Ian Dawson's Blog - Posts Tagged "games-of-thrones"
Writing Tip of the Week: A Conversation About Conflict – Part Two
Last time, we explored three aspects of conflict and how conflict impacts a narrative. Today, we’ll explore three more reasons conflict is essential to any story and ways to utilize it. Let’s continue.
Conflict Keeps Our Attention
Have you ever watched a movie or read a story where nothing interesting happens? Your eyes glaze over, you check your phone to see how long you have before the movie ends, or you close the book and find something else to read.
If there’s conflict, you’re more likely to draw a reader’s or viewer’s attention and keep it as things escalate during the scene or chapter. You want to keep them hooked and focused so they keep reading or watching to see how things are resolved.
In Captain America: Civil War, many conflicts are established early in the story. As these conflicts unfold, a series of related conflicts keeps us watching and curious about how things will ultimately play out by the end of the story: the final battle between Iron Man, Captain America, and the Winter Soldier.
Conflict Can Be Small or Large
Conflict can be as small as two characters disagreeing about where to spend the holidays, or as big as trying to stop Thanos from collecting all six Infinity Stones. The critical thing to remember is that opposing views or forces should lead to a conflict between characters in a story.
Whatever the size of the conflict, both sides have to feel strongly enough about their positions that it leads them to fight over it.
On All in the Family, Archie Bunker is in constant conflict with his son-in-law, Mike, about politics and social issues. This is a minor conflict when compared to a film like Dirty Harry, where the hunt is on to stop a serial killer who’s murdering people at random in San Francisco.
The conflict should be reasonable within the world of the story, and should be scaled up or down accordingly. The conflict in an episode of Frasier will be much smaller than in an episode of Game of Thrones, but there should still be enough conflict between the opposing viewpoints of the characters to keep things interesting.
Next Time…
We’re just getting started! More conflict-based posts are on the way, all throughout the month of May!
Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!
Conflict Keeps Our Attention
Have you ever watched a movie or read a story where nothing interesting happens? Your eyes glaze over, you check your phone to see how long you have before the movie ends, or you close the book and find something else to read.
If there’s conflict, you’re more likely to draw a reader’s or viewer’s attention and keep it as things escalate during the scene or chapter. You want to keep them hooked and focused so they keep reading or watching to see how things are resolved.
In Captain America: Civil War, many conflicts are established early in the story. As these conflicts unfold, a series of related conflicts keeps us watching and curious about how things will ultimately play out by the end of the story: the final battle between Iron Man, Captain America, and the Winter Soldier.
Conflict Can Be Small or Large
Conflict can be as small as two characters disagreeing about where to spend the holidays, or as big as trying to stop Thanos from collecting all six Infinity Stones. The critical thing to remember is that opposing views or forces should lead to a conflict between characters in a story.
Whatever the size of the conflict, both sides have to feel strongly enough about their positions that it leads them to fight over it.
On All in the Family, Archie Bunker is in constant conflict with his son-in-law, Mike, about politics and social issues. This is a minor conflict when compared to a film like Dirty Harry, where the hunt is on to stop a serial killer who’s murdering people at random in San Francisco.
The conflict should be reasonable within the world of the story, and should be scaled up or down accordingly. The conflict in an episode of Frasier will be much smaller than in an episode of Game of Thrones, but there should still be enough conflict between the opposing viewpoints of the characters to keep things interesting.
Next Time…
We’re just getting started! More conflict-based posts are on the way, all throughout the month of May!
Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!
