Conflict, in one form or another, lies at the center of every story. This is widely considered the first rule of writing. Novices should not consider defying it. Almost any book on writing will tell you this, often on the first page.
Kishōtenketsu contains four acts: introduction, development, twist and reconciliation. The basics of the story—characters, setting, etc.—are established in the first act and developed in the second. No major changes occur until the third act, in which a new, often surprising element is introduced. The third act is the core of the plot, and it may be thought of as a kind of structural non sequitur. The fourth act draws a conclusion from the contrast between the first two “straight” acts and the disconnected third, thereby reconciling them into a coherent whole. Kishōtenketsu is probably best known to Westerners as the structure of Japanese yonkoma (four-panel) manga; and, with this in mind, our artist has kindly provided a simple comic to illustrate the concept.
I think it’s relatively easy to interpret any story ‘without’ conflict as having conflict if you look at it from the right direction. If there’s a “reconciliation” phase (possibly it could also be thought of as a synthesis phase), then there must be some sort of conflict that needs to be reconciled.
In this case it’s reconciliation of the story structure—not reconciliation of the characters. The fourth part shows how the apparent non-sequitur is actually related to the first two parts.
Daughters of Itoya, in the Honmachi of Osaka. The elder daughter is sixteen and the younger one is fourteen. Throughout history, generals killed the enemy with bows and arrows. The daughters of Itoya kill with their eyes.
Of course, the above is also a story about conflict . . . Perhaps Kishōtenketsu is engaging because it induces conflict in the mind of the reader (is that what you were referring to?) and also because it’s a poetry form. (This position recommends taking care to avoid arguing about the definition of ‘conflict’.)
I would be very interested in reading examples of Kishōtenketsu in longer (significantly text-oriented) works that otherwise avoid conflict (physical, emotional, environmental, social). Unfortunately I’m not aware of any myself.
I just read the page that you linked. I have to say, that if we hadnt read that interesting bit about how the third act is supposed to be a non sequitur, and I had viewed that strip in isolation, it would have been a pretty lame piece of work.. I suppose it was an interesting way to get the idea across, but it doesnt answer the question as to how effective a form of writing it will be and whether it will be powerful enough to hold the attention of a reader.
I also disagree that this concept is alien to western culture. Many stories use this device in the form of mini sub-plots that may go un-noticed.
Not sure I follow. Why is the conflict here not “Man vs. Thirst”? Just because we are only made aware of the conflict as it ends, doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening in-universe during the first three panels.
Some early science fiction isn’t so much about conflict as it is a relation of an unlikely experience. But then, the stories I have in mind weren’t exactly that great. So that’s not exactly evidence against the assumption. Still, I think a sufficiently skilled writer could create an enjoyable story without conflict, but it would be like a painter throwing out a primary color.
One of my favorite of OP’s short posts is Building Weirdtopia. (Yudkowsky’s no spoilers approach to scientific pedagogy is such an intriguing one, I’m a quite sad he hasn’t spun it into a novel yet. I’d seriously love to read a Neal Stephenson-length epic about a child in such a society recapitulating modern science, but maybe I’m just weird that way.) It strikes me that one could write a novel about a Weirdtopia that has no conflict, featuring only exploration of a counter-intuitive, yet highly intriguing, world. Conversations within, and descriptions of, this strange world (so long as the writer is very, very clever) would keep my interest. But then, this would be more like speculative anthropology than a story.
I haven’t found any exploration stories that don’t have some form of ‘actor versus environment’ that is critical to making the writing engaging to the reader. I’ve also seen plenty of ways to shift the conflict meta, by means of what amounts to a framing device.
I’m excluding descriptive fiction from ‘narrative’; I’m not sure exactly what the boundary is, but describing how something works is different from describing somebody operating it.
This seems to assume that conflict drives all narratives.
Is it the case that all stories have conflict as a primary aspect?
Conflict, in one form or another, lies at the center of every story. This is widely considered the first rule of writing. Novices should not consider defying it. Almost any book on writing will tell you this, often on the first page.
That is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike an answer to the question that I had.
Is that a feature only of every story ever written, or of every story?
There are apparently forms of Asian storytelling that don’t rely on conflict.
I think it’s relatively easy to interpret any story ‘without’ conflict as having conflict if you look at it from the right direction. If there’s a “reconciliation” phase (possibly it could also be thought of as a synthesis phase), then there must be some sort of conflict that needs to be reconciled.
In this case it’s reconciliation of the story structure—not reconciliation of the characters. The fourth part shows how the apparent non-sequitur is actually related to the first two parts.
For example (from Wikipedia):
Of course, the above is also a story about conflict . . . Perhaps Kishōtenketsu is engaging because it induces conflict in the mind of the reader (is that what you were referring to?) and also because it’s a poetry form. (This position recommends taking care to avoid arguing about the definition of ‘conflict’.)
I would be very interested in reading examples of Kishōtenketsu in longer (significantly text-oriented) works that otherwise avoid conflict (physical, emotional, environmental, social). Unfortunately I’m not aware of any myself.
I just read the page that you linked. I have to say, that if we hadnt read that interesting bit about how the third act is supposed to be a non sequitur, and I had viewed that strip in isolation, it would have been a pretty lame piece of work.. I suppose it was an interesting way to get the idea across, but it doesnt answer the question as to how effective a form of writing it will be and whether it will be powerful enough to hold the attention of a reader.
I also disagree that this concept is alien to western culture. Many stories use this device in the form of mini sub-plots that may go un-noticed.
Not sure I follow. Why is the conflict here not “Man vs. Thirst”? Just because we are only made aware of the conflict as it ends, doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening in-universe during the first three panels.
Some early science fiction isn’t so much about conflict as it is a relation of an unlikely experience. But then, the stories I have in mind weren’t exactly that great. So that’s not exactly evidence against the assumption. Still, I think a sufficiently skilled writer could create an enjoyable story without conflict, but it would be like a painter throwing out a primary color.
One of my favorite of OP’s short posts is Building Weirdtopia. (Yudkowsky’s no spoilers approach to scientific pedagogy is such an intriguing one, I’m a quite sad he hasn’t spun it into a novel yet. I’d seriously love to read a Neal Stephenson-length epic about a child in such a society recapitulating modern science, but maybe I’m just weird that way.) It strikes me that one could write a novel about a Weirdtopia that has no conflict, featuring only exploration of a counter-intuitive, yet highly intriguing, world. Conversations within, and descriptions of, this strange world (so long as the writer is very, very clever) would keep my interest. But then, this would be more like speculative anthropology than a story.
I haven’t found any exploration stories that don’t have some form of ‘actor versus environment’ that is critical to making the writing engaging to the reader. I’ve also seen plenty of ways to shift the conflict meta, by means of what amounts to a framing device.
I’m excluding descriptive fiction from ‘narrative’; I’m not sure exactly what the boundary is, but describing how something works is different from describing somebody operating it.