1.5: Creating a Conflict

Conflict is the primary ingredient of drama and without it drama ceases to exist. Conflict is when two opposing forces collide. David and Goliath, Harry Potter and Voldemort, You and Your Future are all examples of opposing forces and these forces meet within the battlefield of story. Stories were invented to help us make sense of the world and find our place in it, and the world is full of conflict. Stories are how our ancestors taught the children in the tribe how to hunt, gather, be part of the community and find their way in life. The power of story still resonates with us today. We all have goals and needs and must navigate obstacles in order to achieve them. In fact you cannot exist without encountering conflict constantly throughout your day. In stories, the greater the conflict and the more impossible the obstacle, the more legendary the hero's journey is to its audience.

Conflict is the element that holds the audience’s attention throughout the play. The audience came to see someone deal with a problem. The conflict should build continuously throughout the play and create urgency with the characters involved. As an audience member you get to escape your reality and problems and witness another person's struggle in order to gain perspective on your current or future situations. It is for this reason that you must make sure that your conflict builds in intensity and reaches a satisfying conclusion.

As soon as the conflict is resolved your audience will begin disengaging from your story and reentering their own lives. This is often a problem for new writers who create a conflict and then quickly resolve it thus terminating the audience's attention. It is possible to layer obstacles so that the audience stays engaged but you need to have a primary conflict for your story. Next you can have a series of smaller conflicts or obstacles that build tension as the story progresses, however you MUST introduce the next obstacle prior to the conclusion of the current obstacle. For example, if your main character needs to get to Las Vegas. Once they get to Las Vegas the audience feels that they have now completed the journey and will be furious if you introduce the new obstacle of getting to Denver once the characters have landed. Instead it is much more effective to have the characters discover while in flight that the venue they are traveling to or person they are pursuing has transferred to Denver, and they must adjust their plans. You have to stay ahead of your audience, if your audience knows what your characters are going to do, before they do it, your audience will be bored and you will lose them.

Conflict can take many forms, but is primarily broken into two main categories and each has several subcategories. The categories are as follows:

Internal

(Human vs. Self)

Mental

Emotional/Spiritual

Physical

External

(Human vs. Something Outside of Themselves)

Human Vs. Human

Human Vs. Nature

Human Vs. Supernatural

Human Vs. Society

Human Vs. Science

Process

List all of the types of conflict on the board. Vote as a group on the primary conflict of the story and then if it is external choose and internal conflict that the Hero must also overcome in order to gain the skill necessary to overcome the primary external conflict. Make sure discuss ideas as a group as to where each idea can go dramatically.