John, that was brilliant. With a stroke of a pen you've created a dynamic oxymoron we can use in future discussions. It will be a valuable encapsulation in summing up oddball twists in literature, and you should get credit for your work. Heretofore, we shall now have "The Cleary Conundrum."
I really hope I don't have to argue that there's no originally out there outside of writing, and that 'there is nothing new under the sun' should be taken literally. If I do that's a real problem -_- I would however like that to settle this debate, in regards to writing, once and for all by clarifying what you mean by that statement. Yes, every successful story I know has a setting and characters and generally a plot. They also have conflicts. Maybe there are other types of stories out there but I'm not so aware of them. If we stick with the basic idea that a story has plot, setting, and characters, where conflict generally constitutes as the plot, we can go further by breaking plot down into the classic 'man vs nature', 'man vs man' and 'man vs himself' categories. By claiming nothing new can be thought of, do you mean to say all stories follow this format? I can come to terms with that. Or do you mean that every type of conflict has been explored? What specifically do you mean?
