Ancient Logic

"When you've gone, will this world continue to exist? Will my wife and kids still be waiting for me at home?" Lt. McNary to Captain Picard in "The Big Goodbye." Stories need conflict, the tension between what might and might not occur. Some conflicts are immediate and visceral, others are abstract and harder to quantify. Different genres seem to reflexively reach for certain conflicts, certain stereotypical problems. Horror and suspense stories are about danger, unseen threats and fight/flight responses. Romance stories often explore the tension between interpersonal love and societal expectations. People read thrillers and fantasy novels to see super-competent people struggle through unbelievable adversity, their hair consistently un-mussed. Science Fiction, set on alien worlds, surrounded by mind-bending technology, is well positioned to handle questions of transcendence and the limits of human potential. Abraham Maslow coined the term self...

Characters have a need to feel competency. Once all of the other basic needs have been met - enough to eat and drink, a sense of security, and acceptance from peers - it is natural for human beings to seek out opportunities to feel good about themselves. To feel important and clever. In literature, this type of conflict is difficult to describe because it tapers away to questions of love and acceptance on the low end and issues of ethics and morality on the upper end. Also, I think many people have a mixed reaction to obviously talented people having those abilities tested. On one hand, professional sports wouldn't exist if we didn't, on some level, enjoy watching talented performers push themselves in competition. But on the other hand, we tend to mock or revile those people who seem too proud of their own accomplishments or too flashy in victory. "Don't spike the football." This is a tough balancing act for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Put sim...

So far this week, I've looked at the two most basic types of conflicts for characters in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation -- physiological needs and concerns over threats and safety. Pressing forward, it's more difficult to make sweeping generalizations about such and such an episode, we have to focus on individual characters and their motivations. The simplest and most general type of psychological motivation revolves around acceptance and love. Human beings are social animals, and even our fictional creations seek relationships and affection. For the most part, the crew of the Enterprise is presented as a surprisingly well-knit and supportive work place considering that initially most of them are strangers to each other. However, there are tensions that pull the characters away from each other, a reoccurring theme in first season "character episodes."  Sometimes you can almost guess what's written on each index card for the main charac...

This week I'm looking at various types of conflict in speculative fiction. I'm using the first season of Star Trek The Next Generation as a source because I just watched the first season and it's still relatively fresh in my mind. I wish that wasn't so, in some cases. For this post I want to examine the next step up in Maslow's Hierarchy of Need: concerns of safety. Characters need to go about their life free from a constant looming danger, when placed under threat, they work to remove the threat or remove themselves from its presence. This is different from physiological conflicts because a threat isn't actually lethal. I know in these paranoid times, the merest possibility of danger appears to cause injury and property damage but in actuality the only thing being attacked is one's sense of calm. That's not to say the need for safety isn't real, it's just one step more abstract than fighting to stay alive in a blizzard. Plenty of examples...

Yesterday I talked up the idea of 'need-based' conflicts in stories, including Maslow's Hierarchy of Need. The few examples I gave of each level up on the pyramid strike me as inadequate so I'm going to explore each in more detail. Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season has a reputation for being conflict free, and therefore boring. As I've rewatched the series, slowly making my way through the episodes, I don't think I agree with that entirely. Even early TNG has plenty of conflict but most of it is higher up on the pyramid and is, frankly, not well executed. I see no need to do an episode by episode review, plenty fine surveys exist online, try Jammer's for sober, nicely executed write-ups. Instead, I'm going to bend a fairly mediocre run of shows to a hopefully higher purpose, namely how can a show set in a nearly Utopian future feature compelling, strong conflicts? I'll start by unearthing the rarest form of conflict ...

I've run into a problem. My current story's conflict doesn't quite have the punch I want it to. I've tried a few different methods to figure out what exactly is troubling the main character or what larger issues are in play, but I'm not there yet. While my story stews for awhile, I thought I'd talk about my dissatisfaction with the standard model of literary conflicts. In other words, let's talk shop. Usually in literature we say conflict comes in four basic types: man versus nature, man versus man, man versus society and man versus self. This is the model I heard in school and this is the model I teach in my own literature class. You could throw in a few other types of conflicts, depending on the genre, conflict versus supernatural beings or conflict with technology. You might even subtract one of the categories due to ideological preference (Ayn Rand disliked the idea that nature had any choice in a story, big surprise). But for the most part...