Scene Objectives and Conflict
Drama sharpens when people pursue incompatible outcomes in the same moment.
High agreementA durable convention or broadly shared professional principle.
The principle
An objective is playable when a character can act on it: persuade, delay, expose, escape, seduce, conceal. Conflict appears when another force resists, redirects, or makes success costly. Scriptnotes repeatedly returns to this “steering wheel” of a scene: who controls where the moment is going?
Put it to work
- Give every speaking character a reason to be in the scene now.
- Turn exposition into a tactic used to achieve or prevent something.
- Escalate by making tactics fail, forcing riskier ones, or changing who has leverage.
Common mistakes
- Writing “talk about the problem” as an objective.
- Making one character a passive information receptacle.
- Ending only after everyone has calmly agreed.
Sources & further reading
Pitcheroo’s guidance is original synthesis. These are the main sources used for this guide.