Conflict: Necessary for Good Fiction?

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A professional writer by the name of Jeff Goins has stated, "Without conflict, you don't have a story. You have a reality show."

Now, I think that by 'reality show', Jeff likely meant programmes that are reality-based documentaries, travelogues, or the like. I do not think he meant those semi-scripted programmes like 'Big Brother' or 'The Bachelor' wherein apparent conflicts are poorly acted and over-dramatized in a vain effort to boost ratings. However, I could be wrong.

What's your take? How do you feel about conflict in stories? Is conflict necessary for a good story? Can you write a commercially-viable fiction-based story that lacks any sort of conflict? Care to demonstrate?

Story is conflict. You can try to be meta all you like, but without some kind of conflict, you have no story. It can be explicit - as in just about every tall tale since the beginning of time - or it can be subtle, like in Dave Eggers' "The Alaska of Giants and Gods" and Steven Millhauser's "The Invasion from Outer Space". Regardless of how you spin it, though, there has to be something: an itch, a frustration, some kind of restlessness. A look, if you will, into the absurd or the dark. (Or if you're Kafka, both at once.)

The reason I started this thread is that on another website, people are saying that conflicts in stories - especially those conflicts that get the stories going (e.g., the "inciting incidents") - are stress triggers for them. Some people seem unable to handle conflict even when it is presented as part of a fictional storyline.

My brief study of creative writing suggested that an important progression in a good story describes how someone wants some objective, faces some manner of internal or external challenges to obtain it, and then deals with those challenges. This could be a knight slaying a dragon to save a maiden, a nation fighting another for territory or resources, or the little engine that could seeking to mount a hill while facing and overcoming the internal conflict of finding sufficient self-confidence.

Maybe the person's aversion is to "conflict" in a violent context.

One of them cited "Goodnight Moon" as their ideal work of fiction.

I think conflict creates the philosophy in the story

Not sure what they see in any kind of media, then. Vignettes are fine without conflict, I think.

I don't know why I'd want to read a novel about someone getting up, going to work, encountering nothing out of the ordinary, and then going to bed without having gone through any changes whatsoever. Conflict isn't just arguments or physical fights, it's all the obstacles characters encounter, everything that causes them to develop and grow, and everything that challenges the reader to think and feel for what they're reading.

What about character study? I like stories about why people behave the way they do.

You never really know a person (or a fictional character) until you see them involved in a conflict, even if it is only arguing over the amount of change they received from a cashier.

Peter Orner tends to write a lot of those (unless I'm simply misinterpreting his work), and there's always some kind of conflict involved in them. They may or may not be resolved by story's end, but you always see his characters under duress.

I can't even imagine a work of fiction without conflict, as you'd otherwise have a bunch of characters standing around with nothing to do.

If we're including inner conflict, I think it would just about impossible to write a good story without any conflict.

This is brilliantly put. Hamlet is a wonderful example.

Fnord, have you ever read Jorge Luis Borges? I think some of his stories may be what you're looking for. They are often very short. Here is one called On the Exactitude of Science: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/bblonder/phys120/docs/borges.pdf.

It does not have conflict in the usual sense, but I do think it has conflict. It just isn't about specific individuals, and instead deals with ideas.