First I have to say how much I love the way James Scott Bell talks about writing and that I highly recommend his books. He explains things in a way that click with me.
One of the things he like to talk about is the death struggle. This is the conflict that locks the protagonist and the antagonist together for the length of the story. Now literary/character driven writers need not call foul. This struggle isn’t always a physical death. It can also be psychological (think Holden Caufield or any romance novel) or professional (think police/lawyer stories, even mother trying to help/rescue her child). And yes a story can be more than one, which brings me to my point.