Swain-How to Build Conflict [ Scenes]

How do you build a story?

With scene.

With sequel.

Two basic units. That’s all. Master their construction and use and you’ve won half the battle. At least.

To that end, you need to learn five things:

1. How to plan a scene.
2. How to plan a sequel.
3. How to write a scene.
4. How to write a sequel.
5. How to mesh the two together.

The scene in skeleton

A scene is a unit of conflict lived through by character and reader.

To repeat: A scene is a unit of conflict, of struggle, lived through by character and reader. It’s a blow-by-blow account of somebody’s time-unified effort to attain an immediate goal despite face-to-face opposition.

What are the functions of scene?

1. a. To provide interest.
2. b. To move your story forward.

How does a scene provide interest?

It pits your focal character against opposition. In so doing, it raises a question to intrigue your reader: Will this character win or won’t he?

It changes your character’s situation; and while change doesn’t always constitute progress, progress always involves change.

Scene structure is as simple as a-b-c:

1. a. Goal.
2. b. Conflict.
3. c. Disaster.

Enter goal: Ever and always, in scene, John must want something.

In case classification systems intrigue you, “something” always falls into one of three categories:

(1) Possession of something . . . a girl, a job, a jewel; you name it.

(2) Relief from something . . . blackmail, domination, fear.

(3) Revenge for something . . . a slight, a loss, betrayal.

Here, this time, we’ll be arbitrary: John wants Suzy.

But what does he propose to do about it?

Ideally, this decision should focus on a target so explicit that you might photograph your hero performing the act to which he aspires. If you can’t, the goal isn’t yet specific and concrete enough. “To win love,” as a goal, is weak. “To get Letitia into bed”? Stronger!

Enter conflict.

Conflict is another name for opposition: a man trying to walk through a locked door. It’s irresistible force meeting immovable object . . . two entities striving to attain mutually incompatible goals. For one to win, the other must lose.

Readers like conflict. It creates and heightens tensions in them, as we’ll see later. Thus, it enables them to vent repressed feelings of aggression and hostility vicariously, without damage to themselves or others.

Debate-Rehashing

Maybe the two of them can debate at greater length?

No. The endless rehashing of a single issue soon grows dreary.

Is there a remedy?

Yes: Bring in additional external difficulties related to the situation. Offer new developments: more hindrances, more obstacles, more complications.

In a word, make it harder for your character to win his goal. Treat him rough. Throw roadblocks at him.

Hook

Disaster is a hook.

A hook is a device for catching, holding, sustaining, or pulling anything—in this case, a reader.

To this end, disaster (as we use the term) offers a logical yet unanticipated development that throws your focal character for a loss. It puts him behind the eight-ball but completely—“Sudden and extraordinary misfortune; a calamity,” in the words of Mr. Webster.

Such a development upsets your reader as well as your hero. Instantly, it raises a new question to hold him fast on the tenter-hooks of suspense: What oh what will the focal character do now?

Disaster and the Question

(3) “But must a scene always end in disaster?”

It must raise an intriguing question for the future—a question designed to keep your reader reading.

To that end, no better device has ever been conceived than the confrontation of your focal character with disaster. That’s the reason the old movie serials always ended with a cliff-hanger—Pearl White tied to the railroad tracks and the five-fifteen roaring round the curve.

Once you’ve gained sufficient skill, however, you can make the disaster potential and not actual. Thus, George might not throw John out, literally. Maybe he just hints darkly at trouble to come, all the more menacing because it remains not quite specific.

Similarly, you can reverse the disaster, as it were. Instead of ending your scene on a down-beat note, with the focal character sucked into a bottomless whirlpool of trouble, you play the other side of the record and set him up to ride for a fall.

For example, you might let him launch some diabolically clever scheme to do in his foes.

This gives you some devastating question “hooks” to pull along your audience: Are things really going to work out this well, this easily, for Hero? Will Villain fall for such a stunt? Or, has he some trick up his sleeve with which to turn the tables?

(I must add that though this “reversed disaster” system sounds fine in the abstract, it’s harder to make work than appears at first glance.

For one thing, it takes the initiative away from your focal character and gives it to the opposition. This forces your hero to wait more or less passively to see how said opposition is going to react. And that’s a dangerous situation, always, where you the writer are concerned.)

In any event, you do have a choice as to how to end a scene. So take whatever path you prefer, so long as you conclude with your story pointed into the future: some issue raised that will keep your reader turning pages, ever on the edge of his chair as he wonders just what’s going to happen now!

Remember just one thing: As a tool, the scene is designed to make the most of conflict. To that end, it organizes conflict elements. It telescopes them. It intensifies them.

Without such a tool, even your best material may come forth diffuse and devoid of impact.

Scene Conflict Errors

Orientation	(1) Orientation is muddled. Your reader’s got to know where he stands. That means he needs a character to serve as compass. Therefore, even if your story’s focal character isn’t on stage in a given scene, that scene still must have a focal character. Pick this character by whatever standard you choose; but do pick him! Then, hold him in the spotlight. See that motivating stimuli motivate and stimulate him. Make him react to them. Whereupon, your reader can use him as a yardstick with which to measure and evaluate what happens.
Diffuse Goal	(2) The focal character’s goal is weak and/or diffuse. That is, it’s not sufficiently specific, concrete, and explicit. The remedy? (a) Keep the goal a short-range proposition. Make it something that the focal character can logically strive to achieve in a relatively limited, time-unified, face-to-face encounter. (b) Be ruthless in forcing yourself to reduce said goal to a single, photographable act. A goal, remember, is the target your character shoots for in order to unify a particular scene. Therefore, keep it dominant—the center of attention, like the duck at which you aim as the flock passes overhead. Other targets may present themselves to your character in the course of a scene; granted.—Here’s a girl to flirt with him. There, a chance to pick up a sorely-needed dollar. Temporarily, such may attract him. But you must hold them to a subordinate level or your scene will veer off like a car in a skid.
Weak Character	3) The character himself is weak. “Why doesn’t he quit?” is the key phrase here. If enough is at stake for him, he’ll fight!
Urgency	4) The scene lacks urgency. What is urgency? Time pressure. That means, there must be some reason for John to act to attain his goal right now. Always, force him to take immediate action. If he can postpone his efforts without loss; if he can date Suzy as well next week or next month or next year, then urgency will vanish. On the other hand, suppose that John learns that the day after the prom Suzy leaves on a European tour. It’s a graduation present from her Aunt Hephzibah. George, a favored suitor, will accompany the party. John envisions a jet-speed romance between the two, complete with marriage at the nearest American consulate. Result: time pressure on John to line up Suzy now.—Plus a feeling of urgency that won’t stop, for your reader.
Diffuse Opposition	(5) The opposition is diffuse. A swarm of anopheles mosquitoes can very well prove more dangerous than a Bengal tiger. But the big cat offers unified and obvious menace, and that’s why a good many more people come down with malaria than are eaten by tigers. It’s also the reason why unified opposition is more useful in building reader interest than is fragmented opposition. Small, annoying oppositions wear out your focal character rather than overwhelming him. Like guerrilla fighters, they hack away at him without giving him a chance to join battle. But heroism ordinarily lies in striking back. Your character needs some one central figure he can defeat and thus resolve his problem. This is where a villain comes in handy. Broad social forces may, in the last analysis, be at the root of your hero’s troubles. But it helps if you bring them to life in the person of one individual, if only so that John has someone to punch in the nose at the climax!
Weak Opposition	(6) The opposition is weak. The strength of your villain is the strength of your story. Writers who lack confidence in their focal characters sometimes try to solve the problem by making villains weak. Result: weak scenes. Remedy: stronger villains. Under stress, your hero may prove doughtier than you think!
Trivial, Fragmentary	7) The scene is fragmentary or trivial. Another name for this headache is lack of adequate external development. The fact that someone spills a drink on your hero’s freshly-pressed pants doesn’t offer meat enough to build a scene, unless further complications ensue.
Monotony	(8) The scene is monotonous. Same problem; same solution. The key symptom here is a tendency on the part of your characters to go over and over the same ground, haggling and rehashing the same issues endlessly. What to do about it? (a) Throw in more external development. Especially, throw in more unanticipated twists. If the wife insists on calling the telephone number she found in her husband’s wallet, and which he insists he knows nothing about, let one of the wife’s old flames answer. Then the happy couple at least will have something fresh to argue over! (b) Give the characters themselves more diversity. Extra facets and modifying traits will keep them from growing so dull and predictable.
Weak Disaster	(9) The disaster isn’t disastrous enough. Again, don’t be afraid to give your hero trouble. The future should always hinge on each scene’s outcome—that is, its disaster. It should have potentially disastrous consequences for your character. If it lacks such, who cares about it?
Indigeneity	(10) The disaster isn’t indigenous to the scene. A disaster should be unanticipated yet logical. That means, it should grow out of your materials. Every writer uses Acts of God now and then, in order to get his hero deeper into trouble. But as a general rule, it’s wise to maintain some sort of relationship between your key story people and a scene’s disaster. Thus, rival George Garvey provides John’s disaster in our sample scene. A belligerently drunken bum might have caused trouble just as well. But he’d have had little relationship to the story beyond mere complication; and readers draw more satisfaction from motivated action.

The sequel in skeleton

A sequel is a unit of transition that links two scenes, like the coupler between two railroad cars. It sets forth your focal character’s reaction to the scene just completed, and provides him with motivation for the scene next to come.

What are the functions of sequel?

1. a. To translate disaster into goal.
2. b. To telescope reality.
3. c. To control tempo.

Continuity and Indigeneity

But sooner or later, every battle ends: on a hook, a question, a disaster.

Eagerly, then, your reader reads on. He seeks that happy moment when your story-forces once again come into conflict.

Here, you must be very, very wary. For conflict for conflict’s sake isn’t enough.

Why not?

Because it’s meaningless.

That is, it bears no clear-cut cause-effect relationship to what’s gone before. It’s not the result of, or reaction to, preceding struggles. When a stranger “just happens” to slug your character in a barroom brawl, it’s conflict without cause within the limits of your story. As such, it’s also an evasion of the long-range issues.

In other words, your reader must have logic as well as interest . . . plausibility in addition to excitement

Without such, the very tension Reader seeks is likely to be lost. Fiction is built on a suspension of disbelief. If your story people behave irrationally or without cause, normal discernment rises to shatter the illusion you’re trying to create. Your reader insists that there be a reason for each new battle; that conflict be motivated; that it make sense for your character to strive toward a particular new goal.

And Arc

This is where sequel comes in. Implicitly and/or explicitly, it reveals how your focal character chooses his new course of action. It reassures your reader that this is a sensible person, worthy of acceptance.

To that end, sequel traces Character’s chain of logic; his pattern of rationalization.

Thus, sequel is aftermath—the state of affairs and state of mind that shapes your character’s behavior after disaster has knocked him down.

Sequel as Topic

What’s the subject of sequel?

It’s your character’s reaction to his plight. It’s preoccupation with the problem the preceding scene posed.

It says, in effect, “I’ve been defeated, humiliated, overwhelmed by a disaster. What do I do now?”

With that preoccupation riding him, Character works out an answer. Then he pinpoints it in a decision to attack a new goal.

Thus, sequel has a 1-2-3 structure:

(1) Reaction.

(2) Dilemma.

(3) Decision.

Reaction to New Goal

What should he do? That’s the question.

It’s also Character’s dilemma: a situation involving choice between equally unsatisfactory alternatives.

Deftly or clumsily, blithely or bitterly, our man works out an answer. Decision emerges: Hell try to set up a rematch in Minneapolis.

It’s a new goal. Our character’s efforts to attain it will give rise to further conflict; another scene to catch and hold a reader.

Logically, plausibly, sequel has brought it into being.

The Reader Brooding

So, John goes off to lick his wounded ego and to brood: Should he appeal to Suzy’s father? To Suzy herself? To Aunt Hephzibah?

Ridiculous thoughts, all of them. Even John can see it. Yet he’s got to do something—not only because he wants Suzy himself, but because he’s convinced that George is interested in her for purely mercenary reasons.

Notice what this does for your reader:

First-off, he gets a chance to suffer and worry with and about John.

Second, he considers the possibilities that he himself might come up with. Seeing the weakness in each, he realizes that John can’t take those roads.

Third, he sees there’s a reason John can’t quit.

In other words, here in the sequel we’ve introduced additional elements to logic and plausibility to hook your reader tighter to the story.

Incidents and Happenings

Perhaps we even add an incident or two, in which John asks friends for advice, to no avail.

(An incident is a sort of abortive scene, in which your character attempts to reach a goal. But he meets with no resistance, no conflict. When a boy seeks to kiss a girl who’s equally eager to kiss him, you have an incident.)

Or maybe there are happenings along the way, in which John meets acquaintances. But because he’s preoccupied with his problem, he fails to respond to their greetings.

(A happening brings people together. But it’s non-dramatic, because no goal or conflict is involved.)

Following : Reaction . . . dilemma . . . decision. All

(1) Do establish time, place, circumstance, and viewpoint at the very start of each and every scene. Confusion infuriates your reader. To avoid it, keep him properly informed. Especially is this necessary where changes in situation are concerned: “The sky to the east was gray and the street lights had gone out before Greer left the apartment.” “The Three Brothers was a squat adobe building, huddled in a wild crook of the hills half a mile beyond the town.” “It was too dark to see the man who shook him awake.” “The Murderer never knew quite when it was he made that final, awful, inevitable decision to kill.”

(2) Do demonstrate quickly that some character has a scene goal. To this end, let that somebody show purpose—preferably, urgent purpose. Make him act as if he had a goal . . . as if he were out to do something specific and important right now: “He clung to the shadows, studying the place for the space of a cigarette.” “She came in the night, long after he’d given her up.” “The lawyer called at nine-forty. He said he represented Daniel O’Connor, and that in the interests of justice, culture, and peace on earth, it was vital that he see me right away.” Ideally, make your character’s goal clear-cut and explicit from the beginning (a) Interest rides with purpose. (b) Goal often represents only the start of scene. (3) Do build to a curtain line. Some scenes have punch and some don’t.- The ones that do have been written so that the disaster comes suddenly and in unanticipated form—a shock, focused needle-sharp in a curtain line

(1) Don’t write too small.

2) Don’t go into flashback. Flashback is somebody remembering in the present what happened in the past. It brings your story, your present action, to a dead halt for the duration. (a) It’s essentially unrealistic. (reverie) (b) It strains reader patience badly.-tension goes to zero

(3) Don’t accidentally summarize. (a) “He told her that—” (b) He hunted for the elevator without success.” (c) Time passed.” Then skip to where things start to happen. The thing to bear in mind is that nothing ever really comes alive in summary. Life is lived moment by moment, in Technicolor detail. To capture it on paper, you have to break behavior down into precise and pertinent fragments of motivation and response.

Writing the sequel

When you sit down to write a sequel, you’re faced with problems in three major areas:

Compression.-emotional bridges

The trick is to find the single feature that captures the essence of what you want to say. You need the lone item which, brought into close-up, speaks volumes about your character’s state of mind.

Transition.

To that end, you spotlight your focal character’s dominant feeling: Is it depression? Rage? Passion? Fear?

Emphasize that feeling immediately before the lapse in time or space or action or whatever begins . . . and then again immediately after said lapse ends.

In other words, set up your material so that the chosen feeling is the element the “before” and “after” situations have in common.

Credibility.

Credibility? It’s the element you need most when you set about translating disaster into goal.

To achieve it:

• Set your focal character against a backdrop of realistic detail.
• Push your focal character in the right direction.
• Let your reader see the focal character’s chain of logic.

Integration

a. You control story pacing by the way you proportion scene to sequel.

As a general rule, big scenes equal big interest., Long sequels, in turn, tend to indicate strong plausibility

(1) If your story tends to drag or grow boring, strengthen and enlarge the scenes. Build up the conflict.

(2) If an air of improbability pervades your masterpiece, lengthen your sequels. Follow your character step by step, in detail, as he moves logically from disaster to decision.

b. Scenes dominate story development.

Any story, diagrammed, resembles a mountain range—a succession of peaks and valleys. You spotlight the peaks, the big dramatic moments, by presenting them as scenes.

• How big you build a scene depends to a considerable degree on its placement in the story.
• You can control scene placement, to some degree, by manipulating sequel.Partly, this means that you can expand or contract sequel so that scenes fall farther apart or closer together.

Flexibility is all-important.

Each story offers different problems. A mechanical approach won’t solve them. You must stand ready to adapt your methods to your materials.

Thus, officially, a sequel involves reaction, dilemma, and decision.

Yet if a man is drowning, do you need to state explicitly that he decides to try to keep his head above the surface?

at first glance scene often seems to flow directly into sequel. Yet experience soon will teach you that often you build impact if you allow a time-break,