Analysis of Stories by [ Sides of Conflict ]

Pick a random story, any story in any form: written, told, animated or acted. Chances are good that the story is driven by conflict. It's one of the easiest and best ways to create tension and suspense.

The conflict also makes the story more real since humans encounter conflict every day even when one attempts to make a decision in their own mind.

Conflict

verb

• to come into collision or disagreement.
• be contradictory, at variance, or in opposition.
• to fight or contend; do battle.

noun

• a fight, battle, or struggle, especially a prolonged struggle; strife.
• controversy; quarrel: conflicts between parties.

A while ago, I read an TV Tropes page about types of stories according to their sides of conflict. I wrote this post in Arabic on my Facebook page and this is a translation. most of this post with the Tv Tropes page in mind, but you'd see a lot of difference if you compare them.

(source: this website from google search)

Sides of Conflict

These sides can be people, animals aliens and even intangible things like thoughts and ideals. the difference between them is what moves the story forward.

The white, black and the gray between them are subjective things and culture dependent. What some people classify as gray or white may be black to others. As an author, you must write according to your target audience definition of morality.

1) White x Black

This is the most basic type, one side is clearly right (white) and the other is clearly wrong (black) and Black/White narrative clearly tries to supports one side and most of time the answer is given and one side wins (mostly white).

This type is very idealistc and is often used for video games or works aimed at younger audience as its the easiest type to understand and it can be used to let children understand the right & wrong in their culture. But reality doesn't have a set answer so mature works tend to avoid it.

2) White x Gray

Sometimes one side is clearly right, but you can't say the other side is completely wrong either. This conflict is interesting because even though one side is more wrong than the other it still have that redeeming value.

In many works of this type, the narrative takes time to show the sympathetic side of the gray side, the WxB narrative won't show that even if the Black has that side.

This type right now is taking WxB type place in the works for the younger audience. as it teaches us that everything has a good side.

3) Gray x Black

This is where there's clearly wrong side but the other isn't completely right. The good side here is wrong enough to be the bad side in the first two types. But there's no white here to fight the evil so the world has to use the next best thing to do that.

Like the previous type. the Gray x Black narrative takes some time to show both pleasant and unpleasant sides of the gray.

This type is often used in the less idealistic works to show that the world isn't as beautiful as it seems.

4) Gray x Gray

This is the most realistic type, where the right and wrong are never clear. There's no right answer.

Gray and Gray narrative will show the good and the bad of each side, and many of these stories are presented neutrally or at least don't imply that the side it follows is better than the other.

This is the most common type of conflict and can be really interesting to see different takes on the same problem and how they conflict with each other while in reality, no one is better than the other.

5) White x White

Good x Good! sometimes there's no a bad side but for some reason, two sides can't both have the best ending they need and are forced to fight for one of them to have it.

In my opinion, this is the best type when done right. Because unlike Gray x Gray both of the sides don't have the unpleasantness that make you think one is worse than the other.

Many small-scale conflicts fall into this, but few stories do this type on the big scale.

6) Black x Black

Evil x Evil! both sides want a bad end but unlike Gray x Gray both don't have a pleasant or sympathetic side or goal. the world in these stories is almost guaranteed to be cynical and the ending to be bad.

True Black x Black is the hardest to write without falling into Gray x Black type. and it's also the hardest to become popular because most readers don't care when every ending imaginable for the story is a bad end.

7) Blue x Orange

This is my favorite type of conflict. But I think it needs some clarification first: you see, in White/Gray/Black the culture has defined rules of the good and the bad. Gray is a mixture of both or something between them.

Blue/Orange scale is different, it's when the character/culture has unique set of rules that makes it hard to be put on the same scale as Black/White.. for example, for a Blue/Orange character wearing a black tie can be considered pure EVIL, while slapping a random child every morning can be a good thing. these are extreme examples.

This type of gray is hard to understand if you don't belong to the same culture (If you're from the target audience then you don't). so it's hard to intentionally write it in a good way.

The actions and personality of a character must justify each other according to the "rules" of that character.

This type is the most interesting to study. the most interesting if done right, But the easiest to screw up. The readers might not understand it correctly (this is often good as it gives fans things to discuss) and it can be offensive to many.

Also since all humans are different, many people in real life even in one family have different sets of morality rules. though most of time they can be set in the same W/G/B scale, rather than Bl/Or one.

Conclusion

There are many types of conflict... I only touched the surface by listing the types according to the sides of it. and I think there are more than those I wrote.

This is what I have today. what do you think?
What's your favorite conflict type?

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I like analyzing stories (you'd know that if you read my LearnedFromManga posts) and analyzing elements in those stories, so tell me if you want more of these posts!!

for now, have a nice day.

Salam (peace)