Today’s lesson was produced by scriptwriter (and former Lecturer in Scriptwriting) Matthew White. He can be found on IMDb or twitter, and his latest movie is Paul Dood’s Deadly Lunchbreak, starring Katherine Parkinson, Tom Meetan, Jonny Vegas and Kriss Marshall.
Check out this passage from a script, and see if you recognise which film it’s from:
John wakes up – his clothes are neatly arranged on the end of the bed. He gets dressed, enjoys a steaming mug of coffee with his muesli. He kisses MICHAEL goodbye, climbs into his car and drives to work.
Trick question: it’s not from a film, because it’s terrible. It’s poorly written, it has no rhythm or movement or life.
And, most importantly, there’s no conflict.
Conflict is your story engine: you can’t tell a story without drama, and you can’t have drama without conflict. Here’s my very simplified description of how drama works:
A character or group of characters wants and/or needs something (goal). A character or thing (antagonist) gets in their way. There’s a struggle (conflict), rising to a crescendo (climax) and an emotionally powerful resolution (catharsis).
Simple!
As a bonus, here are some handy tips on how to make conflict your friend:
1) Keep conflict central to your planning
A powerful way to express your theme is to do so through conflict. For example: I once had an advisory session with Barbara Crampton, one of the Gods of Horror. And she told how to deal with theme in horror: when someone lives according to your message, they live. When they don’t, they die.
2) Forget good guy/bad guy
The world has moved on from this binary conflict. Think about the most successful “bad guys” of the last 30 years in film, TV, theatre and literature. They may be monstrous, they may do some horrible things, but in their own mind they are convinced that they are the good guy. Kurt Vonneghut never wrote a villain in his life – and he didn’t do too badly. Consider a book and movie like The Martian. Where’s the bad guy? There’s fundamental conflict between the characters, but it’s caused by brilliant people struggling to solve an almost impossible problem.
3) Conflict can – and should – take many forms
As Robert McKee famously said, conflict can be as simple as two people needing to get past each other to reach the other side of the room. He also encourages writers to build conflict upon conflict, and try, at the very least, to cover the following:
- Internal conflict: the battle between opposing aspects of the protagonist’s own psyche. It’s often the most fundamental battle of the story, and what your third act is really about. Or to put in another way:
- Chief Brody has to overcome his fear of the water before he can kill the shark.
- Carol Danvers has to overcome her disdain for the Skrulls and unleash her true self if she wants to save the day.
- Arthur Fleck has to channel his rage before he can fight back against a world that keeps stamping on him.
- Personal conflict: the battle between the protagonist and their lovers, friends, family. In a heist or quest movie, your team is a great source of conflict. If a hero needs to save her loved ones, make sure that the loved ones don’t WANT saving. And don’t even think about writing romance or drama without having a wealth of conflict stored up here.
- Everything else! The shark. The rules of society in Victorian England. The ticking clock – and the bomb sitting underneath it. This is the stuff that hooks your audience in, gives them excitement, makes them hold their breath and propels them into that third act where our protagnist has to resolve all the other problems!
[Different genres of story will focus more on different areas of conflict, but if you can deliver on all three, you’re going to give us powerful stories and reduce the risk of repetition.]
4) There’s always room for one more
In other words – don’t be nice to your characters. Think about the last time a story left you breathless. Was it because the hero was having an easy time? Or did things just keep getting worse?
As the old saying goes: get your character up a tree, throw some rocks at them, show them getting down from the tree. To which I would add: whilst you are throwing rocks at them, put some barbed wire around the tree. Tell them that their wife hates them. Steal their dog. And set fire to the tree.
Quick tasks
Look at the passage at the top of the page and try to imagine five places where you could introduce some conflict.
OR
Use my ‘how drama works’ formula below in order to write a logline or short summary of your own movie idea.
A character or group of characters wants and/or needs something (goal). A character or thing (antagonist) gets in their way. There’s a struggle (conflict), rising to a crescendo (climax) and an emotionally powerful resolution (catharsis).
If you’d like me to look at how successful your attempt is, please do feel free to email me (Adam, in lieu of Matthew): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.
I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.
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No wonder Bird Box has been one of the most viewed movies in the world during lockdown! This scif-fi/horror film sees humankind struggling to survive when sight of the ‘monster’ outside causes insanity and a suicide pandemic. You can only get about with your eyes covered, and you must never open the front door when someone or something knocks! Don’t let it in! It’ll infect you! A pregnant Sandra Bullock(!) works with a groups of desperate strangers (including John Malkovich), and she gets to raise two young children in ‘the new normal’. But her group dies one by one, until she has to go outside with her kids to try and get them to some sort of safety. They have to deal with all manner of hazard and marauder!
