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| Manifesto: Toward a Conflict-Free Novel http://horrorworld.org/msgboards/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=5645 |
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| Author: | RobertDevereaux [ Thu Dec 11, 2008 10:03 am ] |
| Post subject: | Manifesto: Toward a Conflict-Free Novel |
It is a given of literary criticism that conflict is the basis of all story. The more conflict, the more engaged readers are, and the moire likely they will stay with you until the last page, full of fear and anxiety for sympathetic characters in peril. This essay asks, Can there be a powerful story for which the driving energy isn't conflict? Is delight a sufficient driver? Surprise and delight? Consider books for young children. Consider Curious George up in the sky, clinging to a kite. And how quickly I needed to get to his rescue, Caitlin was so agitated at the idea that he might fall and hurt himself. Now can there be an adult story where continual and unexpected delights are the driving force? Might the creation of conflict, anxiety, and various sorts of violence--the reinforcement of the myth of duality--be the lazy writer's way out? I'm just asking these questions. Consider Don Quixote. Surely there is conflict, but perhaps in greater measure there is delight. Consider Falstaff in I Henry IV. Delight. Only later will he be rejected by the prince, but until then, easy banter and that grand persona. Tom Sawyer and the whitewashed fence is similar, scampishness and no conflict. Consider much of the Oz books, the unfolding wonders of the odd creatures and environments Dorothy encounters. Or many of the tales in the Arabian Nights. Is it possible to sustain the magnificent engine of a novel with these other-than-conflict drivers, told in prose so powerful and engaging that the adult reader cannot put the book down, and must immediately reread the novel as soon as the first reading concludes? Might such a book bring to vivid life once more the lost innocence and delight of the child in us all, giving way as well to vast possibility, sparking our creativity and the bold optimism of the person for whom the whole world continually opens up infinitely? |
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| Author: | gaybrat99 [ Sat Dec 13, 2008 8:22 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Manifesto: Toward a Conflict-Free Novel |
Very interesting question you pose. And I'm ashamed to say that, despite being a writer myself, it's not something I've ever given terribly much thought to. I am a lover of flash fiction and have written many short short stories that depend not on conflict but on surprise and (what I hope is) delight, but as for novel-length projects, I have never written anything that did not in some way hinge on conflict. |
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| Author: | davidalanrichards [ Thu Nov 25, 2010 1:48 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Manifesto: Toward a Conflict-Free Novel |
I don't think I've ever read a book or a story without conflict, although I've read abstract poems without conflict and enjoyed them if they surprise me enough. But the surprise has to be big and unexpected. If it's a what do you know about that, that's nice surprise I fade. Narrative writing? The only parts of narrative writings I can think of having read without conflict are long descriptions of scenery which can really set the mood for a story with . . . . . conflict or in the case of a number of long-winded writers who I really don't get, can make me so bored I almost want to commit suicide. Personally, I'm delighted by conflict. I've probably been riding conflicting waves of myself for more then a number of years, so it feels like home and I think art comes from conflict. I know when I write, like an oyster producing a pearl I need something that irritates me to get me going. Otherwise why not just sit around and day dream. Not to say I'm always producing pearls. A lot of the time, my writing is more like entertaining lawn ornaments, but the lawn ornament metaphor ruins my analogy Anyway... I don't think there's anything wrong with conflict per say. It grows hair on your chest and such and makes up much of our experince in the world. Could exciting, stimulating narative writing exist that has absoulutely no conflict in it at all? Anywhere? Maybe. But I'm not sure what it would be like. |
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| Author: | RobertDevereaux [ Fri Nov 26, 2010 8:04 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Manifesto: Toward a Conflict-Free Novel |
Thanks for the comments, David. I was really playing Devil's advocate when I wrote the base note. A tantalizing question to some, perhaps, as it was then to me. Of course my current work-in-progress is loaded with conflict! Robert |
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