3 Steps for Writing Conflict that Doesn't Suck (Writing Advice) 

I boosted the audio in today's video, so please let me know if it's an improvement or not. Thanks!

Dang, you unintentionally gave me a great idea for a story with a great conflict. This channel is a gold mine for inspiration.

One of my favorite stories is a short Batman comic called, "Study Hall." A majority of it is Jonathan Crane/the Scarecrow monologuing a, "how we got here" to his current victim, Bromley, as he hits him with different versions of fear serum to see what he hates most. Right off the bat, Crane tells Bromley that he's here for a lesson, and that he hopes to make it more intriguing than his American Literature class that Bromley constantly skips. This immediately sets up two things: -Crane was a college teacher before he became a supervillain, but he's in costume now, which already begs the question of how this situation is even a thing to begin with, and what's the timeline, because this is all happening in a university lectern. -One of the very, VERY few decent traits the Scarecrow has is he legitimately likes to teach, so what the fuck did Bromley do to earn his ire? Between blasts of fear serum to see what makes Bromley tick, Crane tells Bromley (and the audience) that he recently realized there was going to become a point where he was going to get too old to keep playing these games with Batman, so after his last escape from Arkham, he decided to retire from his supervillain life, take on a new identity and return to teaching. There's our first answer. Then, Crane goes on to explain that among his students, there was one young woman, Molly Randall, who he quickly came to adore due to her hunger for knowledge. She is, "the type of student a teacher comes across only once in a lifetime," and just talking to her brings out Crane's other interests that are usually blocked behind his fear obsession: art, music, poetry, history, etc. Now, the Scarecrow is a well-known misanthrope, so the fact that he came to care for Molly at all speaks volumes. You might be able to count this as a twist, because he usually *at best* tolerates people on a good day. And it's easy to piece together that something happened to Molly and it involved Bromley. And if you know anything about the Scarecrow, then it's easy to guess his motivation is vengeance, because it's one of like four reasons he ever does anything (the others being, "I'm just doing this mediocre crime to get funds for my *actual* scheme," "FOR SCIENCE!" and "I'm going to claim it's FOR SCIENCE!, but really, it's Tuesday and I have an urge to cause chaos"). Now, this comic in question is based on Batman: The Animated Series, so what happens next is very much a, "kids aren't going to get the nuance, but an adult definitely will." Earlier that day, Molly came to Crane's office in tears. The only blatant confirmation is that Bromley and Molly were dating, and he hit her. Except by Molly's closed-in posture, how she could barely maintain eye contact, and the look of horrified rage on Crane's face paints a VERY clear picture that more than that happened. This is where the (non-arguable) twist comes in. The Scarecrow is the type of person to terrorize a city block just for kicks, and likes to get a rise out of his victims. And he *is* a vengeful person who has a track record for dishing out tenfold what he got. Except most of the time, it's a, "you hurt me, I'm hurting you back" kind of thing. This time around, he's doing it out of love and concern for another person. (I will also point out that it's a platonic love. He has NO romantic interest in Molly at all; he just really enjoys talking to her, and their mutual fulfillment of teaching and learning from each other. Which in and of itself can count as another twist, because these types of stories are often done with love interests, and the avenging character is a hero, not a villain). By this point, Crane has figured out Bromley's weakness (rats), and congratulates him for feeling like a helpless victim like Bromley made Molly feel. And throughout all this, since it's a Batman comic, you're probably wondering, "where tf is Batman?" Well, Crane was about to behead Bromley with his scythe, and now the Dark Knight decides to come out of hiding. Batman mentions he's been tailing the Scarecrow for a while, thinking he was using the university as a base for a scheme, and he was shocked that Crane actually did just want to teach again. "And you couldn't let me be?" "I knew it was a matter of time before you reverted to type." Well, the Scarecrow's a "one-punch and he's out" villain once you get through whatever he throws in your path, so that's all Batman needs to take him down. But the story has one more twist. Both Crane and Bromley get arrested (again confirming the implications that he did more than hit Molly), and Batman's final thoughts on the matter are: "I suppose Crane was trying to help Molly in the only ways he knew how: with fear, intimidation, and force. Not much different from Bromley's methods. But Crane's always had the decency to wear his mask on the *outside*." Yeah. When BATMAN is siding with the fear-obsessed nutjob this time around, that speaks volumes. I love this story so much. It's in my top five Scarecrow stories solely because even though it's short (like ten pages), it plays out in ways few people expect and subverts some expectations compared to the usual pattern of, "supervillain causes trouble and the conflict comes from how the hero stops him."

Favorite story has to be Fullmetal Alchemist (spoilers of course) -Conflict: Kid and brother lose parts of their bodies in a freak magic related accident trying to bring their mother back to life, the older one joins the military to get funding and research to get their bodies back, specifically the legendary Philosopher Stone -Twist: after some very shady stuff happens, they discover that the Philosopher Stone in fact DOES exist, but it is made using human sacrifice and requires thousands of lives. Even after they find one, they refuse to use it, because of the moral implications. -Complications: after learning the truth about the stone, they start to get persecuted by the goverment and it's superpowered and monstrous agents, the homuncili. -New forms of conflict: the loved ones of the kids on the military get pulled into a great conspiracy after discovering that the goverment is actually controlled by a shadow goverment, who is employing the homuncili for a secret, catastrophic, nationwide project. -The story gets messy after characters from both sides start dying, foreign nations start getting involved in the conspiracy and the chase for the power of the philosopher stone, and war, internal and external, looms in, all culminating in a cataclismic event that puts everybody's life in stake

Bill Murry's The Man Who Knew Too Little comes to mind with messy conflict, but this movie plays every bit of it out in the most satisfying and fun ways imaginable.

Without a doubt one of the truly great conflict developments comes in the movie The Usual Suspects. It starts as a standard police line up meant to figure our who did a specific crime, and slowly morphs into a set of huge competing story lines within which is an even more massive mystery. Truly a classic.

Hi Brandon, I've been an audio dramatist, writing steadily for a little more than a decade. Even though I've written all kinds of stories in multiple genres, I'm still open to learning more about bettering my craft. I enjoy your videos and find myself saying, "hey, I've done that!" or "oh, hey, I should do that!" Thanks for presenting your topics in entertaining ways. I'll keep watching!

The movie Fargo follows these steps really well- the initial conflict is a relatively simple kidnapping scene, the unexpected outcome is the police pulling the kidnappers over and the ensuing murder, and there are a whole mess of complications that leads to.

ASOIAF is my favorite story and the conflict has evolved into confincting conflicted conflicts, and also ice demons.

This guy’s videos are what I study WILLINGLY. There’s always something new to add/fix and overall is incredibly helpful for future authors (like myself) or for people who just do it as a hobby.

I was really impressed by how Daniel Abraham's "The Dagger and the Coin" series kept conflict rolling. Very skilled in weaving those complications in, using them in service of pacing and stakes.

I wish you'd expand on the twist part. Maybe how to twist well, or how to brainstorm potential directions, or how to red herring the other outcome, or how to figure out which outcome is more unexpected yet interesting.

Great video, as usual. While you were offering your excellent example via Seinfeld, I thought of one of favorite novels, "A Simple Plan". It mirrored your breakdown perfectly.

I’ve been rewatching Seinfeld recently, and I must say they have utilized interesting techniques when it comes to storytelling. Also, it’s hilarious!

Your dialogue and story writing videos have been helping and educating me extremely well in the past two months. Within about a week, I have already been thinking up a story concept that should become a great future television series, I’m only 18 by the way. So far, it is about a secondary school, where students go through all these mysteries, secrets, and plot twists, which all started as a strange trend since the 60s. A lot of that inspiration is from my high school I graduated last year from, but also from this television series, ‘Lost’ I am currently watching, too. All I’m doing is just adding major mystery plots I could establish throughout, rather than writing from the beginning of my story. I want to make sure to be more industrious with my television series, rather than those lazy writers handling the last season of ‘Game of Thrones’, or ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, and ‘Rise of Skywalker’, yuck! I have attempted story writing by myself in the past, but your channel seems to have influenced me much more than before! I hope you get back to me and explain if this a good idea of mine.

love your videos Brandon, good work.

Another great video, Brandon! Through my dad, I've slowly grown to really appreciate Seinfeld, and the fact that you're using that as inspiration is JUST the icing on the cake! I can't wait to take your new advice and apply it to my today's novel chapter.

I recently watched a film called "Hakai" (1962) and the conflict in the film was played beautifully. To me, it checked all the boxes you listed.

I'm big on something I see a lot on "Community" and other Dan Harmon shows, but I don't think he ever describes the structure properly (or at least I don't see that his eight-step wheel describes it aptly). But it's related to what you're talking about: 1) Character wants something, so the conflict is in getting it. 2) Character gets that thing, but in doing so, creates problems. 3) Character has to fix the problems created in #2, and maybe even has to give up the thing they originally wanted. But they're a better person than when they started. So the original conflict is resolved but then replaced by child conflicts.

Interesting. I like info on techniques that help braid and twist and Tangle various elements of plot together, especially if they can get a storyline going in directions that seem unrelated

Braking bad has a lot of good conflict, a lot of them. But the conflict between Walter & Jesse, for me, is the best, becuase it's get from bad to worst.

In you favorite story... How does the conflict shift from simple to complex? Let us know!

Your videos just keep getting better and better. Love this channel.

Great examples, helps a lot thanks

Thank you so much for all the work and experience sharing with us, Brandon. Youre sure are a hero for us.

As always, great suggestions!

Thank you for your amazing advice!

Short video and still so much great advice, thanks!

Thanks for the video!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!, These Videos Are super helpful, Thank you

Your videos are always helpful, thank you so much

Great video! The audio boost definitely was an improvement, at least for me. As a very amateurish writer, saying that your videos helped would be a huge understatement. You single-handedly changed my way of writing! My story currently contains a lot of conflict, however I’m not entirely sure if I did it correctly. Could you perhaps make a video where you go a little more in depth about types of conflict? This one was very helpful but a bit on the short side.

Another classic Bill Murray conflict proposition: Groundhog Day.

I have to say, I have my doubts about your "advice" here. The Seinfeld example is a great one... for writing a chaotic comedy of errors. But a lot of the greatest stories have very simple conflicts... they are just very well, very energetically told.

Simple conflict is lord of the ring -> get it to Mordor and destroy it! Easy plot:conflict but the journey is what does the books! So it’s not alway bad to have a simple/ straightforward conflict? Because it’s the promos we want to read? Overall the Seinfeld analogy was very good!

Very interesting, thank you

Great video.

the VFD schism as well as the sugar bowl is a great conflict in a Series of Unfortunate Events

Audio clarity and balance was great! I just happened to watch that same Seinfeld episode a week ago, and you use it to perfect effect here. Your insights are always top-notch. Btw, when's your next book coming out? Can't wait to read it!

Very informative ❤

Thanks .

Short video, but very concise. Wouldn't mind a examples video on the topic.

Thanks for this. A great video. Currently, my protagonist powers through the obstacles with determination and self discovery and it seems a little predictable.

Excellent channel, thanks for making these! My favorite messy conflict right now is Tenet. Hey I was wondering if you might do a video on writing love scenes? I want to include one in my story without it being cheap or cheesy.

EDIT: A LOT of seinfeld episodes do the Multi-Problem Setup & Payoff well. Funnily enough I was watching Seinfeld last night too, and I was thinking how well both The Chinese Restaurant and Marine Biologist build to a punchline. (I'm sure you know most of this already but if not spoilers) Chinese Restaurant - Jerry skipped out on seeing his uncle and runs into someone who knows them. The Restaurant owner says something in Chinese and proceeds to torture them with miscommunication. George is waiting on a phone call but the owner calls out a completely different word. Elaine is starving and tries to bribe people into giving her food to win a bet. It all ends tragically when they finally give up and the Restaurant owners response of "Seinfeld, Four" is so smug I reckon he did it on purpose. Its not the most cohesive, but its multiple ways to handle a single problem, that all ultimately blow up in their face just because the owner holds all the cards. Marine Biologist, George tells Jerry about something he saw on TV about marine biologists, this inspires Jerry to tell a girl George has that job, Kramer is hitting golf balls at the beach (seemingly inconsequentially) and then when someone shouts "is anyone here a Marine Biologist?" And George decides to wing it, he pulls out a golf ball. No explanation is needed, Kramer says "what is that a titlist?" And we all know it's his golf ball. It's my theory that the MORE disconnected each piece is, the more punchy it is when they all mash together in a natural way.

AMAZING VIDEO

The movie and play of Oscar comes to mind. But it feels like it's easier to do this in comedy than drama. But then again Die Hard does a great job of building the conflict. One of my favorite scenes is when John pulls the fire alarm and expects the fire department to come and save the day to only have Hans tell his man to call the department and cancel the alarm. Nice twist.

This is about conflict at a plot level, which sometimes comes off to me as “conflict for the sake of it”, or merely “to cause more complications / place more obstacles in the characters’ path, in order to create suspense”. In other words, one could say it’s about creating “drama”. To me, “conflict” at the highest level is about the thematic conflict, and the events of the plot, including the obstacles and complications, should be derived from that thematic premise. I know it’s a lofty ideal - every author likes to include certain elements just for “the law of cool” every now and then. The important thing with those decisions is not to add in things that actively contradict the thematic premise. Sometimes, authors disprove the attempted message of their own story accidentally. 😂 Now, if somebody deliberately sets out to write a story that proves their own viewpoint wrong, that’s a different game - but more often than not, the counter-thematic elements seem to be unintentional. (Such as J.K. Rowling’s accidentally xenophobic wizards, whose main reason for hiding away from the muggles is not to escape witch hunts, but simply because they don’t want the muggles to bother them by asking them to solve their problems with magic.)

Hello Brandon, first of all i would like to say that as an aspiring author your content in entertaining and it does help a lot. Also as i am currently writting my first book i would like to ask how did you first got your work published!

Just listening to the synopsis of that episode makes me want to laugh. Brilliant writing on a brilliant show

Not only it applies three levels of conflict set in reality, but also set in fantasy. My MC for example has to... 1. Conflict: defeat a metallic dinosaur, Raptor Drone from wreaking havoc in star academy. 2. Twist: but its armor plate prevents the MC from draining its abilities and even if he and his friends successfully destroys the armor for the MC to drain its abilities and replicate its dinosaur attributes, it can switch its armor plating to a harder plating that the MC with this gained ability cannot break. And 3. Complications: After Raptor Drone successfully pins the MC down and his friends cannot do anything to dent it's new form of armor, the MC has to unleash his most powerful form to overpower Raptor Drone's new mode, but it let's him lose control of his powers into turning against his friends and likely destroy Star Academy itself that they must calm him down both spirituality and mentally as a character through his trauma. It's a minor spoiler example from my third book, and I think I've written three levels of conflict better as a writer after two books^^

the Everybody Loves Raymond episode Cookies is superb

I learn so much from your videos, Brandon. Amazing tips and knowledge. You help me so much on my journey to being a better screenwriter :-)

Nice vid

This was genius.

Not that it's a "great" story per say, but I couldn't help but think about how the conflict evolved exactly the way you described it, in Dragonball Z, across the whole Cell Arc. From the day Frieza returns to the day Gohan defeats Cell, we were in for a hell of a ride with such a mess of complications and twists one after the other until the very very end. And it built up such a insane level of stakes for a all-or-nothing climax like I've never seen anywhere else.

You need to watch high guardian spice. It would be cool to watch a video of you pointing everything wrong in the animation.

This is a great example of escalating conflict, and a great reminder of why I never liked Seinfeld as a character. It would have perhaps been better to show some other examples, particularly where the protagonist was heroic, or at least not reprehensible.

A book as part of a series I’m reading created a lot of conflict and moral dilemma. The book is “Lessons in Power”, which is book 4 in the “Cambridge Fellows” series, which is about 2 gay men (Jonty and a Orlando) who lecture at Cambridge, are private detectives and are in a relationship in an early 1900s England. The story is that they are hired to find the real killer of a murdered Lord, but the victim, as well as another key character, both sexually assaulted Jonty during their college days. The relationship is tested and Jonty has to battle not throwing his former assailers under the bus out of revenge. Some moral discussion is similar to that of Entry Wounds in asking “what would you do?”, but more over “how would you deal?”.

Great, content 👍 i like the messy outcomes of a conflict, but when is there too much conflict? I believe it could get so messy it would be hard to track😅

One of my favourite movies is "Out Of Sight". George Clooney plays a convicted bank robber who escapes from prison with the help of a friend of his, who is waiting outside with a car. Jennifer Lopez plays a cop who is at the prison for an unrelated matter at the same time. She sees the escape, tries to stop it, but essentially gets kidnapped by Clooney and his friend. Clooney hides in the trunk of the car but takes her with him. And obviously they both get attracted to each other while stuck together in the trunk. So the main conflict is, he's a criminal who tries to be free, she's a cop whose job it is to put him back in prison, and they both want to be together. Clooney plans a heist with his friend, but a rival gang of ex-convicts from the same prison have planned on doing the same heist. Namely, another convict at the time let it slip that he has diamonds in his house, so the plan is to raid the house for the diamonds. I'm not going to spoil anything more from the movie, but I'll recommend you watch it.

I'll go again for A Clockwork Orange for my favourite story. The conflict is pretty much philosophical, about free will: should a man forced to be good? That's a pretty massive conflict right there.

In a lot of One Piece Arcs, Luffy and his crew/allies will go into an area having discussed some measure of a plan. Invariably, Luffy will get distracted at the earliest opportunity, usually by food, and completely derails any plan, blowing his allies' cover and bringing the wrath of whoever controls the area down upon them. The story has no shortage of well-developed and zany characters, so you never know when someone will make their debut or return and devolve the situation into even greater chaos.

Yo, Brandon. What you just described sounds a like the original Night Gallery film. The first segment involves a shocking murder-for-inheritance plot, with Ossie Davis, the family's major Domo, keeping the secret. Roddy McDowell, the killer, becomes haunted by his dead father's ghost in a series of paintings of the family estate. The ghost's presence causes Roddy McDowell to become insane with fear, leading to his death. But here's the twist: Ossie Davis had masterminded the entire scheme and manipulated Roddy McDowell by creating the paintings to make it look like the dead father's spirit was approaching the mansion. However, in a final twist, both the patriarch and Roddy McDowell's ghosts rise from the dead to haunt Ossie Davis, driving him insane in the end. (✿◠‿◠)

Hey Brandon, I have a question about making a title. I thought of the perfect title for my book, I sincerely doubt I will think of a better one. Problem is, it turns out it's been used before. Is that a problem? Can I still use it? I even checked slight variations of it, and they've been used. But it suits my story perfectly.

Thank You Brandon for your wonderful advice

I could write an entire 50-page thesis on the video game, Xenogears, and how its conflict becomes just insanely complicated and compelling the deeper into it you go.

I’ve never watched Seinfeld but this was indeed a really well written conflict, I love when a protagonist is thrown into a situation where they’re in way over their head. My favourite show for this is BoJack Horseman as we see BoJack constantly brushing away conflict only for it to come back to haunt him in the long run, each time making things more complicated.

Sir, I can't help but notice that you give a lot of advice about writing having only published two books. My question is: How do **you** learn how to write? Maybe it's a bit meta but I think it would make a very interesting video.

Vampire Diares, season 2 a season 3 are top notch in matter of choices, complications and consequences.

👍👍

I think one of the best sequences of tense, twist-filled, tightly-woven, climactic conflict ever written is the entire finale of the Yorknew arc in Hunter x Hunter (the Chimera Ant arc has perhaps an equally good climax, but less compact and efficient and is more action-focused). It's a rather complex sequence to describe without full context, but it involves a sort of cat-and-mouse game of revenge-fueled, magic-powered, information control, recon, ambushes, assassination attempts, kidnapping, and hostage negotiations between a group of relatively inexperienced (but highly competent) protagonists and a group of equally competent, but even more powerful and experienced, villains (who are also extremely well written). The good guys start with a significant information advantage, but are woefully outmatched in a direct combat encounter, and are scrambling the whole time to keep their advantages while the villains are trying to solve the information differences and turn the battle into the level playing field that puts them on top. All of this back and forth is enhanced by the excellent character work, as the characters all act believably but intelligently, as well as one of the best magic systems ever written.

This works very well in comedy, but in drama, it tends to make your serious characters look dumb, selfish, or crass when they are otherwise characterized. It could betray the functionality of your character, so it's best to exercise caution and think about your character, their cast, and what they've been through up to this point.

Jerry's problematic dating habits are evergreen

👍

Making things messy is easy. How to resolve it at the end is hard though.

I just write fanfic and conflict is a plot device I struggle with because I like everybody happy lol.. it's a holdover from my SIMS phase, I guess. lol

Titanic. Yes I went there.

Hey Brandon I'm a writer and a big fan of your videos, they are definitely helpful towards becoming better at the craft. Any chance I can contact you to talk about something I have in mind as a proposal? I'll tell you in advance. I'm a native spanish speaker, with an advanced english level, I think it would be a good idea if your videos were available in spanish, either the same channel, or a youtube channel apart (which I think is a better idea, like "escritor Brandon McNulty en español" lol). I would be interested in translating your videos and dubbing them. I have lots of experience making translations, although not dubbing but I think it'd be fun. If you are interested just let me know how can I reach you to discuss it. An email could work to start with.

The manga Spy x family is great at conflict. The main plot is that a spy adopts a daughter and marries a woman for the sake of a mission, but he doesn’t realize the girl is a telepath and the woman is an assassin. The assassin doesn’t realize the other two’s secrets either, while the telepath knows both of their secrets. This setup makes for a lot of comedic conflict throughout the series.

I think it can go a bit far with making your protagonist stupid. Trying to date both the criminal and the victim? Ridiculous.

I am no thinking wouldn’t it be wonderful if i avoid all types of your advice and break all cliches and make a unique different movie. 😂😂😂

Day 3 of asking you; Brandon. I mentioned you in my novel's dedication page, is it cool?

All go rhythm or something.

I don't have anything to criticise about the method, but I would absolutely hate that Seinfeld episode. I am so sick and tired of those plots where a character holds up a lie just to not have to admit to their friends that they lied to them. We know that people lie because we all do it, we also know why, we know why it's bad and why we still do it anyway. The whole "yes I lied and shouldn't have" is WAY too bland of a plot if you're past 7 years old IMO.

Se7en. What begins as a typical police drama gets really twisted. SPOILER ALERT: The ultimate twist is that killing the villain completes the villain's plan. He wins.

All I got from this was Jerry is a sleazy creep.......

I get where you’re going with this and thank you for doing this video. I think this will be very helpful, but… why did it have to be this trope. The escalating stupidity over a pretty girl.😞

why have you become another youtube face channel? hope this isn't permanent. it's downright unwatchable.