movies made than novels, most people have seen most popular movies): The Fifth Element has a clear and heroic hero (Dallas) and a clear and villainous villain (Zorg) but the two never meet and are never aware of each others' existence. They are in the same scene, once, but Bruce Willis walks out of frame before Gary Oldman walks in.

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Theoretically, it's possible as long as you replace the lack of antagonism with an inner conflict in the protagonist.

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Certainly stories can be written without a "traditional" antagonist. An example that popped to mind was Daniel Abraham's The Curandero and the Swede: A Tale from the 1001 American Nights; this story meanders between fable-like stories, all basically dealing with how people cope with the troubles life sends their way.

But really, I've seen lots of no-antagonist stories. The trick is to find out what is interesting in the story, if it isn't overt conflict. Sometimes it's a character portrait; sometimes it's an intriguing situation; perhaps a personal experience. Sometimes it'll be a unique literary experimentation. (In general, short fiction seems a better match for this than a novel - it doesn't need to be as compelling or as plot-driven, and you can mess around with format more because it doesn't need to hold up very long.)

"Angels in heaven," for example, isn't a story yet - it is, perhaps, a setting. An angel ruminating on the nature of sin and of providence might be spun into an intriguing short piece; or angels trying to learn to see the world through mortal eyes - you've got movement, development, and story even without an antagonist. But "angels sitting around all day praising the Lord" would be rather dull, whereas "angels fighting demons and bringing justice to Sodom" would be lively, but have clear antagonists.

Edited to add: here's a few short stories I can readily link to which I'd describe as not revolving around antagonism:

Rotting, by Shannon Dugan Iverson - character portrait of a man trying to pull his life together.
Bad Enough, by Kristi Petersen - a protagonist determined to starve herself to lose weight, in an absurd but compelling manner.
Synesthesia, by E.E. King - in which our narrator experiences a fantastical heightening of his senses.
Anatomy, Mechanics, by Jack Kaulfus - character portrait of a person on the cusp of a sex-change process.

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Why no conflict in heaven? There are a number of accounts of war in Heaven in both Jewish and Christian literature.

"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven." -- Rev. 12:7-8

But the conflict need not be so visceral. Perhaps the conflict lies in the difference between the expectations of the newly arrived and the reality(?) of the Heavenly circumstances.

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A story without an "antagonistic theme" is a story with "no conflict." Conflict drives plot. Without plot, you have a character study. Without conflict, the character has no reason to change, grow, or develop, so there's not much to study.

What in heaven's name (pun intended) could you write about without any conflict occurring?

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Yes, a book can work without an antagonist. For example, in "end of the world" disasters, the source of friction often comes from the disaster, and not an antagonist. (To use an example, while not a book but a film, think "Armageddon" as exhibit A.) Romance novels often don't have antagonists, either. The conflict could also come from inner conflict, such as drug addiction.

Can a book exist without any friction (which is what I assume you mean by no "antagonistic theme")? Possibly, but I can't imagine it would be an exciting read; it may depend on the audience. Perhaps someone has an example of a book like that, but I can't think of any.

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