Learning to write scenes that have conflict is one of the hardest things to do. It is the biggest obstacle for me when writing. But with practice anything is possible so I wanted to give you a few tips that I use to help me create conflict in the scenes I write.
Without conflict, your scenes can get really boring so I hope that these will help you better master the craft.
Understanding how to define conflict is a step in understanding how to write it. Before I get to conflict thought I find it useful to understand two very important words in filmmaking in general. The first is the word “passive.”
Passive (adj.)
Accepting what happens or what others do without active response or resistance.
As you can see from the definition, passive describes something that doesn’t really do much. It is safe in the fact that it doesn’t really push anyone or anything. It has no intentional resistance. Not saying that this is never going to work in a screenplay but it does leave a massive opening for things to get really boring, really fast.
The next word I want to look at is the word “active.”
Active (adj.)
Engaging or ready to engage in physically energetic pursuit.
Active takes action and action is a word used in movies so it must be correct, right? I kid, but seriously, active is action, action is movement, movement is what makes a movie. Maybe a stretch but a far more interesting experience for the viewer if your characters are taking action or pursuing something.
Now let’s take a look at the word “conflict.”
Conflict (verb)
To be incompatible or at variance. To clash.
Creating conflict is easiest when your characters are actively against each other. They clash. A think I hope you understand is that the idea of only writing active characters that are in an active opposition is not the end all. It just so happens that I, and a number of other people with credits to prove they know what they are talking about, have the notion that writing scenes in conflict that have characters actively “at variance” with each other is far easier to do than the other way around. Why not master the easier route before you attempt to conquer what most have failed to achieve?
Let’s take a look at my tips for taking the easy route.
Step One: Choose Your Characters
You need to have characters in your story to produce conflict. Once you have those characters you will then need to give those characters goals that conflict with each other.
Are your characters two apple lovers? Are they two tree fruit haters? Maybe they both only like chocolate donuts? Whoever your characters may be, give them goals that directly oppose each other. Which is our next tip.
Step Two: Give Your Characters Goals
Giving your characters goals is more than just giving them something to achieve by the end of the scene. You need to give your characters goals that are directly conflicting with each other. This is a lesson that I learned from Corey Mandel and has been one of the most valuable tools I have learned.
The basis of the idea is that your Character A needs to have a goal that directly opposes Character B so that if Character A achieves their goal Character B fails. Only one of your characters can achieve their goal by the end of the scene. If they can both succeed than there really wasn’t any conflict in the first place.
If there is no need to compromise then there is no reason for your character to be in conflict with someone else. This has taken me a lot of practice to get where I am with the conflict goals I give my characters. Some may get there far faster than me, in fact I have friends that achieved this super fast while I was still writing goal lists that were over 100 goals long just to practice until I understood it.
Step Three: Write in Escalations
What exactly is an escalation? Well for me in my writing, an escalation is moments in a scene that make it harder for a character to achieve their goal or it makes things worse. The idea can be broken down like this:
Character A wants to get through a door while Character B stands in front of it with a knife.
Character A isn’t afraid of knives but is of swords.
Character B pulls out a sword. (escalation)
Character A is really only afraid of swords if there are more than one.
Character B reveals an army with fifty swords. (escalation).
The escalations are moments that it gets worse for Character A to achieve their goal of getting through the door. When we start to learn what the character has to lose if the character doesn’t get through the door would be the stakes. The term “raise the stakes” references this and the stakes mixed with the escalations are what helps us to care for the character.
If things get easier for your character in a scene, this usually reference what I would refer to as a de-escalation. This could easily put the reader at ease, give them a chance to relax off the edge of their seat and take on a more passive experience.
Not only does raising the stakes give us a reason to care for the character but it is also a fancy way to pack in exposition without anyone noticing. The saying often goes that “don’t write on the nose” or “don’t blatantly fill your scene with exposition.” Exposition is really the term used to describe when a screenwriter fills a scene with information about what is happening or what has happened so that it gives context to what the scene is about. It is usually considered a bad word in screenwriting.
Fortunately when you write a scene packed with conflict, where it continually escalates and you are constantly raising the stakes it is rather easy to squeeze in all sorts of exposition and no one will really care that it is blatantly in there. “Why is that?” you might ask. Simple that changed the name to stakes, and they are so caught up in the scene and how it is escalating they are all that concerned if you are giving them valuable story information as long as it progresses the story and keeps them turning the page to find out what happens next.
Step Four: Make Your Conflict Support Your Page Count
Two characters saying “no” back and forth to each other for six pages may not be the most interesting scene. This is a common fault many beginner screenwriters make, I’ve done and it is an easy trap to fall into. The trap is that you think you are being clever but you are really just repeating the same thing over and over for your entire scene with no new information being added. The question you might ask yourself is, “does the conflict support the page count.” This is another learn from the master, Corey Mandel.
Try cutting your scene down to the bare bones, take out the extra fluff just to see how it plays at its core. If you feel it needs to be longer you may have to start building in escalations so that there is more conflict that progresses over the course of the scene to where the page count is supported by the proper amount of conflict. There really isn’t a set number for this. I’d argue that if you start throwing numbers around like there should be five escalations for every page, then you obviously haven’t read many scripts or watched many movies. The number is unique to each project.
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