Film 210: Week 7

In this lesson, you'll learn:

• How to establish character patterns that make conflict meaningful
• The difference between setup wants and central conflict wants
• What makes obstacles effective and substantial
• How outcomes resolve through pattern transformation
• Why want never truly ends

Let’s begin!

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Revisiting Want and Obstacle

You’ve already learned about wants, obstacles, and outcomes in the previous lesson. Now, we will explore a little deeper, looking at how these elements work in different phases of your story.

Conflict = want + obstacle. A character wants something, but something stands in their way. If either element is missing, you have no conflict, which means no story.

Remember that wanting never ends. Even when characters achieve their goals or fail completely, their desire persists in some form. This is why characters enter your story already wanting something—they’ve been wanting things long before your story begins.

Wants and obstacles don’t just appear once in your story. They operate throughout—in the setup, central conflict, and even how the story resolves.

Keeping Conflict Going

Want and obstacle must be equally matched to create ongoing struggle. Equal matching can involve any traits that create meaningful competition: funny versus serious, angry versus kind, terrifying versus lucky and skilled. The key is preventing one side from steamrolling the other.

Even if one side wins a round, as long as the other side can pick themselves up and keep the conflict going, that’s what matters. Both sides need to be willing to keep fighting—they can’t walk away from it, or else you don’t have a story.

Visual Requirements for Film

In film, we need physical wants and obstacles—something we can visually understand. This doesn’t mean we can’t have inner wants and obstacles, but we must communicate them through what characters do or don’t do. Their true intentions are revealed through their actions and responses. (We’ll explore this more in a future lesson.)

Setup: Want and Obstacle in the Opening

Setup introduces us to characters and their world as it currently exists. Characters want something but haven’t quite figured out what or how to solve it. This creates a routine, maybe even a rut, that needs to be broken. Within this world, characters are caught in patterns around their wants.

Characters Caught in Patterns

A setup is a character caught in a pattern. The goal they seek is too easy (comfort and success), too hard (struggle and failure), or somewhere in between.

Too easy: They’ve achieved what they wanted and settled into comfort or success. They’re in a safe place but may have grown complacent.

Too hard: They’ve failed because they didn’t have the resources to overcome their obstacle, so they’re stuck in a holding pattern—still wanting but never able to achieve it.

In between: Some middle ground where they’re neither fully successful nor completely failed but stuck nonetheless.

Often at the setup, it feels like the resolution of something. They’ve got what they wanted and are now comfortable, or they failed and gave up trying. Hence, the rut.

Establishing the Pattern

This is done by establishing the pattern. A pattern is the routine, expectation, or way of doing things in your character’s world.

The routine doesn’t have to be small or ordinary—it can fit into whatever lifestyle your character lives. For a spy, high-speed chases might be routine. For a superhero, stopping robberies might be their pattern. The key is establishing what’s normal for that character in their world.

Show the pattern clearly, then disrupt it with the central problem. By showing us what’s normal first, we understand when something breaks that normalcy.

What the Setup Reveals

What you establish in the opening shows their place of safety, what they may value, what’s at stake, and what they fear losing.

What you establish in the opening is a good indication of what the character might value, what they want to return to, or what they’re trying to escape. A character may wish to change but not want to lose what they have.

What we establish here will show us the change (or lack of change) they experience throughout the story.

When the Story Begins

The story launches when something disrupts the established routine, shaking them out of their pattern and forcing them into the central problem.

Establish the pattern efficiently, then break it. Show your character’s world clearly, then let the disruption launch the central conflict.

Remember, setup doesn’t take much time—it’s typically the first 10-12% of your story. In a short script of 2-3 pages, this means only a few lines to establish the pattern before disrupting it.

Central Conflict: Want and Obstacle at the Heart of the Story

The central conflict is the main action of your story—what most of the narrative is about and what drives it forward from beginning to end. It disrupts the character’s established pattern and forces them out of their rut.

The disruption shifts them from the setup want/obstacle dynamic to the central conflict want/obstacle that drives the main narrative.

For example, in Die Hard, John McClane’s setup involves reconciling with his troubled marriage, but his central conflict involves defeating the terrorists who take over the building—almost 75-85% of what we’re watching unfold.

These wants can be connected—the central conflict might help or hinder achieving the setup want—or they can be completely separate. But the central conflict want becomes the driving force of your narrative.

Finding Your Central Conflict

The central conflict is usually what attracted you to the story in the first place. If you’re writing and the story isn’t working, you can return to the central conflict and change it to something that interests you more. Follow the energy of what attracts you to the story.

Does Central Conflict Need to Be Big?

A common misconception comes with the word conflict. We imagine stories filled with fighting and yelling. But that doesn’t always happen.

For example, in the film A Ghost Story, much of the story is about a ghost watching as the living world moves on without him. There are no fights, and there are no story fireworks.

What we actually mean by conflict is an underlying tension between what a character wants and something standing in their way:

• The dis-ease of entering a room full of strangers
• The expectation that something bad might happen
• The uncertainty of a first kiss

Each of these holds expectations; characters want something, and there is tension about whether they will achieve it.

A story doesn’t need explosions and car chases. It simply requires us to connect with characters who want something.

Outcome: How Want and Obstacle Resolve

The interplay of want and obstacle ultimately leads to an outcome. Our characters must be willing to reach or exhaust the limits of their abilities and resources to get what they want.

The outcome must be shown, not hidden. Some stories try to avoid definitive endings, but unless there’s a thematic reason, this often feels like the writer is unable to make the hard choice about where their character ends up.

But remember that wanting never ends. Even if the character achieves their goal or fails to do so, their desire persists in some form.

Types of Outcomes

Stories only end when characters get or don’t get what they want. These can vary widely but generally fall into a few categories:

Success: They get what they want (but this doesn’t stop them from wanting: “Behind mountains are more mountains.”)

Failure: They exhaust all options or reach the limits of their abilities and resources.

Mixed Results: The character gets one thing but not another.

• Partial victory or a win at some cost
• A Pyrrhic Victory: where they achieve their want, but at a significant cost, it’s essentially a failure
• Sacrifice: a character gives up something they once wanted to achieve something that means more to them

Change: The character decides to alter what they seek. This choice can show growth and change in positive or negative ways.

Ambiguous Ending: The audience is uncertain whether the character achieves their want.

• While this can effectively serve the story’s theme, it can often feel unsatisfying and suggest the writer avoided making a difficult choice
• If you're considering this route, ask yourself: Does the ambiguity truly serve the story, or am I sidestepping a challenging decision about my character's fate?

Resolution: The Mirror to Setup

After the want is resolved, there's often a moment of reflection - a breath at the end of the story. This is the resolution, and it mirrors the setup.

Just as the setup showed us the character in their routine before the story began, the resolution shows us who they are now, on the other side. We see their new state, their transformed (or unchanged) patterns.

Throughout your story, conflict opens loops of tension. Some of these close with the outcome, but the resolution gives us space to reflect: Where have we come? Are we changed? The same? This comparison between the opening patterns and the final state gives your story its sense of completion.

Key Takeaways

• All conflict is born of want and obstacles—these elements operate throughout your story in different phases.
• Setup establishes patterns that show what characters value and fear losing.
• Central conflict shifts the want/obstacle dynamic to drive the main narrative action.
• Outcomes resolve through pattern transformation but wanting never truly ends.
• Use reincorporation throughout your story to navigate direction and find satisfying closure.