Is Conflict
Necessary In Fiction?
By Christopher Mahon
As 9-11 became an irrevocable part of American history, and as it became
horrifically evident that we had to reduce the amount of conflict in the
world—conflict that, ironically, has only since increased—I began to wonder
what we writers do, if anything, to contribute to the conflict in the world.
Do we fuel the conflict in society when we portray it in our novels and stories?
It's a question often asked of violent television programs but rarely asked of
writers. Certain books, like Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, may
strike a nerve in the reading public and raise questions about the use of
violence in a novel. But, generally, conflict and violence are accepted in the
realm of fiction.
In fact, it's assumed that conflict is one of the primary tools of the trade. If
you take a writing course, or buy a how-to-write-a-novel book, often you'll find
that one of the cardinal rules of writing a novel is: You've got to have
conflict. A character must run into obstacles.
I wonder if it's necessary.
Couldn't we write stories that develop the way a photograph develops? Couldn't a
story grow in the way a flower blooms rather than in the way a battle is fought?
If we ever hope to achieve a world without conflict, or, at least, with less
conflict, shouldn't we writers try to write stories with no conflict whatsoever,
and develop plots that portray the kind of world we all hope to live in? I'm not
referring to fairy tales (which, now that I think of it, are often very violent)
or utopias. I'm talking about fictional worlds in which people cooperate
harmoniously to improve their lives. Isn't that the kind of personal, social and
artistic wavelength we should strive for? After all, if you can't imagine it,
how can you create it in reality?
These questions do not come to me out of the blue.
In recent years, like so many other people in this country, I have had a
spiritual reawakening. The culture - or at least one big part of it - is
changing, and certain high-profile spokespersons have appeared to usher in the
change. Doctors like Andrew Weil and others like Carolyn Myss have brought
spiritual principles into healing practices. New Age gurus like Marianne
Williamson have updated ancient spiritual practices to the lives of people who
must shop at Lucky's and Safeway. Buddhist masters like Thich Nhat Hanh have
brought meditation principles to the West. And people like Deepak Chopra, who
understand the body and the nature of time through the precepts of ancient
Indian philosophy, have become best selling authors in Peoria, IL.
The message is this: change the way we think; change the way we practice our
lives.
Maybe the message even applies to storytellers: change the way we tell stories;
change the stories themselves.
A few years ago, I began to write a novel that aimed to dramatize the changes
that I saw in the culture all around me. I wanted to write a story in which
certain spiritual principles were operating, one in which people are fulfilling
their dreams in life by tuning into the divine energies that spiritual
leaders—from prominent New Age spokesperson to the most modest of
Buddhists—say we all have access to.
And, in many ways, I wanted to write a book with as little conflict as possible.
I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but I'll tell you this: A fellow
moves to a new town. He gets a new job. He finds a new girlfriend. He develops
spiritually. Things go wonderfully because one of my main characters—however
invisible—is God Herself. The divine presence. She's moving things along quite
nicely for my characters.
And yet what I also wanted to convey was the aching feeling I have that no
matter how hard we try on this earth to align ourselves with a spiritual power
(you may call it the divine), there is always a gap between the spirit and the
flesh. And into that gap falls sorrow and pain and death. Into that
gap may fall the longing for the Divine itself.
I was quite proud of the book, and submitted pages of it to editors and agents
at last January's San Diego Writers Conference.
"Where's the tension?" an editor asked me there, after she had read
the opening pages to the novel and while we were talking about the book. She's a
well-known editor. She has her own imprint.
"The tension is between the divine promise and the human experience,"
I said.
"That could be big," she said, "if you do it well. I mean, it
speaks to what everyone is searching for."
It's been eight months since the conference and I still know I haven't fully
dramatized the tension. The book has gone through four drafts. It awaits
another.
Maybe it needs more conflict.
A couple weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night. I had set my novel in
the year 1999 and 2000. What woke me up was the idea of setting the book in 2001
and 2002. The events of the book occur roughly in the space of the year. From
May of one year to June of the next. I thought if I set the book in 2001, those
four airplanes would fly into the book on September 11th just as they flew into
our lives. That would create a lot of tension between the divine promise and the
human experience.
The idea blew me away because I wasn't quite sure if it was even sensible to
approach such a delicate and difficult subject in my book. I decided the only
one I could talk to about it was the well-known editor in New York, the one I
had spoke to at the San Diego Writers Conference.
I called her and was surprised when she called back two days later.
I told her about my idea.
"That could work," she said.
I talked to her about a number of other things, too in the passionate, effusive
manner I can sometimes click into. Perhaps I shouldn't have called at all. But
I'm glad I did. It's one of those things I probably wouldn't do again but was
glad I did it this time.
I asked her how she thought writers would treat "the event" (9-11).
She said she thought that writers were going to be writing about "the
event" for a long time to come in a lot of different ways.
That makes sense. Not only has the event had a profound effect on our individual
minds and souls, it has now framed the moral and spiritual questions of our
time.
I may be one of those writers. I may revise my novel to include the events of
9-11. I may emphasize the tension—the conflict—between the divine and the
human a little more forcefully.
But still, my questions linger.
Maybe we can't avoid conflict, but how should we approach it? Are the laws of
the imagination and the laws of conflict one and the same? Is there a
difference? Can you even say that the imagination follows laws, or has a nature
that, ultimately, defies conflict?
And what about art? I search in my mind through the other arts—painting,
sculpture, music, photography, film—and ask myself where conflict is found in
them.
I see little conflict in a Georgia O'Keefe painting of a flower. Can a novel
without conflict be any less artistic?
Yet it seems to me now, especially in light of 9-11, that conflict is something
we'll never avoid in the world and we writers have to find ways to write about
it. Peaceful ways, I think.
We just can't duplicate conflict. We just can't replicate it and take it a step
further, into fiction. We have to transform it. Perhaps we as writers have to
battle conflict ourselves—with the peaceful tools of art—and win. Defeat
conflict.
Language has always been the tool for peace. After all the bombs have been
dropped and the bullets shot and the lives destroyed, others have come to a
conference table and talked. They've used language, finally, to resolve the
conflicts that were waged with bombs and bullets.
We writers begin with language, with the tools for peace. And perhaps we should
always emphasize that.
The very beauty of language and the peaceful sensibility of the writer behind it
can transform conflict even as it appears in a story.
But I would still like to write a story that has no conflict whatsoever, that
develops the way a photograph develops, or the way a flower blooms.
Someday.
Originally published at www.writersmonthly.us.
Reprinted with permission.
Christopher Mahon has been a Californian since graduating from the
University of Notre Dame in 1978. He has recently published an excerpt from his
memoir-in-progress at www.toasted-cheese.com.
Christopher has also published fiction in The Jessamyn West Review,
poetry in the anthology What Have You Lost? and numerous articles in San
Francisco Bay Area and Southern California newspapers. He has worked in the
publishing industry, and currently supports his writing as a freelance editor
and substitute teacher. Christopher lives in northern San Diego County with his
wife and their two Jack Russell terriers. Contact him at cemahon@cox.net.
