Thanks for stopping by, September, and good luck with your scene! 🙂

Hi Becca,
I just recently learned about most of them myself, so I saved the knowledge for my RWC post to share with everyone here. Isn’t it interesting stuff? 🙂

Hi Kay,
Glad this post gave you something to think about. 🙂

Thank you for this deeper approach to story-telling, Jami. We often equate emotion with conflict, but there are other ways to engage the reader. I like what Angela said about challenging the reader’s worldview through our characters.

Very thought-provoking! I’m definitely bookmarking this one.

Thanks, Jami. I agree with you — they do have conflict, it’s just different. This was a timely post because I was just reading someone’s post on twitter about how their stories are more about the changes to readers than conflict.

Yes, “challenge” is another good way of putting it — as in, the story can challenge what a reader thinks they know or understand. As I mentioned in the post, although these structures might be thought of as “no conflict,” I tend to think it’s more about a different <i>approach</i> to conflict.

I know writers who have struggled with their stories due to a perceived lack of conflict, so I wanted to dig into the options — and also the risks and expectations. I hope authors who think one of these structures might apply to their story idea will now have a direction to investigate. 🙂

Change by nature means a challenge to the norm – the challenge of ideas, to challenge a worldview, beliefs, etc. (even if the emphasis is on the reader’s change rather than a character’s.). Challenge can lead to transformation (change) or affirmation (reinforcement of current beliefs, so no change). So, perhaps in some cases, while change/conflict is here, the end result is not necessarily set, such as the case of how a reader may or may not change their viewpoint, or what “version” they might believe is the truth.
What do you think – would you agree?