Does a short story need conflict?

Yes, stories need conflict. A lot of the short fiction markets say in their guidelines that they want complete stories, not vignettes or slice-of-life pieces. And scenes within a novel should contain conflict, too.

I think the real issue is what you consider to be conflict. The character needs to want something, have something stand in their way, then eventually overcome the obstacles (or maybe not overcome them in a plot twist at the end). So if the artisan puts the kid through tests, and the kid worries that he’s not going to succeed—or even fails at first and has to come back the next year, or even the next—that’s conflict. He’s at risk of not getting what he wants, and he has obstacles to overcome.

A test could be your conflict if it challenges the teen's ability to follow instructions or a task the teen doesn't see as having anything to do with the apprenticeship he's applying for—thinking of The Karate Kid here and certain of the assigned chores in the film such as washing and waxing the car: "wax on, wax off". Something like that, maybe?

ETA: Sometimes we take the word "conflict" a tad too literally. Conflict is really about a change or a challenge to the familiar—a change in the character's life, a change in status, a change in thinking.

Elenitsa said:

I have published 4 novels already, with 2 more ready for publishing and one being written now. I have written some short stories too, but not many. I have read more than I wrote, though... and I think not all of them have conflict. Is it always necessary? Is it necessary for a short story to have the structure of a longer one, just condensed, or it can be only... sort of a scene?

In my case, the limits of my short story are 3 pages A4, Times New Roman 12, 1 line spaced. It will be about a teen looking for work and finding an old artisan to get apprenticed to. I can't find an actual conflict to this, however. If it was a novelette, or something longer, there could be conflicts, but for these dimensions... I am not sure which the story conflict could be. The old artisan can be wary of his supposed lack of knowledge and put him to test, but... is it actually a conflict? I don't feel it like being one.

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or the conflict could be what happens if he doesn't find work, doesn't get a job, and the issues stemming from that following him into the job! You can do a whole lot with minimal background-- It's something I've been working on a lot myself (trying to establish a character in a few lines and set up that conflict without explaining their whole history)

“Necessary” defined in fiction is what works to the expecations you’ve set; and reaching a level of success with the story that you’re satisfied with.

In discussions like this, someone will invariably point out a successful story that did something similar and say that that seemed to work for that particular writer. Anything and everything *can* be successful, and at one point probably has been.

The test is if you write a story without conflict, and it doesn’t get the reaction that you hoped for or are satisfied with. Then you might have a problem.

Conflict isn't what you're taking it to be, as others have covered. But even taking it as an obstacle/challenge, the answer is no, not all forms of structuring a story are based on conflict. A story like that can be a harder sell, but it doesn't mean those forms of story structures don't exist.

For example, the purpose of a story might be to make the reader wonder how what's happening could have ended up happening, or how elements connect together, with the reveal of that being the point of the story. Jokes can use this structure, because the punchline isn't necessarily about conflict at all, but in making people see things from a different angle.

Vignettes and slice-of-life may not contain conflict (though they can, or at least imply it, depending on how they're written), and some markets may not like them, but that's not the same as saying those styles are not valid and will never sell.

Ultimately, the story needs to keep people reading. If you have a character going from A to B and there's nothing surprising or interesting, that's when there's an issue. But you don't have to create that interest in one single way. You could have an obstacle between A and B, but you could equally start with B and work back to A, where it's the mystery of how B happened that creates the interest. You could describe different aspects of A and skip B entirely. Short stories are a good space to play with structures like this.

Stories need something to happen. You can describe it as conflict, dissonance, contrast or whatever. Personally, I would describe the alternative as boring.