There are all kinds of stories: funny ones, moving ones, the kind of that can awaken something in you that you'd long thought dead. They can be small character studies, sweeping epics, simple, or layered with meaning. However, for all the variety, all the contrast, there is one thing that all stories must have.
Conflict.
We need it. We crave it. All stories are built on it. There's just one problem. Most conflict is fucking boring. Have you ever been sitting around, watching your favorite show, and then realized within about five minutes not only where the plot is going, but why you're going to end up groaning for the next hour? It's because the conflict sucks. There are a lot of reasons this happens and not just in television, though TV does tend to be the worst offender.
The reason for this is that most conflict is false. Most conflict is about shit that just. Doesn't. Matter. When you've got to talk yourself into why the stakes are high, they're not. False conflict is all around us, infesting our fiction like rats.
I want to be perfectly clear, false conflict is not the same as fantastic conflict. Trekking into Mordor so that the One Ring can be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom: this is a fantastic conflict, but the emotions it fuels are real. The struggles and choices the characters make would affect most real people in exactly the same way, given the circumstances.
False conflict is the kind of conflict where, if the characters behaved with even a modicum of maturity for, like, thirty seconds, the plot wouldn't happen. This can occur by many means.
1) The characters could become very stubborn about an issue that it is positively ridiculous for them to be stubborn about. Sure, people can have sore spots or even a petty issue here and there, but there are some things where, if anyone really feels that strongly about it, the character just becomes irritating or altogether less likable. "But we need them to disagree! We need our conflict!" You need a different conflict that isn't predicated on bullshit.
2) Miscommunication. Oh, the comedy of errors, a classic! To some people. To me, they rarely come off well. Maybe it's the product of being raised in a household where miscommunication led to substance abuse problems and loads of family therapy, but I don't find it very amusing. In fact, I don't appreciate misunderstandings in a story unless the entire point of them is "misunderstandings are dangerous." To me, miscommunication is the stuff of tragedy, because what is tragedy ultimately but really sad shit that could have been avoided?
If Carol gets mad at Frank for something she thought he said, rather than something he actually did say, then the conflict is essentially a lie. It's cheap. It's empty-calorie conflict: no nutritional value. Now, if Carol gets mad at Frank for something he said but didn't mean, that's another story, because whether or not he meant something, he still made the choice to say it, thus Carol is angry with Frank's choices. What you have is a clash of beliefs or ideologies. Carol's either mad at what Frank is expressing or just the fact that he would say such a thing, whether he meant it or not. Either way, her anger is based on something real, not a bad game of telephone.
Some writers try to handwave this by having the offender try to explain to the misinformed and fail. For instance, Frank tries to explain that he never said what Carol's friend told her he said, but then Carol refuses to listen to his explanation or even hear him out at all. Or she's being so irrational about the whole thing,Frank decides he doesn't owe her any explanations, and refrains from clearing things up on principle. And the truth is cockblocked, sustaining the false conflict.
Right about this time, you want to throw your remote at the TV, and with good reason. Because on some level, no matter if it's a sitcom, no matter how wacky or comical the characters, at the end of the day, we want to invest in what's going on, and we can't if we don't respect the characters. I challenge any of you to respect someone who's acting like a tool.
To prove that I'm capable of seeing the good as well as the bad, I'd like to offer an example of a show that more often than not gets it right. Tonight on Parenthood, the character of Haddie was talking with her boyfriend, Alex, who is nineteen, about going to her junior prom. He didn't look thrilled with the idea. Now, since this exchange occurred within the first five or so minutes of the episode, I immediately clenched, but rather than waste an hour dragging out this fairly stupid problem, they dealt with it right then and there. Rather than have Alex dig in his heels about how stupid he thinks prom is and how he really, really doesn't want to go, he expresses the point once, and upon Haddie explaining how much she's looking forward to it, decides that a few hours of bad punch and overplayed music, while not his first choice for a Saturday night, is hardly worth taking a stand against.
This frees us up for the actual plot, Haddie's parents worrying about her possibly having sex on prom night, especially given how much older Alex is. Double-interesting because Haddie is a level-headed girl who's not the type to be talked into anything she doesn't want to do, and her parents genuinely like Alex. This now creates two legitimate conflicts, Haddie's parents dealing with the possibility of her becoming sexually active and, what for me is the far more interesting and on-theme dilemma, her mother trying to figure out how to deal with this situation and how to be a good parent without her daughter hating her, resenting her, or otherwise finding her lame... if that's even possible.
Mmm... that was tasty. False conflict, not so much.
So, to all my fellow writers out there, a word of advice and caution. Sometimes our characters are petty people who make petty choices. Sometimes the stay of execution arrives too late. Sometimes Romeo drinks the poison. Sometimes people don't articulate everything as well as they probably could, and it creates a huge clusterfuck of fail. That's life. But life is not fiction, so be careful how you pick and choose when to use false conflict, because, sure, you might keep your story going. People might stick with it to see how it ends, but they'll probably be so pissed off at either you or the characters, that they won't be coming back for the next one.
Do us all a favor. Don't be a lazy fuck. Real conflict. Write it.
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