Conflict

I have been told that all writing must contain conflict. Without conflict, nothing happens. I think I agree with this. All stories are some kind of conflict, classically man vs. nature (god), man vs. man, and man vs. himself. I've been trying to come up with some kind of counterexample, but have yet to figure one out.

The closest I have come up with is the slice of life story. Similar to a diary entry, these can simply be a telling of things that happened. There isn't an overt point to them. We see things that happen and we interpret them in any number of ways. I have read my fair share of diary entries during my time as a writing student. I must say that the large majority of them were not worth reading. They had no interest to me. I think it was the lack of conflict that made them so uninteresting (though the subpar writing technique didn't help).

The slice of life stories I have read that are interesting to me are the ones that do have conflict. Sometimes they are overt, like a secretary who has to fight against her chauvinistic boss. Sometimes they are subtle, like a secretary dealing with the fact that she has never done more with her life than being a secretary.

These stories with conflict connect with us. Even though they are not our experiences, they can remind us of our own experiences, the difficulty of conflict and all of the different ways that it can be resolved (both positive and negative). Ultimately, a story needs to make its audience care. Conflict is a tried and true method for doing so. If there is a way for me to care about a story that doesn't have conflict in it, I think it is still worth reading. If your stories have been falling flat, consider what kind of conflict, if any, you are dealing with.