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The significance of plot without conflict (2012)
- majewsky 9y agoWikipedia has examples of how Kishōtenketsu can be applied to fairy tales and arguments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish%C5%8Dtenketsu
- icebraining 9y agoIt's interesting that the example given is of people killing each other. So much for lack of conflict :) It'd be nice if the author gave examples of significant plots using the structure, like a novel or a film.
- Chathamization 9y ago> It'd be nice if the author gave examples of significant plots using the structure, like a novel or a film. Indeed; I found a lot of pages talking about this concept, but almost none mentioning any examples of its implementation. In fact, the only long-form story (not a four panel comic strip or poem) I saw brought up as an example of it was Kiki's Delivery Service, which has plenty of conflict. It seems more like something that people theoretically like the idea of. It's also interesting the way it's presented as an Eastern vs. Western dichotomy, with Westerners supposedly viewing conflict as central to a story and Easterners not viewing it as essential. I don't see any indication that Eastern stories are less conflict driven than Western ones (most of the major ones I'm familiar with, such as the Four Great Classical Chinese Novels, have plenty of conflict).
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoThat wiki page suggests this has been a conscious process used in Super Mario level design since Super Mario Galaxy: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-17-how-nintendos-best-mario-levels-were-structured-using-chinese-poetry http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-17-how-nintendos-b...
- r888888888 9y agoThe way this works in terms of design is: 1) A game mechanic is introduced 2) The player is subject to slowly increasing difficult that requires the mechanic 3) The player is forced to demonstrate mastery of mechanic in some new situation, often by combining with other mechanics 4) The player has mastered the mechanic and has the option of using it whenever they want in the future
- nsxwolf 9y agoFor whatever reasons I vividly remember asking the question in 7th grade, "can't a story not have a conflict? Can't it just be about some nice people getting along without anything like that happening?" and my teacher simply said "No."
- jbob2000 9y agoThat's a semantic argument. Your teacher is arguing that in order for something to be a story, it must have conflict, otherwise it's just a list of events.
- mannykannot 9y agoPossible counter-example for your teacher: Arthur C. Clarke's 'The Sentinel'? I also recall Robert Graves' writing, in 'Goodbye to All That', of one of his fellow soldiers saying that after the war, he would read the whole of Trollope's Barchester chronicles, as nothing happens in them, though that is not strictly true.
- dsr_ 9y agoGraydon Saunders' A Succession of Bad Days: top review on Goodreads: "There's no plot to speak of--things happen, and then it ends. There's no conflict to speak of until the last chapter. Most of the book consists of detailed descriptions of civil engineering projects and the magical techniques used for them. The characters are ludicrously overpowered special snowflakes. The language is nigh-impenetrable, and the innocent comma is tortured beyond all reason. But you know what? To hell all that. I loved it. This is a story about where legendary sorcerers come from. Five young people (ages range from late teens to early thirties) with magical talent take part in a highly experimental training program. Talent is hazardous; absent training, none of them are expected to live to see fifty. Traditional training, which runs along the lines of "spend several years sweeping floors and learning control before moving on to lighting candles", has a roughly fifty percent survival rate. Their program, in contrast, starts with completely reconstructing a square mile or so of geography and scales up rapidly from there." It is, in fact, an extremely good story. I also suggest Nathan Lowell's Solar Clipper series, a far-future space story in which nothing much happens and it is fascinating. Excitement is largely provided by superior coffee making and people management skills.
- skybrian 9y agoIt seems like both kinds of plots set up a problem and resolve it. In one, a problem happens to the characters in the story. In the other, the problem is for the reader to understand what is happening in the story. But it's very common for stories to include both kinds of problems.
- tareqak 9y agoYeah, I had the same response. To use the phrasing of the article, I find the third non sequitur act to be a conflict in terms of simply being a mismatch from the pattern established by the first two i.e. a combo-breaker.
- jpttsn 9y agoThat checks out. Also, I think a lot of "western" stories have this structure too, namely: jokes. Many good jokes are conflict-less stories, that create a contradiction for the reader to resolve with a double take.
- labster 9y agoJokes are primarily about conflict between expectations and reality.
- evincarofautumn 9y agoDepends on the type of joke. For setup/punchline and wordplay-type jokes, I think “contrast” is more apt. The punchline is a resolution, sure, but not usually in the sense of a conflict—it’s dispelling confusion by connecting the parts that have been presented, or inviting the audience to connect them to have that “Oh, I get it!” moment. That seems basically like kishoutenketsu. To me, humour based on conflict, even between expectation and reality, falls more into the category of irony, mocking, or slapstick, where someone (or something) is the “butt of the joke”.
- healthdavid 9y agoIs there such a thing as a joke that doesn't have a "butt", though? It's obvious in mocking and slapstick but even in wordplay the joke is at the expense of the structure and rules of language and implicitly the people who try to police it.
- Dirlewanger 9y agoI'm not a writer in the conventional sense, but can't Kishōtenketsu be reduced as to just world/character-building? I'm not fully seeing just how different it is. The comic panel was too simplistic I guess.
- savanaly 9y agoI'll try to restate the point in my own words and see if that helps you. "just world/character-building" would be if the plot was: a girl gets a soda from a soda machine, then take it to a boy. Kishōtenketsu is: a girl gets a soda from a soda machine. Meanwhile, a boy sits on a bench. The audience is confused at this point and that creates conflict in their mind. In the resolution, we see the girl was getting the soda for the boy.
- jamesjyu 9y agoIt's different because there is no apparent obstacle that blocks the protagonist (the girl) from achieving their goal. In traditional western plots, this conflict is the main focus, and is usually between the protagonist and an antagonist who has their own (usually opposite) goals. This conflict underlies almost all the narrative structure. For example, the reader should be obsessing about the stakes as they read: what happens if the girl doesn't get what she wants? Who else loses? Does anyone die? This is what drives people to read on. Without conflict, this structure falls apart. World and character building can occur in either of these cases. But in the classic conflict case, the world and characters are usually designed to heighten conflict (ie. the character has a flaw that leads to them to more direct conflict).
- r00fus 9y agoI viscerally hated kids shows (e.g.: Little Einsteins) that had conflict-driven plots, and avoided those for my kids (except in small overall % - where for some reason my kid really wanted to watch). At a point it felt like a conspiracy. You don't need an antagonist to make an interesting story.
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- gallerdude 9y agoI was watching a movie last night, where in the opening scene, a getaway driver escapes the cops. In the meanwhile, the driver, seemingly randomly, kept listening to the score of the local football game. At the end of the chase, the driver pulls into a parking ramp where the game has just ended - obfuscating his vehicle in a sea of fans leaving the game. (It's worth noting that there's still conflict, but this was the first example that came to mind for me.)
- rodgerd 9y ago_Driver_. That scene struck me mostly because it was the rare example of a director trying to make chase conventions work in a contemporary setting, rather than pretend cellphones, radios, cameras, and police helicopters don't exist.
- danharaj 9y agoI would have liked the author to include references to the particular Derrida texts they were referring to. I'm not familiar with him in particular and I'd like to get more context. Especially since Derrida entered philosophy right after World War 2-- pretty compelling evidence (by no means eurocentric, either) that the world is ultimately ruled by violence.
- ashark 9y agoWestern works (especially cinema) use this in individual scenes all the time, right? The first example wouldn't be at all out of place in the first act of a film to show us that two people know one another, or (even more effectively) later after they've fought to show us that they're friendly again. Its use as the central structure for an entire 1.5-2hr movie, or a whole novel, say, is what's rare. [EDIT] All the examples on Wikipedia are very short, too. Is such a structure common as the central plot of a longer work anywhere? Its super-common in the West in the above use—maintaining interest in scenes that lack conflict—but again, not as the main plot structure of anything. Also, the "argument" version on WP made me realize that the thing this all reminds me of that I couldn't quite place is the syllogism
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Western works (especially cinema) use this in individual scenes all the time, right? Sometimes, probably, though conventional theories of screenwriting hold that each scene must have and be defined by a conflict whose resolution advances the plot related to the wider conflict of the piece, and that a scene which does not have a conflict or whose conflict doesn't fulfill a role in advancing the wider plot should be excised. > Also, the "argument" version on WP made me realize that the thing this all reminds me of that I couldn't quite place is the syllogism It also has some similarity to the Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis style of rhetoric/argument, possibly closer than to the purely-deductive syllogism. But, yes, I can see that similarity, too. Interestingly, the Western 3-Act structure has been described as a special case of T/A/S structure; so, in a way, this structure may be more relatable to Western structure than the superficial differences suggest.
- PeterisP 9y agoPerhaps Magnolia http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/ with all the separate stories coming together in the end is an example?
- gwbas1c 9y agoI'm so sick of movies that end with a giant, epic, battle scene. These are movies with minimal conflict for the first 90 minutes or so, and then all of a sudden turn into a boring epic battle to the death. Ugh.
- empath75 9y agoThis is basically the structure of most This American Life stories. A recounting of some events, interrupted by incongruous new information, and then a resolution where the mystery is resolved. There's a YouTube video where Ira Glass describes storytelling as asking a series of questions that demand answers.
- lubujackson 9y agoWhen I think of the focus on multicultural writing I wish it was more stuff like this rather than typical stories told with a slightly different cultural background.
- gallerdude 9y agoYeah, I think everyone (perhaps the hacker especially) has an appreciation for the structures underneath the hood that make something interesting.
- spookyuser 9y agoI love the kinds of stories where nothing happens, I don't even know what they're technically called but I mentally refer to them as people walking around and doing stuff movies. I dont know why they're so appealing to me - maybe for the same reason that people find slow tv good. But I would be totally happy to go and watch Slacker for the sixth time right now.
- md224 9y agoHave you seen Columbus? You should see Columbus.
- spookyuser 9y agoThank you for pointing this out, I hadn't heard about before and now I really want to see it!
- icebraining 9y agoThe trilogy Before Sunrise / Before Sunset / Before Midnight is essentially two people walking and talking the whole duration. EDIT: And now I see it's written and directed by the same guy as Slacker :)
- spookyuser 9y agoYup, I love those too. They probably have even less conflict than Slacker :P
- icebraining 9y agoHave you seen Lynch's The Straight Story? It's literally just an old man who goes to see his brother, who suffered a stroke. There are a few problems along the way, but it's small stuff, there's no big race against time or anything like that, it's literally a straight story of his trip and the people he meets and talks to along the way until he reaches his brother's home. It's also very good, in my opinion.
- Blackthorn 9y agoIt was a major eye opening experience the first time I saw My Neighbor Totoro. There was a charming and wonderful film that was completely devoid of conflict! Yet, it worked and worked well. It went against everything I had been taught in every English class in my life.
- colanderman 9y agoIn my high school literature class we were taught that conflict doesn't have to be between individuals. Indeed, Totoro does have conflict by this definition: between the girls and their insecurity about their mother's illness. The conflict is resolved thanks to Totoro and the friendship they developed with him. I seem to remember The Magic School Bus [1] (kids' science show) having stories – that is, a series of related events – but only sporadic (and generally incidental) conflict. "Magical bus takes school kids on memorable – if ill-advised – journey, and Arnold makes jokes" sums up pretty much every episode. Seinfeld I would venture to say also deviates from the western norm, in that the conflicts (of which each episode has several) are rarely, if ever, overcome. Half the time the conflict reaches a climax at the end of the episode. In fact the entire series ended with unresolved conflict. But the stories are nonetheless memorable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_School_Bus_%28TV_series%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_School_Bus_%28TV_ser...
- icebraining 9y agoI also thought about The Magic School Bus, but while incidental, I seem to remember there was often some element of danger that they had to surpass, no? Like being inside someone and the time until re-growth being limited, causing a race against time to exit the body.
- shichikokuyama 9y agoI love My Neighbor Totoro, and it's a great example of kishōtenketsu structure, but it's not devoid of conflict - it just doesn't have an antagonist. Satsuki and Mei have an argument in the third act where Satsuki stomps off and Mei disappears, setting up the ending (ketsu).
- alexanderdmitri 9y ago> Is it possible that deconstruction could never have been conceived in a world governed by kishōtenketsu, rather than by the three-act plot? Is the three-act structure one of the elements behind the very worldview that calls for its deconstruction? Can the Western narrative of the will to power remain coherent in the face of a rival narrative from the East? This writer would prefer to ask than to answer these questions. Does the author actually say what the significance of a plot without conflict is? Is this an experiment with meta-thesis where conflict is avoided by not actually concluding the argument?
- SubiculumCode 9y agoIt was an interesting article, but I think we must be very careful if we are to make the strong claim that the entirety of western literature follows a single plot structure. Maybe all Disney movies, but not the great abundance that constitutes western literature.
- pacaro 9y agoCiméma du look [1] does something other than conflict in a sense. The movies still have conflict (I'm really thinking of Diva [2] as my exemplar) but it is entirely secondary to the style and texture of the movie [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinéma_du_look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinéma_du_look [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diva_(1981_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diva_(1981_film)
- pnathan 9y agoTangentially, journalists almost, as a rule, put a narrative on events, even those that really don't have a narrative (which is most things under Current Events) E.g, when a story focuses on someone's personal story through the time of events, that becomes the narrative lens. I'm not fond of this approach, because it sets up conflicts and limits the view of events to the specific, when really, as someone far away, the specific isn't useful in understanding how it is actually news.
- ranprieur 9y agoPopular American storytelling is centered on something even more precise than conflict. It's centered on the question of which side is going to win. Not only fiction, but even reality TV, always has to trick us to make the conflict seem exactly balanced until the very end. Sometimes I want to see a conflict that's an obvious blowout from setup to resolution. That can still be vastly entertaining with a little creativity.
- thanatropism 9y agoThis is Dunkirk (2007), no?
- riazrizvi 9y agoNarratives are driven by 1) a question that 2) the reader cares about. - How is Ender going to save earth in space army academy? (Ender's Game) - Who killed Mr Ratchett? [EDIT: or rather How will Poirot figure out who killed Mr Ratchett?] (Murder on the Orient Express) - How was Rome formed in the early days? (History of Rome, Livy) - What's going to happen to Seth Brundle? (The Fly) - How did Warren Buffett become who he is today? (Snowball) - Are Mr Knightly and Emma going to hook up? (Emma) - Who is Ted Mosby going to marry? (How I met your mother) Conflict can be the basis of the question, 'Who will win the fight'. Kishōtenketsu can be the basis of the question, 'Who are these people and how are they related?'. I don't agree that 'in the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict' because many plots do not have the outcome of a conflict as the main question.
- norswap 9y agoI'm pretty sure everyone that watched "How I Met Your Mother" were doing so for the jokes, not the plot. It wasn't even really a narrative at all, more like a smattering of teasers. But you're right, not all plots are about conflict. Plots about conflict, and especially inner conflict, tend to be fascinating if done right though.
- riazrizvi 9y agoYes I agree that watchers/readers are not always focused on the main question. In any moment you feel drawn in to a story you might be drawn along by a secondary or tertiary question. Storytellers weave them together into a tapestry of compelling viewing/reading. Think of a single joke you might hear in a show, 'Why did the chicken cross the road?', we immediately think, 'How is he going to try to make this old joke funny now?'. Once a story loses its questions for you, you lose interest in the story.
- bmm6o 9y agoIt's true that the journey is often more important than the destination. You don't really watch HIMYM to find out how Ted met his wife (at least up until the last season). On the other hand, each episode needs to have some kind of plot to work as a narrative structure.
- pier25 9y ago> The resulting plot–and it is a plot–contains no conflict. It may be a plot, but is it a good plot? Does it makes you want to know more about the story?
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoThis is why I stopped watching Orange is the New Black. Season 3 had no conflict, or it wasn't relevant conflict any longer. Just life in prison. I did consider that dull, but I don't preclude that a plot can't be "good" without conflict. I think that is entirely fine and possible. But in a story where a previous chapter or segment did follow that formula, and then the next doesn't, it looks like a dull accident.
- mvaliente2001 9y agoI've always think that "My Big Fat Greek Weeding" was close to that concept. Instead of a big conflict that is resolved at the end, we have small conflicts that are resolved almost immediately after being presented. Toula feels ugly, ignorant and trapped in an uninterested job. She begins to study, changes her clothes and make up, changes job. She still remembers that she was rejected by the other girls when she was a child, but now in college, she tries again and is accepted. She likes a man, he likes her back. Her father doesn't accept a "xenos", but he tolerates him. He's not catholic orthodox, he gets baptized. And the last part of the movie lacks any conflict, and nevertheless, we're thrilled to see the happy ending materialize because we got to like the main characters.
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- alvinmint 9y agoYou can think that the conflicts are internal and at the end the characters changes, improve or found something unique about them.
- white-flame 9y agoI think that the most important and engaging components of conflict are "mystery" and "anticipation". Playing those out with a deliberate antagonist just happens to be an easy go-to way of encapsulating that, playing with the mystery of what he's got up his sleeve and anticipating when they finally clash. But these components of conflict do not require an antagonist "character" per se. The conflict can be survival, overcoming disease, making that next promotion, getting the girl/guy, not knowing what happened to bring the world to the condition it's in, etc. Or they can be applied in simple charm or humor, but those still need a setup and payoff of some sort. The "setup" here still sets up a conflict of some type, just not necessarily of the antagonistic flavor. So I would disagree that there's no "conflict", but rather there is a lack of a specific antagonist character.
- rodgerd 9y agoOne of the things I realised I loved about _My Neighbour Totoro_ is exactly this; it cuts against the normal kids' movie fare by providing a fairly simple slice of life (albeit with the supernatural). It really stands out compared to the structure of most kids' movies.
- mwexler 9y agoThis reminded me of the MacGuffin concept, popularized by Hitchcock, about the need for a goal to drive a the plot of the movie, but it was just a throwaway device used to get into the characters and their conflict (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin#Alfred_Hitchcock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin#Alfred_Hitchcock). The MacGuffin school assumes that the viewer understands the deeper meaning of the quest or centerpiece, and so can ignore it, but it turns out that many viewers, right or wrong, actually like clever plots and quests... along with great characters and snappy dialog, etc.
- kristianov 9y agoThis is an ancient Chinese writing guideline: 起承转合。
- kruhft 9y agoWhat does it mean?
- fitzroy 9y ago2001 can be seen as a film that (mostly) exemplifies a conflict-free structure. [spoilers] While the plot of the film has been described as ‘a computer malfunctions and tries to kill the crew of a spaceship’, in fact that part of the film lasts for about 40 minutes — or just over a quarter of the two and a half hour running time. The actual overt conflict is only about 30 minutes, arguably starting right before the intermission when we see that HAL can read the crewmembers’ lips through the window of the soundproof pod. Many films have conflict-free exposition scenes or sequences, but 2001 is interesting because it has a single conflict-containing act within a larger non-conflict structure, which is primarily expository and/or revelatory in nature.
- jamesrom 9y agoThere was indeed conflict. The conflict came from the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated frames. Creating conflict is an element of every story. Drama is the process of reconciling conflict.
- manyoso 9y agoI think of movies like Dazed and Confused as essentially without conflict.
- asimjalis 9y agoKishōtenketsu is an idea. Calling it "eastern" and contrasting it with something called "western" is (ironically) creating a conflict where there isn't one.
- alvinmint 9y agoMost writers knows about the different kind of plots and structures, the problem is that the market wants and expect a specific type and writers needs to eat. If you are interested in story structures I recommend this books -Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting bt Robert McKee -Invisible Ink: A Practical Guide to Building Stories that Resonate by Brian McDonald
- Allower 9y agoContrast = conflict. Author is splitting hairs. As shitty writers often do