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Direct Conflict

This chapter asks you to compose a scene that places two characters in a situation of direct conflict. The exercise encourages you to conceive a dramatic scene in terms of conflict. Taken in combination with the first exercise, it attempts to substitute for the notion of people sitting around talking the more dramatically functional notion of people doing things that are in conflict.

The idea that conflict is essential to drama is hardly a new one. Ferdinand Bruntiere expressed it at the turn of the century as an extension of the nineteenth-century dialectical theories of Friedrich Hegel. It has remained a tenet of dramatic criticism ever since. More importantly, the earliest dramatists instinctively knew that conflict leads to good drama. Antigone confronts Creon. King Lear’s daughters reject him.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw various attempts to produce drama without traditional conflict. Naturalistic “slice-of-life” drama was an attempt to study human beings in a scientific manner, to examine daily lives without resorting to contrived conflicts.

In the world of the 1990s, music videos, avant garde, and even more traditional theatrical presentations often juxtapose words, sounds, and visual images, which feature little conventional conflict, in an effort to induce emotional responses. In the popular musical Quilters, which deals with the lives of frontier women, most of the women confront personal or external obstacles rather than typical opposition figures. Similarly, Anna Deavere Smith, in her riveting one-woman shows Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities, and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, profiled numerous characters facing personal demons and obstacles even as the plays explored the extreme violence of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles riots. The 21st century is likely to see more “montage drama,” which will seek to elicit emotional reactions through the manipulation and layering of various aural and visual stimuli.

Despite the emergence of those and other “nonconflict” dramatic modes, conflict has been and remains such a fundamental ingredient of storytelling that a beginning playwright needs to confront conflict head on.

The desires of different characters come into conflict within plays as a whole and within individual scenes within those plays. Sometimes the conflict is psychological—for example, when Hamlet considers his choices or bandies with Polonius; sometimes it is physical—when Hamlet duels with Laertes. Sometimes the conflict is subtle—when Macbeth calculates with his wife; and sometimes it is overt—when Macbeth finally meets Macduff. Whatever its shape, conflict provides an important starting place for a beginning playwright.

The notion that conflict is essential to drama bothers some people. They deplore the idea that plays must be about people fighting or competing. A more inclusive—less “martial”—term would be obstacles, for characters who lack obstacles and challenges are intrinsically undramatic. If a woman wants to climb a mountain, and she does so with little effort and no difficulties, there is no dramatic interest. If, on the other hand, she must overcome debilitating illness, harsh weather, equipment failures, and exceptionally difficult terrain, those obstacles challenge her will to succeed and heighten the drama of her quest. Viewed in that context, conflict, as we will see, is just one form of the obstacles characters must face.

Obstacles And Conflict

Obstacles and conflicts do not arise out of nothing. They are intrinsically tied to two other components: intention and outcome. For obstacles and conflict to exist, there must be an intention or a goal. There must be a character who wants something and who undertakes action to achieve that intention. If someone or something prevents or hinders the immediate attainment of that goal, then conflict exists—just as it does between the woman mountain climber and her environment. Eventually some resolution to the conflict occurs, and that is the outcome.

The hindrance—the obstacle or the conflict—can arise in three ways. It can be internal, such as a physical or mental condition within the character. A boxer growing old is in conflict with the internal aging process of his own body as well as with his external opponent. A young artist trying to decide if she should risk making it or settle for a more secure future is battling internal psychological demons.

A second type of obstacle or conflict arises from circumstances outside the character. The mountaineer faces a climb up a sheer wall. A hiker lost in the desert faces heat, thirst, and vast distances. Both the mountain and the desert present challenging circumstances of the environment external to the character.

A third type of obstacle or conflict presents itself when the intention of one character is at odds with the intention of another character. The mountaineer wants to proceed, but her companion refuses. A young boy wants to join the army, but his mother opposes his desire. Good drama typically combines internal obstacles, external obstacles, and human conflicts. Lear, for example, battles the storm, his pride, and his approaching madness as well as his daughters’ ingratitude.

The exercise in this chapter concentrates on conflict between opposing parties because that is generally the most frequently used obstacle. Because such conflict deals with at least two people, it easily reveals contrasts of human nature. In fact, many instances of internal and circumstantial obstacles are elaborated in terms of conflicts with other characters. Hamlet’s indecision—an internal conflict—is conveyed not only in monologues, but through a series of conflicts with Ophelia, Polonius, Gertrude, and other characters. Willy Loman’s internal problems of guilt, aging, and lack of self-respect are dramatized through external conflicts with his wife and his sons.

Outcomes

The intention of a character meeting some form of resistance produces conflict. To those ingredients must be added another—outcome. There must be some resolution to the conflict. In most plays, taken as a whole, the main character either succeeds or fails. A character overcomes obstacles and the opposing forces or is overcome by them. Our mountaineer either makes it to the summit of her mountain or she does not.

There are, however, resolutions other than complete victory or total defeat. In No Exit the central characters will never achieve their goals but are destined to pursue them forever in a hellish eternal conflict. Likewise in Waiting for Godot the dream of the characters—the arrival of Godot—will never be realized even though the characters will continue their determined waiting. In both cases the situation is resolved or ended through the recognition by the audience—though not the characters—that the goal will prove eternally elusive.

Scenes of a play have the same characteristics of obstacles and conflict that whole plays have. Characters pursue different intentions, they come into conflict, and the conflict reaches an outcome. But whereas a scene is one continuous bit of action in a single location, a play may include numerous locations and times. So one scene from a larger work cannot show the entire story. A scene represents one incident in the larger whole, and, although it includes a part of the story, it also leaves important elements unresolved. The outcome of a scene—except the last scene of a play—is not the final resolution or outcome of the conflict. I should add, however, that some plays—even some rather lengthy plays—tell their whole story as one continuous action within a single scene.

Within a scene, the outcome proceeds in one of three ways: 1) one character wins and the other loses; 2) the characters compromise; or 3) the characters reinforce their disagreement. But the scene may be only one segment of a much larger conflict. Hence, Hamlet in one scene persuades the players to perform a certain play. He achieves his objective. But his victory is merely one part of a larger intention, and in later scenes he pursues other objectives within that larger intention.

In the recent popular movie Jerry Maguire, Jerry and Dorothy have an argument that nearly ends their marriage. The incident is resolved when they go their separate ways. The scene reinforces their conflict. Neither character, however, is pleased with that outcome, so the conflict is resumed and concluded in later scenes through a process of accommodation and reconciliation. It is important to remember that the action of a scene can be resolved or ended even though the basic conflict remains.

I have chosen the word outcome to indicate that a conflict of intentions may be ended or continued. Other writers have used other terms, and two of those terms—crisis and climax—have been used so frequently that they require comment. Unfortunately almost every author who has used those terms seems obliged to define them somewhat differently from anyone else. Everyday language uses crisis to indicate virtually any kind of conflict. Hence a person trying to make a decision (internal conflict), a person trying to climb over a wall (external circumstance), or a person battling another person (conflict of intentions) all present a scene or moment of crisis. Climax has generally been used to designate that point of the conflict when one side wins or loses decisively or when another form of resolution (such as a compromise or reconciliation) is reached.

The exercise for this chapter asks you to put two characters in a direct conflict. You will notice almost immediately that virtually any two characters can be placed in such a conflict situation. Test it yourself. Think of any two people or characters. Then devise some situation where they can come into conflict. There’s always a way.

To arrange people in conflict, think first of any two people. Next, think of a place or an environment where the two of them might come in contact with each other. For instance, if one of your people were a taxi driver, the location might be a taxi. In one were a lawyer, the location might be a courtroom or a law office. Alternatively, you might select a public place where any two people could come in contact with each other: an airport lounge, a baseball game, a lunch counter, or a street corner.

Once you have the two characters in the same place, you need to generate a conflict. That might have something to do with the occupation of one of the characters, such as the route the cab driver took or the lawyer’s legal strategy. In many cases conflicts involve objects. Material items have a way of focusing disagreements. Perhaps the passenger in the taxi wants to eat some particularly offensive or messy food in the car, or wants to transport an item that the driver doesn’t want in the vehicle.

Stage Terminology

In this exercise you will be working with stage terminology and stage directions for the first time. Virtually all plays describe a setting for the action, an environment where the scene takes places. George Bernard Shaw liked to write lengthy, entertaining descriptions that were practically comic essays. Earlier in this century Shaw’s style was much admired, but few writers possess Shaw’s intellect or his comic skills, and such discourses are now rare.

Shakespeare, of course, almost never described a setting except in the speeches of his characters. Some contemporary writers provide little more than Shakespeare. David Mamet’s entire description of the set for American Buffalo, which was an elaborate, realistic second-hand store with hundreds of items, read simply: “Don’s Resale Shop. A junk shop.”

Your own description of a setting should probably be somewhere between Shaw’s expansiveness and Mamet’s terseness. You need not describe the setting in great detail, but you should mention items that are needed for the action of the piece. You should also include selected elements that establish the proper mood or succinctly define the characters who inhabit the environment.

Stage directions are normally written for a proscenium stage configuration. A proscenium stage is one of the three kinds of formal stages. In an arena, or theater-in-the-round, the audience surrounds the action on all four sides. A thrust stage juts out into the audience. The audience is arranged on three sides of the stage, and the fourth side usually includes a scenic background. In the proscenium arrangement the audience faces the stage from one direction and a curtain or proscenium arch hides all or part of the stage and the stage mechanism from the audience.

Theatrical convention, which means normal theatrical usage, calls for stage descriptions to be written for a proscenium stage. In a proscenium configuration the part of the stage closest to the audience is called downstage, while the part farthest from the audience is upstage. Those terms are holdovers from a time when stages were typically sloped, or raked, so the audience could see better. In most theaters now the audience area is sloped and the stage is flat, but the conventional terminology remains.

The side-to-side stage nomenclature is defined in terms of the performers rather than the viewers. Therefore stage right is actually the viewer’s left and vice-versa. Your description of the setting should reflect those stage conventions.

The stage setting illustrated shows a room with a fireplace on the right wall. A door is up right. There are windows on the upstage wall, a bookcase up left and a second door downstage left. The drawing shows a couch at center stage with a chair to the left of the couch. Remember you only need to specify what is important. It may be enough to say simply: “The living room of a modern house.” Edward Albee identified the setting of his Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? simply as: “The living room of a home on the campus of a small New England college.”

As you work on the exercise in this chapter, you will find that characters begin to emerge in greater detail as they react within a specific environment, speaking to and struggling with other characters. That’s a natural development, and the next chapter will deal more specifically with characters and various ways in which characters evolve.

In this same exercise you will be writing dialogue for the first time. A later chapter will go into more detail about dialogue, but for now it is more important for you to visualize and activate a conflict. Let what the characters say derive from what they want and from the kind of people they are.

At some point you may consider writing a screenplay instead of a play. There are many similarities in the two forms. Both plays and screenplays dramatize action. They both use conflict, character, and dialogue in similar ways.

There are, however, important differences. Although plays can certainly jump from place to place, they usually concentrate on one place and one set of characters for longer periods of time than do screenplays. I believe that a great part of the process of dramatic writing is learning to work with characters within particular situations, and I think you learn more about such fundamentals as character, dialogue, action, and conflict by working within the confines of a stage format because it forces you to explore relationships in greater depth.

Screenplays also rely far more than plays on the juxtaposition of visual images, particularly close-up visual images. A camera can show you a dripping faucet, followed by a gun lying on the floor, followed by drops of blood, and finally a corpse. Then it can cut to a man picking his teeth in a car. That kind of flowing imagery makes screenplays more like short stories or novels than plays.

Plays and screenplays employ very different writing formats, but that problem is easily overcome by looking at a book about screenwriting. If at some point you wish to tackle screenplays, I’ve listed several instructive books in the bibliography, but for the exercises in this book I would encourage you to stick with a play format. Except for a few instances where I have used a condensed format for a few lines, all examples in this book employ accepted playscript format, and you should get into the habit of using it, too.

And now let’s proceed to the second exercise.

•  •  • Exercise 2.1

Example

Example

Evaluation

There are several instructive questions you might ask about these two scenes. First, do we know what the conflict is? Can we tell what each character’s objective is? In other words, are the objectives clear and in opposition to each other? How is the conflict resolved?

Second, what do we discover about the characters through this conflict? Do we care about the characters? Do you want one character or the other to win?

Third, is there action in the scene? Can you state in a phrase what we see the characters doing?

Fourth, is the setting significant to the scene?

And finally, does the dialogue sound like people actually talking? Is the language appropriate for the characters in the scene? Do the characters talk differently?

On its surface, the first scene is merely an argument between two college boys about rock bands, but in an odd way it evolves into something more than that. The setting is an innocuous dorm room, and both boys appear comfortable there. Obviously the props of the amp and guitar play a prominent role.

The scene seems purely a verbal argument until Brad tries to prove his point to Tim, using the guitar and amp as his evidence. That action significantly raises the stakes, and at that moment the scene gains dramatic interest and begins to involve us in these boys and their argument. Will he really throw the amp out the window? What will happen if he does? Will that prove a point to Tim? Brad’s decision to toss the amp even affects Tim, who mildly tries to talk him out of it. The climax to the scene, of course, is the amp tossing. While it doesn’t prove which rock band is better, it does demonstrate the depth of Brad’s commitment. It becomes his own symbolic rebellion against material possessions and his own vain attempt at an artistic statement of sorts. The resolution—that is, the boys’ reaction to the event—seems rather anticlimactic and unsatisfying, as though neither the author nor the characters knew quite how to bring this startling event back into context.

Most of the boys’ conversation displays a realistic edge. Notice, however, how the dialogue, when they are just verbally sparring, tends to come out in rather large chunks. But when Brad starts to do something, the dialogue exhibits a faster, give-and-take quality.

The place has little impact on the gentle second scene, which features very little overt action, but a large psychological movement. Although on one level “absolutely nothing” happens, Meg has a bone to pick, and she initiates the conflict. In fact, both characters are upset about the actions of the other at a party the previous night. Both want reassurance that they are loved, one of the most basic of human desires, and it is that common need that interests us in the characters. Their language, which flows nicely back and forth in a youthful manner, skirts the issue until Meg confronts it. Interestingly, rather than address her own concerns directly, she opens the door by insinuating a problem for Jason: “you’re angry about last night.” Finally, Jason directly accuses Meg of leaving him stranded, and Meg retaliates by expressing her jealousy over Jessica. Eventually, Meg gets her reassurance, but Jason is left wondering about Meg’s intentions. The final tableau reveals a nice reversal of the opening as Meg reads contentedly while Jason fidgets and worries.

As they created conflict, both writers also began to generate characters. Now that you’ve seen how any two characters can come into direct conflict, let’s take a more detailed look at exactly how characters develop.