Have you ever been at the movies, watching TV, or reading a book and suddenly find yourself holding your breath, hoping—willing—to know what happens and suddenly, it breaks to a commercial/other characters? Suddenly, you don’t care what’s right in front of you, you want to be back to where you were held on the edge of your seat. This is an element of writing that propels drama, in fact, it defines it. It’s called conflict.
In the beginning of the year I met with my writing coach, Sean Hoade, and he told me the single biggest thing that I needed to work on was conflict; of course there are a lot of principles that were important, but they all build up and boil down to conflict. So, I spent the summer devoted to fully comprehending the concept of conflict, a summer well spent. Once I finally grasped the significance and use of conflict I understood the need for it, and I started to see it everywhere.
So first of all, what is conflict? As silly as that question may be, it is actually crucial, vital even, for dramatic writing. Conflict is when things go wrong. Whether it’s as huge as being trapped in a jeep being attacked by a T-Rex, or as insignificant as a couple arguing about buying whole milk instead of low-fat, conflict happens when characters face things that make them uncomfortable. Conflict makes the characters choose what they consider is important and how far their willing to go to get what they want. It’s the defining moment that the audience sees the true nature of who the character really is. For instance, if a character was in a room with other people and the room was on fire, their choice on how to handle it will tell the audience more about that character than anything they could say about themselves. Do they run for the exit? Do they stop to help the guy trapped in the office? Do they push the pregnant woman out of the way? Do they make for the fire extinguisher? Do they laugh maniacally while spraying the boss’s desk with any flammable substance that they find? It’s when characters are thrown into the furnace, that the audience truly sees what their made of.
The only reason a book or movie will ever hold someones attention, and be enjoyable, is when the story presents a character, they present a goal, they present a problem to that goal, then they show how the character will solve that problem. It’s a simple concept, but it is the entire reason people love the story; they don’t care that their’s a problem, they care how the character will solve it. Sometimes, the character can’t solve their problem, and that leads to more problems, increasing the tension and stopping the audience from caring about anything but what happens in the next scene. If a story doesn’t have that, than the audience might as well take a nap. If everything goes great for the characters, if they don’t ever face anything that has a chance of beating them, it’ll be a story but it won’t be a drama—which means it’s a story not worth telling.
So, conflicts come in all kinds of sizes, and they have different roles in a drama. Of course there’s the main conflict: Protagonist wants outcome A, Antagonist wants outcome B, and they constantly struggle against each other to get what they want. This is the big conflict, the thing that makes the entire story worthwhile, and is the whole reason why the audience showed up in the first place. When telling some a friend about a story, this was the thing that they’ll most want to convey to convince them that the story was worth the trouble of reading or watching: “This farm kid needs to fight against a super powerful empire that is oppressing the galaxy with a weapon that can destroy whole planets;” “These guys need to destroy a ring so that a super evil bad guy won’t take over the world;” “These two people write letters anonymously and love each other, but they hate each other in real life, and when the man figures it out he has to learn how to make her not hate him;” and it goes on and on.
There are also little conflicts, these happen when characters that are, or were, on the same side disagree on how or why their going to do things. This is done so that the audience can see the differing qualities the characters have, and it can be anything: world views, political opinions, religious beliefs, food and diet choices, personality traits, and life goals. In the end it doesn’t matter what the difference is, what matters is that the characters are working together, but their own individual goals, or the method to reach that goal, is being blocked by their companion. This is especially done to spice up scenes. To increase the drama out of a scene that would ordinarily be pretty boring, and once your aware of it, all those times you were watching a tv show and think to yourself: “Huh, that doesn’t make sense. Didn’t that character have exactly the opposite opinion three weeks ago?” will make sense. Congratulations, your not crazy, it’s simply an easy way to manufacture conflict and tension, it may not always make sense but it does—hopefully—make drama.
Of course there’s more conflicts than just between characters—however, those are generally the most interesting. A lot of conflicts can also be internal or environmental conflicts. An inner conflict is when a character struggles with decisions or acts that they have made. For instance, say there is a character that believes all life is precious, but then is forced to choose between killing someone or somebody else dying. If written well, no matter which decision they make they will undoubtedly struggle with how their world beliefs were questioned and if they had done the right thing. Another character may not have had such problems, in fact some may celebrate killing someone, so these are very character specific conflicts. If a character faces a conflict of outside forces beyond any characters control, I suppose the best thing to call that is environmental conflict. Like The Day After Tomorrow, where the characters had to fight to survive an extreme spontaneous ice age. Now an environmental conflict can be the big driving force for the story, but it doesn’t have to be, what it is for is to put pressure on the characters and force them to decide what matters, and how are they going to get it.
That is, in very short amount of time, a summery of dramatic conflict. It may not seem complex now, after reading it in about 1,000 words, but it was no less a concept I devoted my summer to fully comprehending. Now that I feel like I mostly got a handle on it, I’m seeking out ways to use it in every way I can in story telling. That said, the characters from Free Radical, are going to face a lot more struggle in their lives; but that’s a good thing. If everything was all sunshine and rainbows, who’d ever want to hear about it?
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Did you enjoy hearing about the art of dramatic writing? I had a lot of fun sharing it with you. As always, if you want to read more posts like this one, leave a mention in the comments--otherwise you never know when I may strike again! Also, please remember to like, share, and subscribe; and if you like them, be sure to tell your friends about these blogs!
Image Source: http://www.rudebaguette.com/2014/01/27/will-netflixs-launch-france-received-open-arms-arms/