What makes a story boring?

Keep in mind that when discussing conflict in a creative writing sense, we're dealing with objectives and concerns that are to be addressed and felt by the characters involved in the plot. Do not take it to mean a literally antagonistic relationship between the character and another character, an event, an environment or any other entity. The Slice of Life anime example brought up earlier is a good example of this attribute in effect. An episode of a family sitcom that merely involves entertaining the kids is still a conflict because the character engaging in the action is using said action to resolve a problem or complete a task.

Something one of my professors really rammed into our heads is that you should never confuse an antagonist with a central conflict. They are closely related narrative entities, but they are not inherently one and the same. Going with that, conflicts in a story should not automatically be viewed as a bad occurrence. One very lighthearted anime I came across, like many others of its type, was just about two lovey-dovey people being all lovey-dovey. It was a sweet-natured, relatively harmless romantic adventure, but they still had conflicts to resolve. What movie do you want to see on our date? Where do you want to eat? How do I look in this dress?

These aren't conflicts in the sense that they are bad situations, but they are conflicts in the sense that they create a situation in which a decision must be made to mobilize the plot. When novelists, playwrights and screenwriters are talking about the dangers of a story without a plot, this is more or less what they're talking about. The story is boring because there are no significant decisions to be made, and it immobilizes the plot.

edited 15th Oct '14 9:54:23 PM by Aprilla

Edit: Actually, never mind. Everyone else has already said everything I wanted to say, and better than I could anyway.

edited 17th Oct '14 10:29:17 AM by Tungsten74

There is a difference between having a lot of little conflicts to resolve and having a central conflict to the story (movie, book, tv episode) that's going to build to a climax and then resolution. Not having a central conflict can make a story boring but if it has a mood to it that can make it interesting.