In which fictional animals are once again maltreated

Not so long ago, I was reading through a story for a friend and the question of conflict came up. This led me to go and see what the wondrous wisdom of the internet had to say on the matter and the consensus was pretty much the following:

Good storytelling is all about drama and drama is all about conflict.

If you haven’t got conflict, you haven’t got a story.

Which, y’know, isn’t bad advice. If a story is length of rope, then conflict provides the tension to keep it taut. Slack ropes have been responsible for many of history’s greatest catastrophes. General Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn, for example, was unable to issue the commands that might have saved his forces due to getting his foot caught in an errantly slack length of rope, tripping over and getting his head stuck in a gopher hole. He knew nothing more of the massacre until a vengeful Cheyenne drove a buffalo up his ass. True story.

Anyway, knowing you need conflict is all well and good, but none of the articles I read actually explained why. As I’ve said before, my background includes both psychology on the one hand and systems analysis/design on the other. For me, it’s not enough to describe such a mechanism by simply going:

'The more you turn the conflict wheel, the greater the oscillations of the reader’s satisfaction flange.'

No, I want to know how that turning creates oscillations and why a greater oscillation rate increases the reader’s satisfaction. If I know that, then that might lead me to deduce that there are diminishing returns if the conflict wheel is spun at more than 136rpm or that if the reader’s satisfaction flange oscillates at more than 26MHz, it tends to break off, hit someone in the eye and then you need to order a new part in from China at a cost of £372 plus import duty, as well as a further £2,782 to settle the personal injury claim brought by whoever’s eye you just punctured.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to work that out in this article, but I’ll give it a go. This is going to be a stream of consciousness thing, so you may want to get yourself a raft or a flotation ring, because things might get choppy!

That really wasn’t necessary, was it? ‘Things might get choppy!’? If I had any self-respect, I would have at least dropped the exclamation mark.

Still, it’s something to bear in mind, as is the fact that the flotation ring might be the more cost effective option because later on it could serve as a haemorrhoid cushion. And by later on I mean in some hypothetical distant future where you get haemorrhoids, as opposed to during the reading of this post. I’m fairly sure my writing won’t give you haemorrhoids.

Also, if the stream starts turning a yellow colour, then you’re not riding consciousness any more…

So, we’ve got a psychological framework for stories. They probably evolved as a teaching tool that arose from primitive humans’ newfound ability to turn physical actions into abstract principles - metaphors, in other words.

Now, in that context, why would the age-old story about good overcoming evil work better with good struggling to succeed, as opposed to simply bopping evil on the head in the first act?

Well, real life would ably disprove the notion of easily defeated evil as soon as evil raised its head and turned out to be two feet taller and one hundred pounds heavier. By having the hero try and fail, try and fail, try and succeed, it teaches the audience that the happy ending can still be attained, no matter how many times evil stamps on your head and grinds your face into cow manure.

But I must admit that explanation feels a bit weak to me. It may apply to a story in general, but it doesn’t explain why every scene works better with conflict and drama.

Perhaps then, it’s more a question of expectation. When two forces are placed in conflict, things happen. Dangerous things. Things that are likely to require our attention.

We’re back in prehistoric times. You’re a semi-evolved homo sapien (just for the purposes of this example, you understand). Over here, are two rocks. They are just sitting there. They will continue to sit there for the next million years. There is no conflict between them on any scale. Over there, on the other hand, is a Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops squaring off against each other! (Because, of course, we have gone back to the prehistoric times of Hollywood, not that of the established fossil record). The Tyrannosaurus Rex is circling warily, feinting with those fearsome teeth, while the Triceratops is snarling the dinosaurian equivalent of ‘come on then, if you think you’re hard enough’.

Which of these two sights, as a semi-evolved homo sapien, are you going to look at? The rocks or the dinosaurs? Which has a greater bearing on your continued survival? The fallout of a saurian scrap or the fallout of two rocks doing nothing at all?

This tickles my reason centres with a greater rate of oscillation than the previous idea. From a survival point of view, there is no pressing need to pay attention to peaceful harmony. It’s not going to be a threat. But any form of conflict in our vicinity immediately draws our attention, because the consequences could be profound for our continued existence.

Big Bad Bill McGruff is snarling at us. He has a broken bottle in his hand. He’s shouting something about us spilling his pint, running over his dog and taking his girlfriend up the back alley. We best pay attention.

The television news is saying that civil war has just broken out in Umbobostan. Our nephew’s over there, helping out with the Red Cross. Will he be all right? We best pay attention.

This cheery fellow in this book we’re reading gets on with all his friends, has a good job, happy marriage and is just about to start painting his house, which we already know from a flash-forward framing device takes him fifteen years and passes entirely without incident. We best go find something else to pay attention to.

Yes, I think I’m going to go with that. Every scene in a book has to be underpinned with conflict, either explicit:

Waaa!
Bad guy with gun!
Explosions!
Argument with romantic interest!

… or implicit:

“But little did our hero know…”
“Rumours came of a new Dark Lord rising in the toilet…”
“His wife nodded, but stiffly, as if agreement had been forced out of her with a hot poker shoved up her…”

… because that conflict either describes action or creates an expectation of action to follow and our evolved instincts know to pay attention.

No conflict, no interest.

It’s why a good story starts with a hook and immediately shows us forces set in opposition. It’s why a good story ends as soon as all its conflicts have been resolved.

That said, I think there are cases where an audience’s interest can be retained without conflict. Well, I say cases, only one springs to mind and that requires playing to innate human curiosity.

Oh, look, over there, a white rabbit with a pocket watch. “I’m late, I’m late,” he’s saying. He’s now running off that-away. Are you curious as to where this curious creature is going? Probably. Are you more curious about what he’s going to do than what those two inanimate rocks are going to do? Definitely. Are you so curious that you’re going to take your eye off those sparring dinosaurs, who are now grappling on the floor and rolling in your direction? Probably not.

Curiosity politely requests your attention, conflict demands it. The bigger the conflict, the more demanding it is.

Of course, badly written conflict can still turn people away and then there is that confounding 'reader factor'. Wendy may be evolutionarily predisposed to attend to conflict, but her personal history makes her actively avoid it, even in fiction. She wants cosy, no-drama-here stories, because even the prospect of minor disagreements dredges up memories of the bitter arguments she had as a child with her invisible friend, Ralph, which led to Ralph trying to drown Wendy in a bird bath.

You could legitimately target this Wendy's niche reading preferences, but bear in mind everyone else will quickly grow tired of the peaceful bonhomie and seek out a more dramatic story instead.

Ooh, and look, because you were paying attention, you were able to step aside and avoid being crushed by those wrestling Jurassic reptiles, which, alas, is more than I can say of that unfortunate white rabbit, who is now definitely and irredeemably late.

The scientific disclaimer:

Despite the anecdotal evidence of the squashed rabbit, you shouldn't trust my theory (or indeed any other) without the evidence of experiments and careful, real-world observations. I haven't surveyed any psychological research papers, so maybe such evidence already exists, but whether it does or not, the theory is strong enough to make some testable predictions. For example, a research subject is asked to watch a succession of images scrolling across a screen. At any one time, five of those images are visible simultaneously. Random images show situations suggestive of conflict (e.g. two people arguing), while the rest show neutral situations (e.g. an unpopulated landscape). This theory hypothesises that pupil tracking would show a subject spends significantly more time looking at the conflict images.