Internal and external conflict in Eastern and Western storytelling

[P Drysdale]

I've been writing for a while and only recently started really thinking about this and find it absolutely fascinating so I thought I would see if people here are equally interested in it. The video I have linked goes into some detail about the differences between Eastern and Western storytelling, but it's 30 minutes long and I know not everyone has the patience or time for that, so to summarize: the main difference being that Eastern stories tend to focus on characters with an internal struggle, and Western stories tend to focus more on the plot by way of a character facing an external struggle, e.g. Luke Skywalker would never have left Tatooine or trained to be a Jedi if there were no Empire to face. Obviously this isn't a rule that applies to all stories from East or West, and you can have both mixed together and that's fantastic, but it has made me rethink my own writing and how I approach characters, backstory and active vs passive protagonists.

Discuss!

(I appreciate the video is very focused on Japanese Anime for examples rather than literature but I still think it does a good job of comparing and contrasting these storytelling types)

 

[tinkerdan]

There likely are differences in story telling between cultures. However I think this just describes the difference between a Plot driven story and a character driven story.

Oddly you star Wars example is more of a blend because before the inciting incident Luke was having the internal struggle between going off and doing his thing and having to help on the farm. The plot required the pain of his aunt and uncles death to really drive him into his mission early on and that played on the notion that had he waited without an incident he might have been too late and ended up; in a whole different place.
Also even after the inciting incident there were still many internal conflicts that were often inconveniently interrupted by the plot.

In the second movie the entire first part of the movie was internal conflict while Luke trained.

It might however seem that there are more character driven stories in the east than the west.

However this might be due to the possibility that an overly character driven story often overlooks plot resolution or maybe defies defining a plot, because the character's struggle is the actual plot. That is something that I could say that I've felt when reading specifically cultural literature.

However if you look closer at western literature you will find some of the same; possibly not enough.

It's possible you could define my two first books as being Character is the plot books.
Now::[Recent edit]
Having listened now to the entire thing.
The narrator(sounding like a computer generated fake voice) is describing Internal struggle and external struggle and not internal conflict and external conflict.

He suggest that external struggle has conflict and internal struggle does not have conflict.
This I think is an error and it is just that it is more difficult to see the conflict that exists in the internal struggle; however conflict is there and If he delved as deeply into the internal as he did the external he would have found that there is still a conflict that would unravel the internal struggle story just as tragically as he described the dissolution of story for external struggle without the conflict.

The one thing I could agree with is that there is a difference in the tropes that are used by some western writers and some Eastern writers.
Those tropes reflect the cultures.

So basically the answer to this is that the difference is largely cultural Tropes and it is enlightening because if you could access the other cultures tropes you could come close to having tools to write like them.

I stick with my notions about plot and lack of plot and Character driven stories and Plot driven stories.

 

[ckatt]

What he really seems to be comparing is Hollywood vs non-hollywood. What people often refer to as Americanized I think is actually commercialized. That is to say that the film or story had been modified to appeal to more people who will open their wallets. Not necessarily to like the story more, just to get them to pay for it. Character-driven plots require more thinking on the part of the viewer. People that think more spend less money.

As Hollywood is such a strong global force. I think many regional film industries have cut out their piece of the pie by doing something unique because frankly, they can't compete with the Hollywood budgets. And the kinds of films that excel on a big-budget are the type this video is calling American.

Also, he is comparing series to movies. A series has more time to delve into an ensemble cast then a movie. More time to reveal each character. Scrubs has 182 episodes. that's almost 80 hours of viewing. the first trilogy of Star Wars is barely six and a half.

 

[tinkerdan]

@ckatt That was my thought also that it was movies; but I mentally included comics or graphic novels and of course TV which would be the series you mentioned. However his description of the Tropes and the structure of story telling also crosses over to written novels. I can agree with most of what you have said though I would emphasize that more than it being a matter of trying to do things differently--by the descriptions given--I'd be more inclined to stick with the notion that different cultures derive different tropes and that that is the primary difference.

One thing I might add though is that when he was pointing out the flaws in Western culture and the notion that the western super nerd is an awkward, weak, cowardly outcast I had to laugh--because there is so much truth--however he totally missed what he did to the Eastern culture.

The Eastern super nerd was all of the thing that the western popular was sans the weak points of being stupid and vapid--thus creating a super, athletic, popular nerd that almost sounds like a formula for deus ex machina. Mostly though I think he ignores the fact that in all cultures it tends to be lonely at the top; which is where that super nerd must be. So the popular is probably a superficial construct.

 

[P Drysdale]

I was really just springboarding off that video for the character-driven/plot-driven angle but I do see how the mere fact that he's focused on film and TV changes the argument drastically compared to a book, or even a series of books. Particularly in terms of series of films and TV it seems prudent to have your characters overcome whatever their internal conflict is over the course of the series, rather than in the first installment, which raises the question of when in a book that maybe isn't part of a series but has sequel potential do you have your character overcome (or succumb to) their internal conflict? It might be boring for readers to see a character grow up completely in one book and then have to follow a 'perfectly complete' character through further stories.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It depends a lot on the genre, too. SFF tends more toward action than a lot of genres—yet that is not even true of all SF and Fantasy, and even less so for certain other popular genres.

For instance, in romance introspection for the male and female protagonists is actually an important part of the story. And a lot of literary fiction is very, very introspective. Detective stories can be rather cerebral, depending on the writer, as the detective mulls over all the clues, makes guesses, evaluates the suspects, etc. (The murder and the capture of the culprit is usually a very small part of the actual story in a murder mystery, with the rest focussing more on conversation—interviews—and putting the clues together than practically anything else.) And while here in the west there are many action genres, in the US women's literature, primarily romance, outsells everything else combined.

If you are talking about movies, of course, it depends a lot on what goes over well on the screen. And yet consider all the recent remakes of Jane Austen novels, which, although they have sprightly conversation (which is good on the screen) do lose a lot between the page and the book, because one of the chief delights is the narration. So I think that any generalities must take into account a lot more than what is seen in blockbuster movies.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

This premise echoes the distinctions drawn by Susan Cain in her groundbreaking book Quiet (a work all introverts should read) where she contrasts the attitude in, for instance, America, where introversion is seen as something diverging from the "extrovert norm" and in fact is often considered "a problem" ; whereas in eastern countries generally, introversion and all its wonderful consequences are much more accepted - and understood.

 

[GDobkins]

@Stephen Palmer I love that article; however now that I understand introverts--where is the description of Extroverts.

As to the OP --I listened to this all the way through and though there are many interesting ideas I think that it falls short both because it is rather narrow in scope--like limiting your reading to one genre and then trying to pigeon hole all genre as if they all worked the same. They don't.

The other thing though goes back to the mention of culture and I think that though the stereotypes and tropes are different and reliant on culture there is something a bit deeper culturally that is left unsaid.

I recall recently reading the work of an author who taught in Korea. She made the observation that the one major difference between east and west is that in the east education is almost like a sport or at least a competition and that any student that doesn't take it seriously as such can get left behind in the dust. I think that the distinctive difference in competitiveness is a larger influence on all of this.

Also though, it might be possible in the narrow view of the link that a big difference is mostly that in that type of fiction western culture tends to romanticize their stories and the eastern tend more toward realism which might look like magic realism to the West; which takes us to where the viewpoint is narrow--because the west has magic realism that I think intersects with eastern works.

That's just my opinion though.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

On extroverts and introverts, you can't do much better than this.

 

[sknox]

Binary classifications of all sorts make me queasy. The human experience is more complex and more subtle. If asked, which I rarely am, I tell people I'm neither extrovert nor introvert. I'm just a vert. Similarly, I'm neither right nor left brained, I'm whole-brained. Or lame-brained, depending on my mood and my interlocutor. Especially when I'm in writer mode, I look for the peculiar over the typical, so those labels just get in the way. Your Process May Vary. <g>