I read somewhere that every story needs a conflict, with consequences riding on the outcome. Now, I’m not sure that’s true for all stories. Literary writers can get away with almost anything in their fiction, and more power to them. However, expectations are different in genre fiction. Genre fiction has its formulas, be it romance, mysteries, thrillers, westerns, horror, fantasy/science, paranormal fiction, or what have you. Genre readers expect stories to include their favorite tropes. These tropes almost always involve both conflict and danger. So yes, I suppose that most genre stories need conflict and dire consequences to work. The issue I have with this premise is that the table stakes for these conflicts and consequences have escalated to the point where they’ve become so grand that they’re rather silly, even absurd. Plus, they’re often violent, gory, and ultimately so common as to be trite.
Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was content to solve mysteries that did not involve murder. Today, every mystery, no matter how cozy, must involve at least one murder. A dead man, woman, or child is the starting table stake for today’s mysteries. Often the ante is upped with a second murder. And a third. And even a fourth. And when every little village has a murder every couple of months like clockwork, these stakes get silly. I’ve lived in a small town for 30 some years and the only murders that regularly occur are self-murders; suicides and overdoses; the people who die “unexpectedly” in obits.
It possible to write a mystery that doesn’t involve murder. Doyle did. Heck, I did as well. I’m sure today’s mystery writers could do it too. But there is no tried and true formula for that type of mystery, making them harder to write. There may be thousands of such manuscripts in drawers, unpublished, because agents, editors, or publishers didn’t buy them because they believe that they wouldn’t sell. Maybe they’re right. Maybe the table stakes are too low, without death in a story. But I doubt it.
And take paranormal, fantasy, and science fiction; these stories are often dark and grim these days – or rather, “grimdark.” Moreover, it is very hard to find a fantasy or science fiction story that does not involve war. A century ago Lord Dunsany wrote a fantasy story about several servants conversing in the basement of a London club about the members of the club – the members being old and forgotten gods who gathered at the club to reminisce. Tolkien, however, brought the Great War into fantasy, and so these days those old and forgotten gods no longer sit around reminiscing; they’ve returned to wage war and makeover the world in their evil image. They’re only deterred from doing so by a band of misfits and their supernatural magical powers. At least until the publisher pulls the plug on the series. And if the heroes are not misfits, they’re princes or princesses, future or deposed, who must save the throne and kingdom, or recapture it from evil usurpers.
And in almost all these stories, a war is either looming, on going, or just ended, with graphic descriptions. Bloody battles are fought in great detail. War, gore, death and destruction are the table stakes for so many fantasies – echoing the trenches of the Great War.
It’s no different in science fiction. All too often the fate of the human race, a galactic empire, or indeed, all creation teeters on the brink of destruction, to be saved, against all odds, by that band of plucky misfits again. Destroying entire planets is the starting ante for many of these stories and it goes up from there. Now, this is nothing new in science fiction, E E Smith was throwing whole galaxies around 90 years ago. However, the amount of blood, gore, casual killing, rape, and sadistic cruelty chronicled in both science fiction and fantasy today seems to have escalated expediently over the years. I’ve been reading the short reviews of books entered into the Self Published Science Fiction Contest, and many of the reviewers mention how much violence they encountered while reading just the first 10% of the books they were sampling.
Now I have nothing against using war, gore, death and destruction – or old ladies to solve murders – in books on any moral grounds. Obviously they sell, and so they must have their fans. I’m just not one of them – a simple a matter of personal taste. What I don’t like about these tropes, these formulas, is that they strike me as being cheap tricks. Lazy writing. The table stakes have been upped to make the events of the story, and thus, the story itself seem all the more important – larger than life. Their heroes are princes and princesses, not ordinary people. And if not royalty, they’re still some sort of superhero. Conflict and consequences are then ramped up the max. “Ignore the little man behind the curtain,” seems to be the name of the game. But it was the little man behind the curtain who was, in fact, interesting, not the terrifying, but ultimately hollow, Wise and Benevolent Oz.
I believe that a competent writer can tell exciting stories without resorting to Wagnerian heights. Doomsday is indeed coming. It’s the day you die. For all of us, the world ends with our death. And so too does it for the characters you create in your story. Life and death stakes for the characters alone can make for an exciting story. Indeed, you can write an exciting story without life and death stakes. There is no need to have the fate of the world hanging in the balance as well. If you make your characters engaging, and then kill them off, would that be a less devastating ending to the reader then if Evil won in the end? Is not everything beyond the fate of your characters little more than stage settings? The theater shows that you can scale back to the essentials without losing the drama.
I like to keep things simple. I like things that are understated. However, I am fully aware that everyone is different. There are people who want to read, and writers who want to write, stories with a far wider sweep, and grander scale, than I do. Heck, there are people who like opera. Each to his or her own tastes, and I’m fine with that. Still, I wish I could find stories to my tastes, without writing them.
Perhaps the market demands vast stakes. Maybe high stakes, war and gore are what agents, editors, publishers want to buy, and readers want to read. But does that mean they won’t read and enjoy stories that don’t quite follow that formula? As writers and publishers we don’t have to follow the pack. We can chart our own course. I believe that characters – people – are the heart of most good stories. They don’t need to be the center of their fictional universe to be important. Create compelling characters and readers will enveloped in the story, without the need for a grand setting and vast table stakes.
So what’s your take, both as a reader, and as a writer, on the scope of a story? Do you enjoy vast empires teetering in the balance? Do you like to read and write about larger than life characters facing impossible odds? Is grandma solving a murder a month or vast cosmic horrors lurking on the edge of night your thing? Or do you think that characters matter more than the scale of action? The clock is ticking… Comment. You have only minutes to save the world by commenting!!!
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I think in part this is due to books having to compete with movies, where visual action is the thing. That said, I personally don’t like extended scenes of combat, either written or visual. And really, what the stakes are doesn’t matter, as long as the characters who have to figure something out or get something done are engaging and the problem an interesting one. Whether it’s saving the world or finding a missing object.
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I find action scenes in movies boring.
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Especially when they go on and on…
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I think you’re right. I’ve started books that I can see the movie or TV scene they’re copying. And so many seem to be written as a pitch for a tent-pole movie franchise rather than a novel. But who can blame them? That’s were the money — and audience — is.
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Until very recently, I used to avoid ‘military scifi’ like the plague. Not only was the veneer of science incredibly thin, the characters were usually cardboard cutouts, and the plot was a shoot out at the OK Corral, but with spaceships and lasguns. -rolls eyes-
Then I stumbled on a few writers who did it /well/. When a story has it all, it’s a good story, imho. 🙂
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Can’t argue with that, Meeka. I’ve had the same experience.
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Even though I write some strange things myself I avoid ‘fantasy’. I don’t want to read about made up planets and kingdoms and certainly not if they are always having wars that make even less sense than human wars. I like to read and write about humans and there are plenty of mysteries in human life that don’t involve murders. We only have to listen to ourselves gossiping with our friends, eager to hear about the wedding they went to and the latest gossip about relatives. Or what adventures did your neighbours have when they decided to go somewhere exotic on holiday in current Covid times? We can all make mysteries and adventure out of the most mundane so yes, let’s have a break from murders, we don’t need them.
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Plus, there’s more to a story than the story you’re telling. It’s how you tell it — the words you use and how you use them which can be entertaining in and of themselves.
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I had to chuckle. When I saw the title of your post, I immediately flashed back to fiction workshops in grad school where the absolute worst thing someone could say about your story was: “This isn’t a story. It’s a slice of life.” Oh, the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments on our way to the bar after class! Our story was a slice of life; it had no stakes.
But you were talking about something else altogether!
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Now, I would’ve thought life is a story. Genre fiction readers generally expect certain tropes. I learned only after writing one that a romance has to have a happy ending. Go figure. But with literary fiction, I would’ve thought you didn’t have to follow “rules,” if you’re good enough.
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Those who make rules are everywhere. The distance between criticism and rule-making is a short one.
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Some good points. After a while it all gets boring. An analogy: I like a good super hero movie but at some point you know you are just watching a cgi high tech cartoon.
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I suppose it all depends on execution, but blurb after blurb, it seems that so many stories have the same premise. I mostly pay attention to SF and so many of them have a band of misfits going somewhere to find some McGuffin that could change the fate of the galaxy or whatever. But I do think people also like familiarity — or they would’ve abandoned superhero movies long ago.
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lol – well said!
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Raising the stakes isn’t a bad strategy, but is it always necessary? I would argue no. When writers put me in the shoes of their protagonist, they’ve got me. I don’t have to feel terrified, but I want to feel something (awkwardness, embarrassment, tension, curiosity.)
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That’s a good point, Pete–making the reader identify with the protagonist. Easier said than done, of course, but something to aim for.
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That’s what I think too. How you tell the story is what makes it interesting.
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As with most of these things — like plot and the three act structure — whether there is conflict is something I just don’t consciously think about while I’m writing. And since I don’t outline my stories, it doesn’t happen before I write either. If there is conflict it happens naturally as I’m writing the story.
My niece is in the TV/Film business. She has dreams of eventually directing or producing. I’ve offered some of my stories to her as candidates for scripts. What’s the one word she uses to describe what she is looking for? Conflict.
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I suppose because commercial movies show rather than tell, and conflict is an easy way of creating a visual, interactive drama. But it’s a question of scale. How big and important does the conflict have to be to drive a story?
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As you suggest, it shouldn’t have to be huge. There’s something to be said for subtlety.
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I don’t think conflict should drive a story unless that is inherent in the genre. But like you said, not every sci-fi or fantasy story needs to have a world-ending battle. Why wouldn’t sci-fi just as easily revolve around the nature of human relationships 500 years in the future?
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May the gods of reading spare me from another wave of:
Serial killers
Cops with traumatic pasts (usually involving a serial killer)
Government conspiracies (having worked in govt, the idea of one being that cunning, all embracing and working in unity is laughable to say the least)
Alien races who turn up out of nowhere and have nearly wiped out Earth
Kingdoms teetering on the brink of collapse due to a horde of some sort
Villains with perfect plans which inexplicably unravel only in the last chapter, then still survive for another book. (Is there ever an incompetent villain in fiction? No only in real life).
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And the list goes on…
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The outcome of conflict is resolution. The source of conflict is two or more entities diverging or colliding based on their needs. Those needs are the stakes. They needn’t be grand in scope, but they must be crucial to the parties involved. The resolution of this conflict, for the story to sit well in a reader’s belly, is for the protagonist to have had their stakes, their needs fulfilled.
In the case of literary fiction, these needs may only be bumps along a winding tale of “life as we know it.” There, some needs are denied, while others realized.
For genre fiction, I suspect those stakes must encompass a greater breadth of existence than a reader’s mundane life. We all have jobs to lose, loved ones who will die, privations to overcome. When we read, we want to, yeah, identify with the protagonist and their needs, but also experience boundaries pushed beyond our limited realities.
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Exactly. In genre fiction you do want to read something that takes you out of the mundane, but there quickly comes a point where the escalating stakes no longer contribute to the story. They’re there for the blurb on the back cover.
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I happened to have Wodehouse on my mind right before reading this post. What are the stakes in his stories? Unwanted engagements, pranks gone wrong, stolen cow creamers… incredibly minor stuff. Yet Wodehouse is one of the all-time greats, and people will still be reading his books when most of the “Ultimate Battle Between Good and Evil” stories have been forgotten.
Now, I enjoy a good epic war story or a tale of cosmic horrors threatening to annihilate the world. But the key word is “good”. A good story can be about a war to save the universe or about a man who takes a trip to evade his meddling aunts. It’s all in how it’s told, but I suspect that less-confident writers (and publishers) tend to gravitate to the big, epic stories because they figure they can compensate for any flaws in their stories with sheer scale. Whereas Wodehouse could write about low stakes because he was just that good.
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I think all of us fans of Wodehouse know that you can make the most trivial concerns into stories that entertain, with good writing.
On reflection, I wonder if finding the vast and desperate stakes in SFF and thrillers and such unnecessary may be a generational viewpoint. I’m not a movie, TV or video game person. I like words. And I’m old. I have to wonder if the writers who grew up in the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s, with cable TV, blockbuster movies, and video games are drawing their story ideas from their experience, which is different from mine. Audrey brought up movies as one source for the extravagant stakes, and the more I think about it, the more I believe that all the visual media that younger (than me) writers experienced growing up has to have had an influence. Why else could I sample various self published science fiction books and in the first chapter, recognize the movie or TV show — Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly — that inspired their stories. (And indeed, how thin a veneer of science fiction the stories have — TV show thin.)
In traditional published works, writers are expected to pitch their stories to agents and editors as a mash-up of various successful books or movies to sell them — it’s like this and this, only bigger.
But as I said in my post, I’m not saying you shouldn’t write big, or shouldn’t enjoy these stories, only that it isn’t necessary, with good writing.
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I agree with you Chuck – good writing is the key. Unfortunately, what /we/ consider to be good writing is not currently fashionable – probably for all the reasons you named. 😦
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Interesting question, Chuck. My two all time favourite science fiction stories are Dune and Left Hand of Darkness.
Dune is galaxy spanning and ‘epic’, yet it’s the characters who matter to me, and that includes the world of Arrakis itself. Gradually understanding the mystery of the worms was what thrilled me the most.
The Left Hand of Darkness is fundamentally character driven, and again, the world, its strange biology, and the culture to which it gives rise is one of those ‘characters’.
I hate formulaic anything, and that’s reflected in my writing. lol It’s also reflected in the 1 star review I received for Miira. Apparently the first 6% of the story had no story. It was boring. My fault. I didn’t kill anyone in the opening paragraph. 😀
I fear none of us will ever grace the best seller lists, but I believe our work may last the test of time. I hope it does.
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Imagine scholars of the future reading over these comments and working them into their theses or books on the Early 21st century Indie Authors.
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My favorite SF book is Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey. I’m a fan of clever, witty writing, and the narrator is a nice person & pleasant company to spend time with. It is a very different type of book than the ones you love. Thankfully they all got published, though in my case it was the first book of a planned trilogy that got cancelled because Shades of Grey was his least popular book. It will be one of my regrets on my death bed. (But then it can’t be diminished by disappointing sequels.)
If you don’t get one star ratings you’re not doing your job right. If you write to try to please everyone, you’ll end up not really pleasing anyone all that much. One of my books was the most boring book the reader had ever read. I love that review because the reader took the time to say why she rated it one star. And she had valid points.
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I just thought of another reason for the dire stakes–for the past several decades, we’ve kept hearing that it’s our last chance to change our ways before something terrible happens, such as nuclear war or climate catastrophe. No wonder the world-is-about-to-end-unless-someone-special-saves-it trope has emerged!
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Very true. The world has seen almost constant wars for over a century now, and we have the ability to destroy ourselves, so it is not surprising that writers these days use those stakes as a premise. All the more reason why I like to escape in reading and writing to a more innocent world.
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Exactly!
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