by Deren Hansen
Some time ago Julie Danes pointed out that
conflict should not be contrived.
What is a contrived conflict?
In comic books, bad guys are bad because they're bad. Slap on a label like, "Nazi," or, "Terrorist," and your job is done. Other examples include oppressive clergy, greedy corporations, and government conspiracies. It's conflict by definition, which is the height of contrivance.
Another kind of contrived conflict is what I call irrational conflict: characters at loggerheads whose differences could be resolved with a rational, five-minute conversation. Romances are particularly liable to this kind of contrivance when the author can't think of a better reason to keep the leads apart. Yes, misunderstandings occur in real life, as do coincidences, but as a general rule (because you don't want your readers rolling their eyes) you're only allowed one of each.
Of course, it's not that some kinds of conflict are contrived and other are not. Any conflict where the reader sees the puppet strings, or worse, the puppeteer (author), is contrived. Readers need and want to believe that the conflict in the story arises organically from the mix of setting, plot, and characters, and that the conflict couldn't have played out any other way.
When I think about organic conflict, whether it arises from characters or plot, I imagine the parties to the conflict as forces of nature. Picture what happens when a surge of the restless sea meets the immovable cliff. Or when the speeding car meets the brick wall.
The most compelling conflict feels inevitable: notwithstanding everyone's best efforts, the collision occurs.
Unlike the watered-down food label, "natural," organic conflict is a much healthier, and a much more satisfying choice.
Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.
Experimental philosophy is a new movement that seeks to return the discipline of philosophy to 
a focus on questions about how people actually think and feel. In Experimental Philosophy we get a thorough introduction to the major themes of work in experimental philosophy and theoretical significance of this new research. Editors Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols have been kind enough to explain this all in simple terms below. Joshua Knobe is an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Shaun Nichols is in the Philosophy Department and Cognitive Science Program at the University of Arizona. He also is the author of Sentimental Rules and co-author (with Stephen Stich) of Mindreading. Be sure to check out their Myspace page and their blog.
The reason the two of us first started doing philosophy is that we were interested in questions about the human condition. Back when we were undergraduates, we were captivated by the ideas we found in the work of philosophers like Nietzsche, Aristotle, and Hume. We wanted to follow in their tracks and think and write about human beings, their thoughts and feelings, the way they get along with each other, the nature of the mind.
Then we went to graduate school. What we found there was that the discipline of philosophy was no longer focused on questions about what human beings were really like. Instead, the focus was on a very technical, formal sort of philosophizing that was quite far removed from anything that got us interested in philosophy in the first place. This left us feeling disaffected, and a number of researchers at various other institutions felt the same way.
Together, several of these researchers developed the new field of experimental philosophy. The basic idea behind experimental philosophy is that we can make progress on the questions that interested us in the first place by looking closely at the way human beings actually understand their world. In pursuit of this objective, practitioners of this new approach go out and conduct systematic experimental studies of human cognition.
For example, in the traditional problem of free will, many philosophers have maintained that no one can be morally responsible if everything that happens is an inevitable consequence of what happened before. But the entire debate is conducted in a cold, logical manner. Experimental philosophers thought that maybe the way people actually think about these issues isn’t always so cold and logical. So first they tried posing the question of free will to ordinary people in a cold abstract manner. After describing a universe in which everything is inevitable, they asked participants, “In this Universe is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for their actions?” When the question was posed in this way, most people responded in line with those philosophers who claimed that no one can be responsible if everything is inevitable. But the experimentalists also wanted to see what would happen if people were given cases that got people more emotionally involved in the situation. So they once again described a universe in which everything that happens is inevitable, and then they asked a question that was sure to arouse strong emotions. It concerned a particular person in that Universe, Bill: “As he has done many times in the past, Bill stalks and rapes a stranger. Is it possible that Bill is fully morally responsible for raping the stranger?” Here the results were quite different. People tended to say that Bill was in fact morally responsible. So which reaction should we trust, the cold logical one or the emotionally involved one? This is the kind of question that experimental philosophy forces on us.
But that’s just one example. If you want to learn about more of the experimental studies that have been done, you can take a look at the recent articles on experimental philosophy in the New York Times and Slate.
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No! That's Wrong!
by Zhaohua Ji and Cui Xu.
Oh my...Kane/Miller has brought us a delightful book from China!
A pair of ruffly red underpants blows off a clothes line and lands near a little white rabbit who immediately places them on his head. "It's a hat," he says. The text at bottom corrects him, "No, that's wrong. It's not a hat." But the rabbit doesn't seem to listen and goes about placing the underpants on the heads of other animals. It takes a donkey to set him straight and let him know he's wearing underpants on his head.
But, if the donkey is right, and they really ARE underpants, where does his tail go?
Along the way, the story introduces a number of adjectives and opposites. For example, the "hat" is too small for an elephant, but too big for a fox, and it's simply amazing, magnificent, incredible...you get the drift.
I really can't think of anything that's much funnier than a bunch of animals with hilarious facial expressions wearing underpants on their heads, and children will laugh out loud at this book and its illustrations. I can just imagine them yelling, "No! That's Wrong," as they turn the pages. Even the back end papers will elicit giggles as readers see a number of animals incorrectly wearing articles of clothing and other objects on their bodies.
If you're looking for a funny book that will make your child (and you) laugh and also introduce some new vocabulary words along the way, this would make an excellent choice.
Release date: March 1, 2008 (available now!)
This is a really valuable post. Thanks Deren. I love the part at the end: notwithstanding everyone's best efforts, the collision occurs.
So often, conflict feels contrived.
Thanks! You just helped me with this week's post!