: Re: Does a story require a villain to succeed? So far in my WIP, which is a â€œjourneyâ€ story, the main characters have been struggling against the environment and the fact that theyâ€™re displaced

Traditionally, people have referred to four different types of conflict that can animate a narrative.

Sexist language aside, these classifications can be quite helpful:

Person versus person - Your typical villain story.
Person versus nature - A disaster story, or a survival story.
Person versus self - Your hero must work hard to overcome deep flaws within.
Person versus society - The government is out to get your hero, or her conformist peers just can't accept someone who doesn't fit in.

But ultimately, something needs to keep the narrative from just being a smooth progression from start to finish. It's possible to be quite creative with this, however, and one story can quite often have multiple types of conflict. For example, in my current WIP, the protagonist thinks he has antagonists, but really, his main enemy is himself. Other stories have dealt with antagonists who become friends, or at least allies, when facing off against society or nature.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_(narrative)

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: Writing compelling dialogue I try to avoid repeating the prosaic "he said", "she said" structure as much as possible when writing dialogue. But I think overload of complex descriptors "he articulated",

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: Good characters need to be compelling, which is not necessarily the same as relatable but can be. Compelling characters have strong motivations that you, as a reader, understand; a relatable

: Re: Does a story require a villain to succeed? So far in my WIP, which is a â€œjourneyâ€ story, the main characters have been struggling against the environment and the fact that theyâ€™re displaced

More posts by @Kevin153

: Can fanfics be bestsellers? Fanfiction is somewhat of an uncharted territory, which few actual writers/critics take serious note of or are very enthusiastic about. It has been long asked and established

: Writing about a topic which you don't have personal experience in I would like to make it very clear that I'm very young (just graduated to a teen) and only an amateur writer. I have recently

: Writing compelling dialogue I try to avoid repeating the prosaic "he said", "she said" structure as much as possible when writing dialogue. But I think overload of complex descriptors "he articulated",

: Good characters need to be compelling, which is not necessarily the same as relatable but can be. Compelling characters have strong motivations that you, as a reader, understand; a relatable

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: Re: Does a story require a villain to succeed? So far in my WIP, which is a â€œjourneyâ€ story, the main characters have been struggling against the environment and the fact that theyâ€™re displaced

More posts by @Kevin153

: Can fanfics be bestsellers? Fanfiction is somewhat of an uncharted territory, which few actual writers/critics take serious note of or are very enthusiastic about. It has been long asked and established

: Writing about a topic which you don't have personal experience in I would like to make it very clear that I'm very young (just graduated to a teen) and only an amateur writer. I have recently

: Writing compelling dialogue I try to avoid repeating the prosaic "he said", "she said" structure as much as possible when writing dialogue. But I think overload of complex descriptors "he articulated",

: Good characters need to be compelling, which is not necessarily the same as relatable but can be. Compelling characters have strong motivations that you, as a reader, understand; a relatable

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: Re: Does a story require a villain to succeed? So far in my WIP, which is a â€œjourneyâ€ story, the main characters have been struggling against the environment and the fact that theyâ€™re displaced