Conflict: Moving Things Along

What makes a good scene in a movie?

One word: Conflict.

Yes, a good scene needs conflict to move things along. Opposing forces. Protagonist does A. Antagonist reacts with B. Action-reaction. (Yeah, kind of like Newton's third law of motion.)

The protagonist needs to go from one trouble to the next. (Basically, put your good guy up a tree and throw stones at him.)

Don't have conflict in a scene? Writing gurus tell you to get rid of the scene. Granted, that's not always easy to do, especially when you've become rather attached to the scene.

On the other side, you can also go overboard with an over-zealous approach to cutting out scenes. Sometimes the audience needs a short breather. And sometimes it isn't bad to lull your character into a false sense of security. Or perhaps you need a scene for character development.

But, keep in mind that conflict can also take the form of an underlying tension in scene. Dramatic irony works well; where your character is unaware of some danger lurking, but the audience knows it's there.

Still, it's always a good idea to evaluate each scene for the element of conflict/tension. Remember the old Hitchcock adage: That drama is life "with all the boring parts taken out."

And nobody wants a movie to be boring!

P.S. Can you think of a good movie that has scenes you would call "boring"?