While stories need conflict, writers don’t have to rely on adversarial relationships to make their stories work. In a post on the SFWA blog, Marie Brennan says the definition of conflict is broader than we usually imagine.
“If your education was like mine, you were probably taught that there are three basic types of conflict: Character vs. Character; Character vs. Nature; [and] Character vs. Self,” Brennan writes. While those concepts can be interpreted in many different ways, they all assume an adversarial relationship between the protagonist and antagonist or the protagonist and him/herself.
Brennan offers an alternative definition. “Narrative conflict is the instability or imbalance that imparts motion to the story,” she suggests. While a description of a garden by itself is not a story, the addition of a character to the setting changes the dynamic. “Their motivation could be as simple as wanting to find out what lies along the path,” Brennan writes. “That curiosity unbalances the stasis of the moment, seeking an answer: a tiny instability, but enough to put the character into motion, and thus turn an image into a story.”
In this example, there is no struggle, only ignorance or a lack of something intangible. “The character’s desire to know more is the conflict not because it’s opposed, but because it’s unfulfilled,” Brennan explains. “Many stories of discovery run on this engine…the main drive is simply, What’s over there? Let’s find out!”
