6 Types of Story Conflict Every Screenwriter Should Know

there's one thing all of your favorite movies books and television shows have in common and that is character and story conflict so by definitions conflict is just the struggle between two opposing forces it's just that simple and as simple as that might sound you'd be surprised how many writers often forget this crucial ingredient when they're telling their story we even see it in a lot of popular movies at least the ones that aren't that good anyway today we're going to go over some examples of what good conflict looks like the different types and several ways you can create it but before we dive into what each type of conflict means i want to make something clear first when you think of conflict don't think that it always needs to be something that's completely over the top in order to be effective for example it doesn't have to be some massive fist fight in public doesn't have to be some huge nuclear explosion and it doesn't have to be some ridiculous attempt to overthrow the government just keep in mind that you always want to provide some type of purpose with your conflict and you want it to be attributed to your character's development in some kind of way now let's talk about what types of conflict you can use to move your story forward first off character versus self and then we have character versus character character versus society character versus supernatural character versus technology and character versus nature you may hear the word character be interchangeable with the word man like man versus self or man versus nature now you'll notice that each type of conflict i just named falls into two categories and that's either internal or external conflict let's talk about internal conflict first so internal conflict is when your character struggles for something within themselves it can be a belief or some type of desire in the movie fight club the main character played by ed norton struggles with a life of extreme boredom everything in his life is so routine it's literally driving him insane he has been on cruise control for so long in his life he doesn't even know how to go after his main need which is living his life with purpose and being fulfilled of course that all changes with the inciting incident when he meets another character named tyler durden played by brad pitt now the external conflict is something or someone standing in the way of your character's needs or goals this is going to be some form of external force that creates tension throughout the story an easy example for this could be how marty mcfly in the movie back to the future is constantly bumping heads with the high school bully named biff marty has a pretty straightforward goal after a time traveling experiment goes away he ends up in the 1950s inadvertently screws up his fate by being there and his goal is to make sure his mom and dad fall in love otherwise he will assist to exist the constant external conflict and tension rises as biff constantly punks marty's dad and physically harasses his mom in high school to the point where his dad decides to not even ask marty's mother out on a date that's a big problem if they don't have a date they can't fall in love if they don't fall in love then marty doesn't get born so the examples we just covered when discussing internal and external conflict covers two of the six types of conflict we're covering today they fall into our previous categories of character verse itself and character versus character next we're going to talk about character versus society now keep in mind that societies are made up of people so in essence this one is sort of like character versus characters in a way a good example of character versus society would be if your protagonist was fighting against his own government or if they were on trial for a crime they didn't commit essentially your protagonist is going against the grain and against the status quo remember that movie the fugitive harrison 4 played dr richard kimball a man who escapes from the law in an attempt to find his wife's killer and clear his own name there's a massive manhunt going on to bring him in and being led by u.s marshals hell bent on his capture now richard kimball is by all means a law-abiding citizen but that same law that was put in place by society to protect him could get him a life sentence or the death penalty in this particular scenario so he takes matters into his own hands some additional examples would be movies like v for vendetta the hunger games john q starring denzel washington all three of these movies are good examples of where the protagonist takes matters into their own hands and goes toe-to-toe with society in some kind of way next up is man vs supernatural and this is something that we typically find in horror and sci-fi movies a good example of this would be the movie the shining by stanley kubrick based on the stephen king novel now this story is based on a character named jack torrance an aspiring writer who visits an isolated historic hotel called the overlook hotel with his wife and son who was gifted with the psychic ability called the shining during their visit a bunch of unexplained events take place and jack loses his damn mind now there's a difference in the execution between the novel and the movie in the novel the protagonist is in the overlook hotel and it's the hotel itself that's haunted there's ghosts and other haunted things that are apparent to anyone with a set of eyeballs but in the movie we are under the impression that all the creepy things happening is just a part of his descent into madness overall both story versions fit into the man vs supernatural category because jack's struggle is with the hotel and unexplained events as well as his sanity when we get into talking about things like character versus technology this is the type of conflict that we see in movies like the terminator the movie her minority report christine irobot x machina chappie robocop or a movie like interstellar a few things to keep in mind when using man vs technology conflict make sure you actually understand the technology that you're writing about educate yourself on the technology that actually exists and what may be in the works there's nothing worse than a writer who's telling a story about technology that they don't fully understand ask yourself how this technology fits into the lives of your character in the movie irobot will smith plays a technophobic cop who investigates a crime that might have been committed by a robot that premise alone gives us an idea of the conflict that lies ahead between those two once they come in contact with each other and finally character versus nature when we explore character vs nature we find that our protagonists often face elements of nature that are completely out of their control the protagonist either struggles to solve survive or overcome that conflict in order to gain control back in their life some good examples of this are movies like the day after tomorrow castaway 127 hours the life of pie the gray or the martian starring matt damon overall if you're having trouble writing your story or you're stuck in some type of way make sure that the conflict between your characters and their goals are compelling you can't move a story forward effectively without conflict regardless of the genre always remember that conflict is the soul of your story without conflict your characters are just going to be going through everyday life where only the most uninteresting events are being highlighted in story in the next video we'll talk about different ways you can create conflict until then keep writing in the meantime make sure you check the links in the description and get on the mailing list for more content like this [Music] peace [Music] you

Channel: Jay Carver

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Keywords: filmmaking, screenplays, indie, films, filmmaker, screenplay, screenwriting, dialogue, script writing for beginners, how to write a screenplay, jay carver, j-style films, how to make a movie, indie filmmaking, screenwriter, story conflict, six types of story conflict

Id: Q08shwWPPjE

Length: 8min 28sec (508 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021