No Antagonist

I think we're saying you guys are trying to use a dictionary-defined term to mean something that it is not. "Literary fiction" has specific requirements to be called that. It's like trying to argue something is "legal" based on the merits of the activity and not, you know, the freaking law.

It has nothing to do with us being elitist unless we actually like the way it works.

Um, for one thing, Hellsing is a comic, and...

Yeah. Are you really sure about that?

While that smacks of Fan Myopia, it actually illustrates the point I'm arguing for - for fiction to be "literary" is an essentially meaningless label that does not indicate anything about quality, and largely does not denote genre. What's being discussed here is realistic fiction.

Huh? Ellison was absolutely a science fiction writer. An extraordinarily gifted one, but I think we've already established that quality isn't really relevant in this discussion.

It's a different medium entirely. Calling something "literary fiction," for good or for ill, is about the medium.

While I would agree with the idea that "literary fiction" as a label is ultimately meaningless and condescending, I'm not sure that's exactly what he's talking about...

Despite his reputation, a lot of Ellison's works fall pretty far outside of science fiction.

No, no it is not. Having pictures means you can get away with not writing a huge majority of your prose. Not saying I have anything against the medium, but the two are not the same apart from being ink on paper. Telling much of the story with pictures is vastly different, while the reader gets an accurate picture of what is happening via the picture, a writer who doesn't use pictures essentially gives details describes what is happening up to a certain degree, and then you use that information to form your own picture. It's the reason behind why Tom Cruise is being picked to portray an actor in a favorite novel series of mine, and I think it's a poor choice. Because without having pictures, I've made my own picture of the character in my head, and then seeing Tom Cruise the first thing that comes to mind is that he looks nothing like him.

I would feel slightly more concerned were I being admonished by someone who used (or, in this case, didn't use) apostrophes correctly.

I'm not even sure what the antagonism is stemming from (hurr see what I did there?). These are defined terms, you normally don't just arbitrarily come up with your own definitions. I don't bust into a biology classroom and go "THAT AIN'T NO FUNGI" (also I dislike using ain't).

Whether one likes using literary fiction requirements to produce their work is another matter entirely and one can discuss that. One cannot discuss what the term "literary fiction" means just to suit themselves.

Look, can we agree on this definition? "Literary fiction"="fiction with lots of literary merits that is acknowledged as such by the establishment", "genre fiction"="not fiction that fits in a genre, but fiction that is extremely formulaic in following the tropes of that genre", "commercial fiction"="fiction that attempts to sell as much as possible". Also, can we agree that, while in practice the first usually doesn't overlap with the other two, they aren't mutually exclusive?

No.

If I go by the wikipedia articles, the definitions are multiple and vague. It's like "intuition" in philosophy. Every bastard uses that term to say an entirely different thing. If the definitions have been set in stone I'd like to be shown where.

edited 14th Jun '12 10:29:45 PM by TheHandle

Wikipedia is not the be-all end-all of answers. Generally speaking, literary fiction is a label slapped on certain works of fiction by a specific group; it is not something that random people on the internet can decide. It is also essentially meaningless in terms of actual quality - it's little more then a pride point for people who buy into the mentality behind it.

You are trying to redefine it as 'works of literary merit'. In some ways that's preferable as a concept (if horribly subjective) but it really is like going into a greenhouse and yelling that the mushrooms in it aren't fungi. You can't just redefine specific terms on an arbitrary whim, especially when it's not even necessary. The original purpose of this thread was talking about the idea of No Antagonist, which is common in realistic fiction - not literary fiction, except inasmuch as realistic fiction is essentially the sole genre literary fiction is selected from.

Here to continue the Lit Fic discussion. Here for the discussion of whether and when it's okay to apply Home Rules to language and define "literary fiction" = "works with literary merit" instead of "works with establishment seal of approval", or, for that matter, "dog" = "that moment when you are waking up (and probably you have opened your eyes and moved around but not stood up) and aren't really sure whether you're thinking about your dream or still dreaming it" as opposed to "canis canis".

BACK ON TOPIC. So, how does one pull off no having agent antagonists without making the story boring? Let's have a look at the problem here. From the Evil Is Cool page:

It really is not, I think. But let's see what we've got at The Villain Makesthe Plot

This presumes that, without villains, people are free of struggles and suffering! That's simply preposterous, and more than a little tragic: the notion that "we shall not rest until our enemies are defeated" which goes hand to hand with "once our enemies are defeated, there will be a big party and everything will be okay". There's this... not-acknowledging that happiness takes a lot of hard work even when you aren't struggling against anything. No, especially when you aren't struggling against anything. And it also glosses over the fact that you can't blame all your problems on an external power, a scapegoat, an "other" whom you can Love to Hate!

I'm sorry, I'm getting upset all by myself here, but I'm starting to think that conflict, strife, and stuggle, aren't only a necessity of fiction, but one of life itself. It's just that immersive fiction provides you with conflicts that interest you more than those you're actually engaged in, and one of the points of attraction of escapist fiction is that your fictional surrogate solves them more successfully than you solve yours: people need conflict to keep them interested in living, but they need to be successful at those conflicts in order to feel happy.

That is, I think, the core of happiness, Not pleasure, not peace, not rest, but winning. Christianity acknowledges this condition with its notion of "Original Sin": you can never rest or relax, you can never attain Virtue, you can only strive for it, against your own Vices. It also vaguely externalizes this notion in the form of the Devil as a Whisperer and Evil Councilor. Islam takes this notion Satan notion even further, formalizing and codifying it, and adds the notion of Jihad, the Struggle, the duty of every Muslim.

The interesting part here is that it distinguishes between the Small Jihad and the Great Jihad. The former is the the struggle against the foreign enemy, the Pagans who would crush and and oppress the Muslims, and to whom one must not submit. The latter, the Huge one, is the lifelong, constant, unending struggle against yourself. The Abrahamic religions as a whole suggest that to win this struggle against yourself, you should just follow a set of rules they prescribe, in the name of and for the sake and glory of the Lord your God the One and Only.

Buddhists seem to go downright meta: they suggest that you struggle against the struggle itself. The extinction of the flame, the cessation of suffering, longing, wanting, and needing. Overcoming the need to overcome. Overpowering the Will To Power. Honestly, I think it's delicious.

Anyway, my point is, there's been huge amounts of people and immense organizations who have expended a staggering amount of intellectual effort over the centuries into the problem of people struggling with themselves. So the notion that you need a villain to make a good story seems, at first glance, to be a little dumb, from where I stand right now.

Why would one need villains to tell a compelling story?

edited 15th Jun '12 6:49:39 AM by TheHandle

Ever seen Stranger Than Fiction? To me, that was a good example of a work lacking an antagonist. To give a brief summary, a man starts hearing a voice narrating his life. At one point, the narrator says he's going to die. Because of this, he starts looking for the narrator (if she exists) to ask her to not kill him, and he also examines his life, as he was previously a rather boring person.

The narrator in question is a popular author; the narration is the narration of a book she's writing, with the man being the protagonist in the book. She doesn't know that she's affecting the man's life, and is actually experiencing a severe case of writer's block (having not written a book in ten years), so the two of them are portrayed equally sympathetically. Neither of them is a villain or has any malign intent.

Based on the No Antagonist page, it looks like the primary catalyst for a story without an antagonist is an event (a disaster of some kind), a personal issue the protagonist is struggling with (drug addiction), or a goal the protagonist wishes to achieve (setting up shop in the big city).

edited 15th Jun '12 10:20:28 AM by TeraChimera

In the "commercial fiction" sense, Gundam Sousei is an excellent example of absolute with absolutely no antagonist. Basically, the plot is: Yoshiyuki Tomino (played by Spider Jerusalem) fights the Animation Age Ghetto and the Sci Fi Ghetto by trying to get a legitimate, compelling military drama to the public through the very first use of giant robots that played like weapons of war instead of giant pro wrestlers. He was a bit ahead of his time, and the show had a hard time taking off, was canceled before it could end properly, and was just hell to make. As in, the main animator got hospitalized because of overworking. Nevertheless, through the extreme determination, hard work, and self-sacrifice of all involved in its creation, and the clever use of the violent passion this show created in its fandom, the franchise finally took off spectacularly, marking the beginning of a new age in animation.

And it is awesome. There's this very famous line in Mobile Suit Gundam, "Even my father never hit me": to get the voice actor to say it just right, Tomino, who was getting frustrated with his feeble attempts, just went into the room and punched him until he got it right. That's right, you can have No Antagonist and still have physical violence!

edited 15th Jun '12 10:50:09 AM by TheHandle

Well not speaking of examples, it's generally quite difficult to build the no villain plot and remain interesting to people usually interested in space operas or military sci-fi and what have you.

What are the plot choices?

• Personal behaviour issue that must be overcome (I have a drinking problem OR I am estranged from my daughter OR I lack self-esteem)
• Realisation of the value of possessions (my life is actually a lot better than it really is OR now I truly appreciate the art about me)
• Repairing a particular relationship
• Exploring a world

What other ideas can you do without a villain? Having a villain is certainly "easier" to create a plot around, but generally abused to create really shallow plots. That's probably the big reason for people to give higher merit to works that perform well without a villain.

...And that's relevant how? The OP never claimed to be writing any of that.

It's relevant if you're going to chuck out vast portions of what you're allowed to write about. We want to be able to conduct the "No Antagonist" plot in any type of writing. Not just go "oh well, who cares about all this stuff".

Well, I'll agree that one should try to be enjoyable and relevant to as many people as possible. Elitism is not a very healthy disposition. I mean, it's not bad, per se, but it' much easier to go wrong if you're always preaching to the choir.

Naoki Urasawa is an author who writes manga with literary merit, in the Thriller genre mostly. While there are villains in his Jigsaw Puzzle Plot stories, they're seldom the focus: they're simply one more facet of the struggles the (very well-rounded) characters must overcome. I'm reading Billy Bat right now, and I never expected to find Lee Harvey Oswald so sympathetic (and pathetic).

Excuse me? I don't see where elitism comes into it. All I was doing was saying that while it may be true that there are some genres where No Antagonist doesn't work, the OP wasn't writing in those genres and so it wasn't really relevant.

Keep in mind, Tropes Are Not Good. The fact that there are some genres where it's hard not to have an antagonist doesn't mean a damn thing about the quality of those genres - having an antagonist is not "bad".

Isn't The Handle, the OP? :D

But actually, we could, if we want, focus the discussion on what genres you typically write within. By you, I mean, The Handle.

I don't want the discussion to focus on that.

I didn't mean to say you were being elitist, I was merely generally commenting on the fact that I don't mind writing in genres that would disqualify my work from ever being labeled "literary fiction".

In that case, I think my bigger issue is that I like plot a lot so "no antagonist" usually requires that you have a mostly character-driven story. Being capable of mixing the two together is where I think an author would really shine in my opinion.