How to write a scene: goal, conflict, turn (and fix flat ones)

A flat scene can usually be diagnosed in three questions: whose goal is this, what's in the way, and what is different when it ends? This post covers where those questions come from (McKee, Field and the syllabi that use them), how to answer each one well, how to spot the scene that fails, and a 45-minute exercise that fixes flat scenes while they're still one-line outline entries.

The three questions

Every working scene answers three things:

1. Goal. Someone in the scene wants something now, in this room, and you can say it as a verb: to get the keys back, to find out who sent the letter, to leave without being seen.
2. Conflict. Something pushes back: another person with a goal of their own, a locked door, a clock, or the character's own fear.
3. Turn. By the end, something has changed. The character is closer or further away, knows something they didn't, or has lost something they had.

Different teachers use different words for this, but they're describing the same unit:

McKee's Story turns up on the reading lists of several of the syllabi below, and his version gives you a test. His definition, reproduced on the McKee Seminars site, says a scene is "an action through conflict" that "turns the value-charged condition of a character's life on at least one value with a degree of perceptible significance." The value is something at stake in the character's life (love, trust, safety, freedom), and it has a charge, positive or negative. The test is to note the charge at the top of the scene and again at the end. If they match, McKee asks the uncomfortable question: "Why is this scene in my script?"

Syd Field comes at it from the other side. In a piece on the art of problem solving on his official site he calls the scene "the living cell" of a screenplay and says it serves two functions: it "either moves the story forward or, two, reveals information about the main character." His fix for a dull scene: define the character's dramatic need in that scene, then generate more conflict until it has "an edge".

The fiction version comes from Swain, whose scene is goal, conflict, disaster, followed by a "sequel" of reaction, dilemma and decision. The Advanced Fiction Writing article Writing the Perfect Scene and September C. Fawkes's walkthrough of Swain are two widely read explanations. In Randy Ingermanson's version on Advanced Fiction Writing, the disaster is a failure to reach the goal; Fawkes notes that Swain himself allows a scene to end on a win that sets up a coming disappointment. McKee's turn is broader still: a scene can turn toward the character, as long as it turns.

Where it shows up in courses

None of the syllabi below prints the words "goal, conflict, turn" as an assignment title. What they do instead is schedule a scene-construction unit, attach a short scene or an outline to it, and assign the books that teach the check. Some published examples:

• A University of Texas at El Paso screenwriting syllabus (FILM 3315, Fall 2023) gives week 8 to "Building a Scene - Goals, Obstacles, Tactics, Expectations | Reversals & Revelations", with "Exercise 6: Scene Structure" due that week, and lists McKee's Story as recommended reading (syllabus PDF).
• Julia Lesage's University of Oregon course outline for Dramatic Screenwriting assigns a "Scene on overcoming obstacles" (3–5 pages, 10% of the grade), then hands out a "Handout for outlining the beats in each scene of the treatment" and teaches scene cards. The readings include Russin and Downs's chapter "Beats, Scenes, Sequences" and Paul Lucey's "Scene Structure and the Basic Dramatic Units" (course outline).
• A TCNJ master syllabus for COM 325, Writing for Film and Television, schedules "A showing of good vs. bad scenes – writer's objective vs. character's objective" in the same week students write their short-film outline (syllabus PDF).
• An NYU London Advanced Screenwriting syllabus (IDWPG-UT 1057) sets a "Step outline for your film (+ Ending)" as Assignment 7, after a lecture on writing scenes, and lists Story in its bibliography (syllabus PDF).

The outline stage is where the check does the most work. The open textbook FADE IN: A Guide to Screenwriting Basics has students put one scene on each card: 45–60 cards for a feature, about 8–15 for a 20-minute short, with a scene averaging about two pages. Field's own rule of thumb, as quoted in a summary of Screenplay, is fourteen 3×5 cards for every 30 pages. At that size a scene is a single line, and a single line is the cheapest place to find out it doesn't turn.

Why check before you write pages

A flat scene that has been drafted costs you two or three pages, plus the attachment you now feel to its dialogue. A flat scene on a card costs you one line. You can also check a scene without writing it at all: McKee's test only needs the opening charge and the closing charge, and both belong in the outline.

The step outline sits between the treatment and the draft, which is exactly why the three questions belong there. The step outline and reverse outline post covers the full document. This post zooms in on the three fields that decide whether each entry deserves to become a scene.

How to answer each question well

Goal: whose scene is it?

Start by deciding who owns the scene. A No Film School piece on the "first law of scene writing" puts it simply: every scene must belong to someone, and it isn't always your protagonist. The piece's advice is to pick the character whose perspective offers the most tension.

Write the goal as an infinitive with an object you could photograph: "to get the landlord to sign the form", not "to feel respected". McKee's scene-analysis method asks for the desire as an infinitive, as Michele Celeste García explains in her walkthrough of the chapter. A goal you can see lets the audience keep score.

Conflict: what pushes back?

The best opposition is another character with a scene goal of their own that can't coexist with the first. When the obstacle is only circumstance (rain, a flat tyre), make sure it forces a choice, not just a delay.

Not every scene needs a shouting match. Script Reader Pro's guide to screenplay scenes argues that a scene needs stakes more than it needs a fight. Pressure can be quiet: a question the character doesn't want to answer, or a guest who won't leave.

Field's problem-solving piece has a good model for adding conflict to a "soft" scene. In a student's script, a lawyer questions the nurse who cared for her mother before she died, and Field found it read as "talking heads". His suggestions: the nurse isn't home, so the lawyer has to wait a couple of hours; the nurse's boyfriend lets her in, so she's already inside when the nurse arrives. Field's word for the result: the scene now has "an edge to it".

Turn: what's different at the end?

Name the value and give it a sign at each end: trust + at the top, trust − at the close. McKee, in a passage quoted in Andrew Kortina's notes on Story, says there are only two ways to turn a scene: "on action or on revelation." Someone does something that can't be taken back, or someone learns something they can't unlearn.

The turn doesn't have to be the goal succeeding or failing. A character can get exactly what they asked for and still end worse off, and that's often the stronger scene.

Diagnosing a flat scene

Almost every flat scene fails one of the three questions. Find which one, and the fix usually follows.

The third row is McKee's sharpest point. His scene-turn passage says a scene that doesn't turn is "almost certain" to be there for exposition, and if that's its sole justification, "a disciplined writer will trash it and weave its information into the film elsewhere."

A produced example: the black-market scene in Casablanca

One of McKee's worked examples in Story is the black-market scene in Casablanca: the SuperSummary chapter summary says the scene analysis chapter discusses scenes from Casablanca, and García's walkthrough points to his reading of Rick, Ilsa and the linen vendor. The film's screenplay is credited to Julius and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, who were honored with the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Wikipedia).

Here's what happens, checked against a lecture handout that reproduces the scene's opening and a transcript of the film. Ilsa is looking at a tablecloth at a linen stall, and the vendor holds up a sign: 700 francs. Rick walks up behind her and says, "You're being cheated." When the vendor realises she's a friend of Rick's, the price drops to 200, then to 100. Underneath the haggling, Rick and Ilsa go through rejections, a brief rapprochement, guilt-tripping, insults and a proposition. The handout, following McKee, counts eleven beats. The scene ends on Ilsa's line: "Victor Laszlo is my husband. And was, even when I knew you in Paris."

Run the three questions on it:

• Goal: Rick wants Ilsa back, or at least to make her admit what Paris meant.
• Conflict: Ilsa wants to get through the meeting without giving him anything. The vendor's falling prices are comic business on top of that.
• Turn: a revelation. Rick's hope (+) becomes something much worse (−) because of a fact he didn't know.

The scene is a good one to study because the conflict isn't where the dialogue seems to be. The vendor gives the scene its surface. The turn comes from what the two of them won't say until the last line.

A worked example on original material

Here is a scene card from an imaginary short, The Deposit, as it might look in a first outline:

INT. FLAT – DAY. Nadia and her landlord Mr Okafor walk through the empty flat. He checks the rooms. She hands over the keys and leaves.

Run the check. Goal: none stated. Conflict: none. Turn: she arrives with keys and leaves without them, and that's logistics, not a change in value. It's a nonevent.

Now rebuild it:

• Goal: Nadia wants to get her full deposit back today. She needs it for the new flat's first month.
• Conflict: Okafor wants to keep part of it for a burn mark on the counter that she knows her ex made.
• Turn: she could blame the ex and get the money, which would mean admitting he still had a key. She says nothing, signs for the deduction, and leaves £200 short. Security + becomes security −, but self-respect goes from − to +.

The rebuilt card is still three lines. It now has an owner, a collision and a turn that happens on a choice. It also sets up the next scene, where she's short on rent. That's how the check tightens an outline: a scene that turns hands its consequence to the one after it.

Try it

The exercise below gives you a four-scene outline of a short called The Night Bus, with two scenes that fail the check. Read each flag, work out which question is missing, and fix it in the outline before a word of the scene exists.

A few notes for when you're working:

• Time box: 45 minutes. About ten minutes a scene, plus a few to reread the whole outline in order.
• Deliverable: four scenes, each with a one-line goal, a one-line conflict and a turn written as a value with two signs (for example, "hope + → −").
• Rule: if a scene still won't turn, cut it or merge it. Four scenes can become three.
• Extension: do the same pass on your own short outline, 8–15 cards, before you draft. Then check that no two scenes in a row turn the same value in the same direction.

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How schools check it in reverse

The same three questions work backwards on finished films and on your own drafts. That's the reverse outline: one line per scene saying what it actually does. McKee's analysis method, as the SuperSummary summary lists it, has five steps: define the conflict, note the opening value, break the scene into beats, note the closing value and compare, then survey the beats and locate the turning point.

A lighter version, from a No Film School piece on breaking a scene into turning points, is to watch one produced scene and jot down each turn as it happens. It uses the bar scene in Sideways, written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, where Maya asks what the two men are up to tonight and Miles says they're probably going back to the hotel to "crash".

On your own draft, the reverse pass catches the scenes you meant to turn but didn't. The reverse outline exercise and the rewriting exercises take it from there.

FAQ

Can you give me an example of a scene goal?

"To get the full deposit back before the landlord leaves" is a scene goal: specific, visible, and finished one way or the other by the end of the scene. "To be happy" isn't a scene goal. It can't be won or lost in two pages. A good scene goal usually serves the character's larger want, the way Nadia's deposit serves her move.

What is a turning point in a scene?

In McKee's terms, it's the moment the value at stake changes charge: hope becomes despair, or trust becomes suspicion. He says it comes either through action or through revelation. It often lands near the end, but it's the change that counts, not where it falls.

Does every scene need conflict?

Every scene needs something pushing against the goal, but that pressure can be quiet: a withheld answer, an awkward guest, a character's own reluctance. What a scene can't do without is a turn. If nothing is different at the end, McKee's test says to cut the scene or fold its information into one that turns.

What is Dwight Swain's formula for scene and sequel?

Swain, in Techniques of the Selling Writer, splits the unit in two. A scene is goal, conflict, disaster. A sequel is the aftermath: reaction, dilemma, decision, and the decision makes the character proactive again for the next scene's goal. It's a fiction-writing model, but screenwriters use the same rhythm when a big turn needs a beat of reaction before the next push.

What are the four elements of scene writing?

Different teachers count differently. StudioBinder's G.O.D.D. lists goal, obstacle, dilemma and decision. Goal, conflict and turn cover the same ground in three: G.O.D.D.'s dilemma and decision are one way of making a scene turn.

What determines a scene in a script?

For formatting, a new scene starts whenever the location or time changes, which is why every card in FADE IN starts with a scene heading. Dramatically, a scene is a unit that turns a value. Sometimes that takes three locations, and sometimes one location holds two scenes.

How long should a scene be?

FADE IN gives an average of about two pages. Kortina's notes quote McKee's warning that most directors' cameras "drink up whatever is visually expressive in one location within two or three minutes." Treat both as averages. Let the turn decide the length.

Where to go next

Once the outline turns, write the scenes. If a scene turns but the dialogue says everything out loud, try the subtext exercise. If it leans on words, try the silent scene. If the goals feel thin, go back to the character's want, need and wound. For the rest of the series, start with the screenwriting exercises film schools assign.