my perspective on “all stories need conflict” has shifted a bit

I used to think that it just wasn’t true, and it led to people shoehorning conflict (which I defined as basically fighting against others, oppression, abuse, or some situation that causes suffering) into every story

but it seems like when people talk about “conflict” in a storytelling sense they’re defining the term so loosely that it could apply to literally any story. for example in the story “I got out of bed” the conflict is between the main character and the force of gravity, or maybe their own tiredness

so I still think that “all stories need conflict” is harmful but I also don’t think it’s falsifiable. I just think it’s (IMO) a bad way of framing storytelling because it defines all stories in terms of drama and fighting and enmity and other nasty things - which leads writers to shoehorn those things into every corner of every story and really play them up as well

personally I think that a good story is a collection of cool ideas and interesting questions. the characters are a way of showing those things to the audience and ideally also exploring those things in more depth

the characters need to want things, and those things need to cause them to encounter some cool ideas/questions. ideally they should also linger on those things and engage with them in a way that shows the full potential of how cool they can be

now that I write this out, I wonder if a good way to write a story would be:

• make a list of related ideas and questions that the writer is excited about
• use worldbuilding to make a world around those ideas/questions
• come up with some characters (ideally incorporating even more cool ideas/questions) who want something(s) from the world
• make the characters passionate about some of the cool things (that’s an easy way to get them to engage with them)
• make it so that between them and the thing(s) they want, they’re faced with obstacles that require them to engage with even more of those cool things

so yeah I guess the kas version of “storytelling is about conflict” would be “storytelling is about exploring cool things”

and my ideal story structure would probably be something like:

1. introduce the characters and what they want. at the same time, introduce the world/setting and establish some of the cool things baked into the world
2. have the characters face and eventually overcome an obstacle that causes them to engage with more cool things. make sure it’s clear that the characters have gained more than they lost from the obstacle
3. if you want to put more stuff in the story, go back to 2. otherwise go to 4
4. the characters accomplish their main goal! explore the implications of that for a while before ending the story on a positive note

“kas you’re just describing conflict again”

well, like I mentioned above the concept of “conflict” can be applied to literally anything, so it can also be applied to the “cool things” framing that I came up with. but what I’m doing is reframing stories to be about their appealing aspects - instead of framing stories as if the conflict, itself, is the core of a story’s appeal

I think that obstacles (my version of “conflict”) exist to guide the characters along a certain path so that they’ll encounter cool things. I think they’re a tool that can be used to maximize the appeal of a story. but what I don’t like is the framing that obstacles are the appeal of the story. I think that ideas and questions are the appeal - not conflict

very very tempted to use this new writing framework that I came up with. I love having a system for things and I think it’ll make writing a lot less overwhelming for me, without me having to use someone’s conflict-centric writing framework instead