Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Conflict by Stuart Spencer

    Uploaded by

    Nicholas Lee
    40 views9 pages

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    40 views9 pages

    Conflict by Stuart Spencer

    Uploaded by

    Nicholas Lee

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 9
    18 BuIDEB0OK [on different occasions. Both have failed Is no sure answer, only the one you feel ible with at the time. CONFLICT Up inill now, we've been discussing the frst basic tool of Bttucture: action. Want, need, objective, motivation, and sub. fext are all aspects of that basic tool, a subcategory of it Let's move on now to the second ba . mene sic took: conflict, ob- WHAT Is CONFLICT? IN MY college course I once had a student, Ken, who wrote 4 scene that he insisted wasn’t very good. The scene was set in the 19208. The characters Aila (cight) and her sister Marie (sixteen) speak rather quietly throughout. Aila wants Marie to come outside and play hop- scotch. Marie allows that she'd like to, but it’s more important that Aila stay inside and do her homework. We already know from earlier scenes that Aila has a debilitating and incurable lung disease. Marie's action to keep Aila inside doing her homework is really an effort to protect her health, indeed her life. ‘The rest of the class loved the scene. So did I. It was a simple and moving rendering of these girls’ lives. The action 56 : 77 THE PLAYWHIOWT® GUIDEBOOK was cleat, as was the de i h jeeper motivation, which came out ele: ‘gantly and subtly. Fr sal Ken agreed that the scene used all th 1¢ used all these tools, and a owed that he liked how they were employed. aye I asked Ken why, then, didn’t he wee *t he like what he had “No conflict,” he said. “But there is,” I said. “The scene is full of it.” No it isnt. They're just sitting there being ‘other all the time.” a “They are being nice to each y ice to each other” I returned, “whi only makes the conflict that much more poignant.” 7 Ken continued to protest. “But I want it to be more exciting. Conflict should be about fighting and confrontation and, Be know, people going at each other!” hat, of course, is the layman's % is the layman’s definition of confliet— ag confronting, yelling. And while it’s certainly one way conflict can work, and a good one, it’s no cere one, it’s not the essence of what ‘Conflict is that thing (or person) which prevents a char- i from getting what he or she wants. (We could call this, iramatic conflict” but here we'll simy in here we'll simplify it to just “con- Conflict is a structural device, lik levice, like action. It is (or shoul be) operating all the time, whether the audier ‘ os eae nce is aware of it No Sometimes it's apparent to them: characters get louder ee Sometimes it's not so apparent but is nevertheless ical factor in drawing us into the scene. Ken's lovely scene about Aila and Marie was like this. Too often conflict is used to mean a vague state of ten- sion, anxiety, anger, or some other heightened emotion in the 58 THE PLAYWRIGHT'S GUIDEBOOK . This is partly because those are the times when the perceives conflict I's also because, asin the case of 1n look like conflict. But they're not, motion. ‘emotions cat ‘is not emotion anymore than action is ¢ ‘Conflict is that which prevents a character from getting hie or she wants. jn my writing career, was working on a short one-act called Ticket tha I couldn't seem to get right. I thought | id all the components I needed for a good play. The two ‘eharacters, a brother and sister named Jack and Marla, had ‘very strong feelings about ‘each other. The resentment they felt ‘went back fifteen years to a time when they were both ‘teenagers and Jack had persuaded his parents to send him off to a fancy private school so he ‘could study music. Marla was forced to remain at home and was never able to pursue her ion to go to law school. In the play, Jack has come to visit Ms re she still lives. He wants to take her back to, ey a amt arla in their old hometown whe New York with him where he can show her the turn, has always longed to go to New York. His offer could be the fulfillment of that dream, even though she remains deeply bitter toward him. “The dramatic problem of the play, as I saw it, was the tremendous resentment on the part of Marla—this, and the shock and anger Jack experiences when he discovers for the first rime how bitter she really i. In the first, incomplete draft I had written, once these feelings were revealed, the two siblings let each other have it ‘with both barrels. Anger! Resentment! Recrimination! Vol- canic emotional eruptions! 59 4 way to get past these emotions, there being volcanic page afer page. It HT could write them this way with no end in sight, wd frankly ic was getting mighty dull, Ta How could all that conflict seem so boring to me? Because it wasn't conflict at all, i Te was name-calling, Nor dramatic conflict for sure, It was also an a ve also an argument of "ts, because they certainly disagreed over what had hap- pened fifteen years ago in their youth. Bur it was not conflict. Why? Because th ? Because they could both have what they wanted, which was to go to New York. He waned her to go to New York, and she wanted to go to New York She was angry about it, to be sure. Angry that he hadn’t asked her before. Angry that he was living in New York at all nee she had become a suburban housewife. Angry that she ‘new she couldn't stay once she got there. But underneath this anger, she wanted the same thing he wanted: York. When buth characters want the same thi conflict. Conflict is that which What he or she wants. to go to New ing, there is no Prevents a character from getting EXTERNAL CONFLICT An inanimate object can, in theory, tied in a chair with a rope (a favori adventure movie), Provide conflict. If Joe is te scenario of the action/ then it is the rope that is Joe's confli a ’s conflict. } While the playwright should be aware of this and use inani. 60 objects when it’s appropriate, there’s generally not much ity here for the playwright to do her work. Far more fertile ground is found in other characters. In ‘when one character wants one thing and another charac- ‘wants something incompatible with this, we have a more ing kind of conflict than that between a man and a =. We have what we call “external conflict.” In other words, Joe’s action can be, to Mike, a conflict; land Mike’s action can be a conflict for Joe. External conflict fan be thought of as two actions of two different characters— ‘when the two actions face off and prevent one character from getting what he wants. In Act One, Scene One of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Rass, Levene, a formerly great but now down-on-his-luck real estate salesman, pleads with Williamson, his boss, to give him the good leads. A lead is a name, but not just any name. It's the name of someone whom the company has reason to be- lieve is a hot prospect—somebody who has indicated they may want to buy real estate, Therefore, a lead is valuable. It can mean the difference between success and failure. And Levene very much wants to be successful again, He begs Williamson for those leads. He insists other peo- ple waste them; he explains away his recent failures; he pleads seniority. His action is quite clear Williamson refuses. He has an answer to each of Levene’s reasons. He will not give Levene the good leads. Period. Williamson presents Levene with a conflict. He prevents Levene from getting what he wants. Specifically, he presents an external conflict—which is a conflict that occurs between people. 6 BUIDEBOOK. to the Joe and Mike paradigm for another ex. ample. ‘Suppose that our parched friend Joe still wants his glass of water. And let’s ‘Suppose that he sits alone in a room, tied to a chair that is bolted into the floor. A glass of water sits on the table in front of him, but he can’t reach it because the rope re- Strains him. His action remains th the water. His conflict is the roy him from attaining what he war the same as before: wanting pe. The rope is what prevents nts. Lets face it. This isn’t as intriguing as Mamet’ scene ‘The potential for interesting dialogue between a man and ‘rope is limited. But it does illustrate in simple, concrete terms the idea of external confli . Keep that image in your head, Be- cause now, as good students of Aristotle, we'te going to break down external conflict further, into two types, Direct External Conflict, {call it direct external confi because the conllct occurs d- rectly between two characters who wi fant to possess or control the same object. Let’ imagine Joe inthe same room, with the same action, and the same glass of water on the table before him, Mike is Present, and he's also thirsty, so he also w: ants the glass of wa- ter Joe wants the water; Mike wants the water. There's only one object (the glass of water) and they both want it. Here, Mike is Joe's conflict; Joe is Mike's, ‘The frst scene of Glengarry is also a good example of di- 62 ” That's an exter: THE PLaYWRicHT's cuIDEBoOK i conflict. Levene wants the leads; Williamson also ‘The scenario varies from the paradigm only so far won already has possession of the leads and there- Nr need to attain them. He only needs to retain pos- ‘of them by denying them to Levene. External Conflict \ Bin ‘external conflict also occurs between two characters. lle the action ofthe fist characteris directed toward the the action of the second is directed elsewhere. This \d of conflict can be illustrated by again using Joe and Mike. Joe still wants the glass of water, but Mike has no interest in it, What Mike wants is to kill Joe, and he’s very busy trying to do so. This keeps Joe sufficiently occupied in defending hhimself that he is unable even to get to the glass of water in order to drink it. ' Again, we have conflict. Joe cannot get what he wants; Mike cannot get what he wants either. Mike is Joe's ee he is the one preventing Joe from getting his glass of water. And Joe is Mike’s conflict, but for a different reason: Mike ‘wants to kill Joe, while Joe is doing his best to prevent that. Hence, indirect conflict. It’s this type of conflict which often involves positive feel- ings rather than negative. We have just seen a negative exam- ; here is a positive example. pile of indirect conflict; wit Joe still wants to drink the glass of water. Now, th eh Mike wants to kiss Joe. He's in love with Joe. Joe is attractet to Mike, but he already has a lover and wants to be faithful, and so no kissing. Besides, he's still thirsty and wants that elu- i sive glass of water. i 6 ‘ence sometimes has a Frc ite neon te bopper a ‘ithe me oe ey doo ge How dull a play it would be if this were so, a To the contrary, though, Shakespeare has constructed a Scene with the lovers so that the conflict between th Take, for example, leave, to escape and save tus persuade him thay wae ample of indirect conflict, oe Be the morning scene. Romeo wants to his life Juliet wants him to stay and What matters, as always, is noe the fact th being applied or even that we agree on which tools, but th, something is ha Ati hing is happening here that works beautifully, a 64 And in cither case, Shakespeare then provides a delicious and reverses the flow of action and conflict. In the sec- half of the scene, Romeo now decides he can afford to ‘awhile after all, while Juliet urges him to escape with his There is more external conflict (whether you think of it direct or indirect) in that scene than in many shouting ches of lesser plays, INTERNAL CONFLICT Internal conflict occurs often in novels, where the conflict may be entirely within a character. Virginia Woolf's 7b the Light- 4ouse is one of the supreme examples of this. Indeed, in Te the Lighthouse, the action itself is mostly internal. The characters think about what they want, contemplate it, mull it over, but almost never stare it out loud to another character. In turn, any conflict they may encounter comes not from the other characters, who after all are silent, but from themselves, with ‘whom they are carrying on an internal monologue. As a novel, To the Lighthouse has the advantage | discussed in the Introduction: the ability of prose to plumb the inner workings of the mind. Action and conflict rage throughout Woolf's book, though they remain silent and invisible to the external world, Plays, of course, exist only in the external world, and therein lies the crucial distinction. If a playwright were to adapt To the Lighthouse to the stage, he would be faced with the central problem of how to bring the conflict out into the open and speak it aloud so that it could be seen and heard. 6s avIDEB 00K the fourth wall and allow their internal thoughts in the form 0 the audience (> p. 258, 'm Talking to Many great playwrights have chosen this avenue (Shake- ‘Speare springs to mind), but when they have done so, it was with great selectivity and restraint. The proportion of solilo- uy to dialogue even in such a contemplative play as Hamlet is tiny. Playwrights who insist on writing vast sections of their plays in the form of a monologue to the audience often find the audience wondering why they didn't visit the bookstore in- stead of the box offic. The playwright may also choose to reveal internal con- flict by incorporating it into the character's words and behav- ‘or and interactions with the other characters. This is the method 1 prefer because it is the method most suited to the theater. The theater isa place of words and deeds, of language and spectacle, a place where, in the words of Peter Brook, the “invisible is made visible.” In his autobiography, Elia Kazan describes the experience of his wife, Molly, as she wrote plays. Molly was apparently a brilliant woman, full of passion, and quite knowledgeable about the craft of theater. She wrote plays that were emo- tional, intelligent, and well-structured, but strangely unmov- ing. Kazan wondered why. Molly, he knew, was a forceful, strong-willed person and her plays reflected this: her main characters were relentless in the pursuit of their action, Nothing got in their way, Far from being a fault, Kazan mused, this ought to be a strength in her writing—a quality that we admire in all the great plays. Still, Molly's plays never seemed to work, which led to realize a deeper, more complex truth about drama, ‘most fascinating character often is not the one who is able to pursue his action relentlessly. The most interesting eters are often ambivalent. The character does have an tion, yes. And he does pursue it. But there is something else: jing in him complicates that pursuit. This complication Iakes the character more interesting because it gives fuller di ‘mension to his dramatic journey. ‘The complication that causes the ambivalence is a second faction that the character himself pursues, one that is in oppo- mn to the first. In a basic scene, when a first character has an action and a second character has an action that opposes it, ‘we call it conflict. When the same character has both these ac- tions, we call it internal conflict. Internal conflict is two actions within one's self that give tise to a conflict. Ifa character has an internal conflict, along with the ex: ternal ones we've already talked about, we in the audience are in even greater doubt as to the outcome of the play. Things are more complex, We perceive a struggle that is both greater and deeper than when we only see a conflict between two separate characters. Greater because there is, simply, more conflict in the scene. Deeper because a struggle that is within one’s own conscience (or soul or mind or what have you) is perhaps the ‘most profound struggle that we humans know of. I's not necessary for every character, or for every play, of course, There are plenty of great characters who don’t seem to have much if any internal conflict. But if you, like Molly Kazan, find that there’s an ineffable something missing from 67 WWNIONT's CUIDEBOOK 4 look at your main character to see if an ‘conflict might not fan the flames. Let's use Oedipus the King as an example once more. Aris: totle admired the purity (what he called the unity) of Oedi- pus’ action. Everything in Oedipus relates very clearly to the title character’s pursuit ofthe central action: I want to stop the plague. Or it could be phrased in its more concrete form: I Want to find out who killed King Laius. (Although these might sound like two different actions, remember our discussion of vertically integrated actions in Part One. That's what these are, Integrated actions are intimately dependent on each other and do not lead to internal conflict.) Everything Oedipus does is a pursuit of that objective— whether we call it “stop the plague” or “find the murderer.” Correct? Well, yes. And no. Here is where the intricacy, the sub- tlety of internal conflice comes in. Oedipus has an ever-growing fear that this pursuit may lead to disaster. That fear (an emotion) also rises out of his generally noble, responsible character. And his fear leads to a second action, which contradicts the first. This action might be phrased “to avoid the truth.” Hide it, bury it, ignore it, deny it, Which is precisely what he does through much of the play—alongside his more overt action. It's like a shadow ac- tion, parallel to the first, popping up occasionally only to be ‘quashed by his first, more driving action. He keeps saying how badly he wants the unvarnished truth—bur the facts are staring him in the face all the while, ‘growing more and more insistent. When he quite deliberately puts them aside as though they meant nothing, this is his sec- ond action. Together with the first action, it creates an internal 68 Twant to know the truth, yet at the same time I don’ Its part of what makes the play so fascinating. If Oedipus no fear (and a consequent action to deny the reality which from that fear), he would have no courage—the former ‘essential to the latter. And if he were not a courageously Aoble man, we would not feel nearly the same about him. It is hhis fear that gives us a chance to sympathize with him. We are “Involved in the fear, we understand i. Ie gives him dimensio Tt helps to make him what we used to call in high school a “well-rounded character.” If he had no fear, had nothing at stake (> Chapter 5), then his role could easily be reduced to that of an automaton, plodding through the play like a robot mouthing the words. Think of other great plays and interesting characters: Blanche DuBois, for instance. Her action is often described as, “wanting a safe haven,” or as “wanting magic, not reality,” or “wanting to be pure again.” I would agree with any of these, and they all more o less ft together. They're expressions of, the same basic need in het But she also wants to sleep with Stanley. She's clearly aroused by him and feels the need, the compulsion, even, t0 hhave sex with him. This could lead to disaster, and it does when he finaly rapes her. It's the last action in the world she ought to be pursuing if she really, unambivalently wanted her safe haven. But she doesn’t wane it unambivalenty. There’. something else in opposition to that first need. And it's one of the things that makes the play great. This drum: to want two things simultaneously. I can hear you say- ing, “How the heck am I supposed to do that?” ight sound like an impossible contradiction, a conun- 69 ‘easy. There's not a lot But its quite doable. 40 put the concept of ambivalence into dra- mutie terms. That's why its better to cal it internal conflict_- because onstage, that’s what we really want, Not ambivalence, strictly speaking, but two separate and distinct actions thar come into confice with each other, both actions being within fone person. As any actor will tell you, he can play only one action at a time. Therefore, don’ try to show a character literally strug: Bling with his two conflicting actions simultaneously. We may do this in real life, is true. And when we do we're usually frozen in place, unable to make a move in any direction, We usually call it depression. Your character will have the same Problem, bue the audience will probably perceive it as passiv- ity or stasis. And they will almost certainly not be interested in it. Instead, create the illusion of real-life internal conflict by allowing the character to pursue one action for a beat, then another in the next beat (> Chapter 7, if you don't already know what a beat is). The audience will be given the impres- sion of simaltaneity, but you will actually be writing only one lear action at atime for your actor to play. For an illustration of how this might work, les go back to Joe and Mike. Lets suppose that Joe wants his glass of wa- ter for a simple, obvious reason: he's thirsty. But Mike is also thirsty and has complete, unquestioned control over the glass. But let’ also suppose that Joe is angry at Mike—not be.

    You might also like