The Three Types of Conflict Every Scene Needs

Every scene in your screenplay needs conflict.

Okay, I know that sounds obvious, but it's not as simple as it seems. There are different types of conflict you can use to deepen a scene's action and make sure what your characters are doing connects with your audience.

A working scene should contain three layers of conflict that operate simultaneously. When these elements combine, you create moments that push your story forward and force your characters to make difficult choices.

Screenwriter Pedro Correa breaks down scene conflict into three essential components in a recent Film Courage interview. Check it out below.

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The Three Types of Conflict

External conflict is what's physically happening in the scene. It can often be a very simple obstacle—your characters need to reach a mountaintop, but boulders block their path. Maybe your hero needs to defuse a bomb, but the villain's henchmen stand in their way.

Emotional conflict connects the present action to your character's inner wounds and past experiences. We talked about this previously as "the wound" and "the misbelief." What, internally, is getting in your character's way? In the first example, maybe they see the boulders as insurmountable because a loved one once died in a rockslide, and they don't want to risk the same thing happening to them.

Philosophical conflict deals with worldview and moral boundaries. It's about the lines your character won't cross. In our imagined mountain scenario, maybe they could use TNT to blast a path through the rock, but would endanger a village below. That's a moral conflict.

This three-layer approach mirrors what Final Draft describes as the intertwining of internal and external conflict. Your key scenes should contain all three conflict types working together.

In Challengers, there's a clear external conflict. Two tennis players are playing a simple match. Internally, their conflict is romantic. Both men want the same woman (while also wanting each other), and she's watching from the stands. Philosophically, they both wrestle with what it means to be a champion, whether winning requires ruthlessness or whether love and ambition can coexist.

The momentum scenes connecting a story's major beats can function with just one or two types, but the more conflict you can layer in, the stronger your screenplay becomes.

Challengers Credit: Warner Bros.

Testing Whether a Scene Works

Correa has a simple test. "A scene is working to me if a hero is making a decision at the end of that scene that was different from before."

If nothing changes, if the scene doesn't create a new fork in the road for your character, it probably doesn't belong in your script. Correa says, "If you just watched that scene and somebody took your TV remote or smashed the projector in a movie theater, you'd want the audience to be like, 'Oh, no, no, wait. What happened?' What did she end up doing in the next scene?"

This aligns with what screenwriting teacher Robert McKee calls the "turn" in every scene, or the moment where things shift from positive to negative or vice versa.

As McKee puts it, if the emotional value at the end of the scene matches the opening, you need to ask yourself why the scene exists at all.

What If a Scene Still Doesn't Feel Right?

Sometimes a scene works on paper but still feels flat. It has no energy or seems rote.

Consider elements that might add additional tension or shift the tone. Maybe it's a ticking clock. Another idea Correa suggests is changing the location to shift the temperature.

"Could this be more interesting in a library? This breakup scene, and they have to be quiet?" he said.

He references How to Blow Up a Pipeline as an example, imagining a planning scene moved from a basement to a public space. "Could we have that happen at the DMV? One of them needs to renew their ID, and they just don't have time, and time's running out, and they're discussing this in somewhere like that," Correa says. "That changes the temperature of the scene completely."

Same conflicts, different stakes. External circumstances shape how the emotional and philosophical conflicts play out.

Challengers Credit: Warner Bros.

Make Your Scenes Matter

Strong scene construction is not just "What happens?" It's "Why does this moment force my character to change?" When you layer external, emotional, and philosophical conflict together, you create scenes that work on multiple levels.

Check out our guide to conflict. Even small obstacles like a door that won't open can create tension when your character needs something urgently.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt has described this approach as interweaving external, internal, and philosophical stakes to create rich, multidimensional conflicts. In Little Miss Sunshine, for instance, characters face external challenges (competing in a pageant), internal struggles (individual insecurities), and philosophical questions (what defines success).

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