#WritersCoffeeClub Day 29 – What’s something you’d like to see future generations of writers discard?
Thankfully I'm already seeing pushback against the toxic idea that all fiction must follow the 3/5 plot arc and all plots must contain a central conflict. I hope this trend will continue and future writers will see conflict-centered plots as one among many options, not the be-all end-all.
@JessMahler Nuanced agreement here: go back a few decades and there was an interesting taxonomy of plot in use: man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. self. *All* of these involve conflict, but in at least two the conflict *cannot* be "man punches adversary". The central conflict can be existential, or metaphorical, not literal.
(The 3/5 plot arc is deeply annoying because it's a cliché but it got to be a cliché because it's so very versatile: doing something different requires work.)
@cstross
I'm familiar with the taxonomy. When I say I want to see more stories that don't center conflict I am including all of those.
That isn't to say that stories shouldn't include conflict. I think it would be extremely difficult to write a story without it, if it was even possible. But a story can have conflict without centering that conflict.
I'm also... a bit jaded on the idea of the endless versatility of the 3/5. I have very clear memories of a highschool English teacher praising The Most Dangerous Game as an example of that flexibility, which struck me then (and now) as stretching the definition of the 3/5 to the breaking point.
Doing something idfferent from 3/5 is hard for many people because it's what we were raised and indoctrinated with, that's not the same thing it being inherently easier or more versatile than other options.
For me, I found by 3/5 and conflict-centered plots to be a straightjacke that crippled my writing. I can't tell you how many times I was told the problem in my stories was not enough conflict, lack of conflict, poor conflict management, etc... and the more I followed the advice and tried to fix it, the worse things got.
It was only when I realized that I was cramming conflict into a story bc I'd been taught conflict was necessary that I started really grasping my own voice. I took the story I was working on at the time and stripped out the antagonist almost entirely. You could try to frame the resulting story as centering the emotional conflict between the two main characters, but... that frame doesn't fit it very well.
