Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3661-3665 (22nd to 26th January 2018)
JoeCovenant:
--- Quote from: Shjade on 26 Jan 2018, 13:42 ---
--- Quote from: MrNumbers on 26 Jan 2018, 02:44 ---
--- Quote from: Shjade on 26 Jan 2018, 01:14 ---...And no, good drama doesn't require a conflict.
--- End quote ---
As Joe sniped me to saying... well, yes? Yes it does?
You're right that it doesn't need a villain to cause it, but... every story, period, requires conflict.
--- End quote ---
http://www.thewriteturn.com/kishotenketsu-the-four-act-narrative-or-the-plot-without-conflict/
"All drama needs conflict" is common knowledge. In western/european schools. That doesn't make it universal truth any more than any other euro-centric "truths" about civilization, social norms, etc.
--- End quote ---
"The third act of a Kishōtenketsu story is a complication, but it is not a conflict.
The contrasting dislocation might provide the reader with a sense of chaos as this third, seemingly random situation is explored, but this is not a conflict.
It might be argued that the third act of Kishōtenketsu might be able to be a conflict, but conflict certainly isn’t integral to the plot resolution or narrative development as it is in Western narrative structures.
A further difference is that the character does not need to engage with the complication of the third act. The twist might simply be a shift in setting or focus, that will bear some relevance to the establishing acts in the fourth act."
Complication / Conflict
TomAYto / TomAHto
However...
Your intitial comment questioned that "all *Drama* needs conflict."
Drama, by it's very definition, *is* conflict... and conflict itself has many, MANY facets.
"Contrasting dislocation"? "Sense of chaos"?
Says "conflict" to me.
The article you quoted also flatly states that "Kiki's delivery Service" is a classic example of this (apparent) non-conflict trope...
Except it isn't. Miyazaki, (The director of the film) has stated that the movie portrays the gulf between independence and reliance in teenage Japanese girls...
Conflict.
In the film she is basically stalked by a young guy... Conflict.
She and her cat have a falling out... Conflict.
She forgets how to fly... Conflict.
(Yeah, that'll do.)
Is it cold in here?:
Hmm. This is educational.
Less educationally but more fundamentally, there's an old definition that says "The King died" is a news report, and "The King died, then the Queen died of a broken heart" is a story. Pretty sure that was from a Euro-descended background. I don't see it as conflict. Ditto Hemingway's "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn." which he represented as being a story.
(Actually I can beat that one from real life. On the bulletin board for ads at one job, "Estate sale: motorcycle helmet". )
Cornelius:
I think another issue we're having, is what is the definition of conflict? If we're discussing conflict in the context of drama, or narrative, in general, the term does not hold the same definition as it does in other contexts. There's our internal conflict as well.
But let's move away from the term conflict, for a while. Let's go back to our ancient Greeks, who seem to have meddled somewhat in this discussion already, and borrow their term for the concept: agon. This is the word that gives us protagonist, antagonist, and agonising. Its meaning approximates contest, which is less strong than conflict.
The main function of agon, is to provide a certain tension, to drive the story, regardless of the cause of that tension. It may be your classic melodramatic good guy and bad guy, it might be one man's fight against the sea (not to mention a marvellous marlin), or someone's growth over time.
"Then the Queen died of a broken heart" contains this tension, even if it is not explicit. There is the tension between the instinct of survival and the emotions of grief. Hemingway's shortest story has the same kind of tension, in its implicit context that the child never got to wear them. It's less poignant, to me, in the estate sale example. But well, in six words or less, your tension practically must be implicit.
Even in the most basic narrative, there is the tension of time - of what was, and is, and will or will not be - or conversely, like in De avonden the sense that nothing changes despite that being the normal order of things. Granted, that will not always be the most interesting of narratives, but that in itself stresses the importance of that tension.
It might be that I've spent too much time reading my scholastics, but a proper definition of the question, and the terms used, can sometimes enlighten things to a surprising degree. So, I guess that this is what, in a narrative context, I understand by the term conflict. And I hope it helps enlighten why I do think it is quite essential for most narratives - poetry is another thing, though, where the same rules do not always apply.
JoeCovenant:
--- Quote from: Cornelius on 29 Jan 2018, 07:35 ---I think another issue we're having, is what is the definition of conflict? If we're discussing conflict in the context of drama, or narrative, in general, the term does not hold the same definition as it does in other contexts. There's our internal conflict as well.
--- End quote ---
(forgive the snippage but...)
^^^^^^^^
In a nutshell!
Case:
To get back to the starting point:
--- Quote from: gopher on 26 Jan 2018, 01:01 ---
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 25 Jan 2018, 20:56 ---It's interesting, and frustrating, to me how quick some members of this forum are to search for a villain in every storyline.
--- End quote ---
Maybe. However good drama tends to require a degree of conflict. A 24/7 hugfest would not engage people.
--- End quote ---
Good drama may or may not require conflict. Discussion of art does not. That was the point - the behaviour of people here on this board, in this thread right here. Not the behaviour of fictional people on the other side of the 4th wall.
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