Okay playwrights, today we’re going to address an elephant in the room: unresolved conflict. Say that your characters have a conflict that started at some time in the past and something happened that prevented them from resolving it. Maybe one character moved away, maybe they just stopped speaking to each other, or maybe a detent was reached for the sake of some other person. Whatever it is, now your characters are thrown back together in a way that triggers that old conflict.
Day 13 – Unresolved Conflict: Take two to four characters from your stock company and write a 10-minute scene in which an old conflict is unearthed and rehashed in the present. Adapted from The Playwright’s Handbook, by Frank Pike and Thomas G. Dunn (Revised Edition, 1996).
There are two ways in which the passage of time should have an effect here: (1) by intensifying emotions and (2) by allowing each character to develop a distorted, subjective memory of the triggering event. Ask yourself these questions:
- How much time has elapsed?
- What brought the characters back together?
- Was their reintroduction voluntary or forced?
- Do things start out polite or are they tense from the get go?
- Does the conflict get resolved or worsen?
Remember, you don’t have to fully explain the original triggering event to your reader or audience. Keeping them guessing about what really happened is part of the fun.