Writing the Scene

Craft: Elevating Scene Conflict in Action

Let's take a look at the three fundamental tools, just sort of quickly analyze the Want-Do-

Gets of the characters.

Want-Do-Get

So, Brett wants to not go into the supermarket. Agnes wants to go into the supermarket to

get her medication. And the motivation for this is Brett doesn't want to die. Agnes doesn't care

about that, but these are two mutually exclusive positions. Agnes wants to go into the

supermarket, and she's kind of just a trailblazer who just doesn't really care. And Brett, he really

doesn't want to go into the supermarket because he's afraid of the zombies.

Funnel

So, looking at the second tool, the funnel shape, in the midpoint, we can clearly see that

the moment she gets out of the car. The moment she says, she's going to go get her thyroid

medication and she leaves him, that's probably the midpoint of the scene. And from this

moment, everything starts to accelerate in momentum. The zombies zero in on her, and Brett is

running after her, everything culminates into the single most important line, which is, "If you
can't use those muscles to kill zombies. What are you even doing with your life?" So that's, in

this hypothetical movie, a character thing. We don't know. But it distills down to the turning

line that this is the emotional crux of the scene.

I would say that if we were gonna analyze the hypothetical movie that doesn't exist, Brett

seems to have a lot of fear in life and he's obsessed with bodybuilding, but he doesn't really

want to fight zombies with them. And Agnes, who doesn't have physical strength, is brave, I

guess. But, the funnel—we start broad. We establish who, what, when, where, why and how.

We get to a moment he says, "Gran, it's not safe." She leaves. Things start to accelerate. That's

the midpoint. And then we end at the most important line. So that's the funnel shape, this

scene seems to do that.

Contrast Lens

The third tool, obviously, is create contrast between your characters using voice and belief.

So, these are two very different characters. We have an old character who's physically weak,

but has a huge personality. And we have a much younger character who is physically strong,

but obviously has a lot of fear and they speak differently. Like, Brett's a yeller, Agnes is a, you

know, quiet old lady who sort of says things in a proper way. She's condescending. He's kind of

confused and direct. There's obviously at least a 20 to 30 IQ point difference between Brett

and Agnes. That's also probably in the word choice.

Summary

So, looking at the three things, we have two Want-Do-Gets that are in conflict. Agnes wants

to go into the supermarket to get her thyroid medication. Brett does not want her to do that.

He clearly doesn't want to go into the supermarket with all of the zombies. Those are two

mutually exclusive situations. The Do is that Agnes goes. Brett's Do is to try and stop her. The

stakes of what happens if Brett doesn't get what he wants, that his grandma might die. He

might die. If Agnes doesn't get what she wants—well, we have a little less information on that,

but very clearly like it's her thyroid medication matters a lot to her. Maybe it's because she's

obsessed with the routine in her life and a zombie apocalypse isn't gonna stop her. Who

knows.

This is a scene, again, for a movie that doesn't exist. But fundamentally we have the Want,

Do, Gets. We have the funnel shape with the midpoint. And we have contrast between the

core characters in the scene, at least in their voice and belief and also sort of insubstantial

things like their age and gender and everything. Hopefully that's helpful.