Lesson 13

[Paul Penley]

Paul P's Delivers insights through conflict.

What I learned doing this assignment. ScreenwritingU gives the writer pne more arrow for their quiver. This execise helped me hone in on a way to devolope insight.

My list of the New Ways / Insights I want my audiences to experiences:

1. Argument-
Step 1. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver?
I want to make it clear that being first to the gun isn't always the best way for a man to proceed.
Step 2. What kind of conflict could that insight show up in. – Argument.
Step 3. Brainstorm ways you might deliver the insight through the conflict. Adam shots a rattlesnake which could have bit Goldie's horse. Goldie is thrown from his horse. Goldie drags Adam off his horse and throeatens to kill him if he ever points his gun in his direction again. Goldie extends his threat to the rest of gang.

2. Loss-
Step 1. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver?
Loss of a loved one makes you realize how much they mean to you.
Step 2. What kind of conflict could that insight show up in.
Loss- Billy mourns the loss of his Father, his Outlaw brothers and his Brother Johnny.
Step 3. Brainstorm ways you might deliver the insight through the conflict.
Billy looses his father and never forgets his lessons. Billy looses his outlaw friends and seeks revenge. Billy looses his brother and vows to take him out of hell and revenge his father.

3. Physical confrontation. –
Step 1. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver?
Friendships are important.
Step 2. What kind of conflict could that insight show up in.
Physical confrontation- Now on opposite sides Billy and Red fight eachother in the streets of Hell. Billy and Johnny fight in the streets of Hell.
Step 3. Brainstorm ways you might deliver the insight through the conflict.
Both fights show Johnny and the outlaws how imortant they are to eachother.

4. Accused-
Step 1. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver?
Adam is accused of knowing Billy and the outlaws. He will deny them three times before the cock crows.
Step 2. What kind of conflict could that insight show up in.
Accused- Frightened for his life, Adam denies knowing his outlaw cohorts. He lives long enough to realize they will do anything for him.
Step 3. Brainstorm ways you might deliver the insight through the conflict.
Adam challenges Goldie to a duel knowing he will be killed. But he does it to save someone who tried to save him.

5. Competition-
Step 1. What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver? Ego is the destroyer of men.
Step 2. What kind of conflict could that insight show up in.
Competition- Men duel and fight for the right to become a demon in the Angel's army of doom.
Step 3. Brainstorm ways you might deliver the insight through the conflict.
Gunfights and challenges are used to gain status. Billy and his gang use it to survive and take revenge upon the Angels.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 3 weeks ago by  Paul Penley.

[Margaret]

Margaret Delivers Insights Through Conflict

What I learned: I haven’t used conflict to deliver an insight before – this was a new concept for me, a new tool for my writing box.

Ways I will use Conflict to deliver Insight:

1• Argument Provokes the Truth Conflict: Between Marie-Claude and Margot during the sewing circle Potential Insight: The true meaning of collaboration and mutual respect Scene: Marie-Claude’s academic brilliance clashes with Margot’s practical sewing skills. Their argument reveals that intelligence comes in many forms, and true resistance requires understanding and valuing different strengths.
• Conflict Uncovers a Secret Conflict: Lise’s confrontation with herself about her tendency to talk too much Potential Insight: Personal perceived weaknesses can become unexpected strengths Scene: When Lise fears her chattiness will compromise the resistance, she discovers that her ability to talk endlessly becomes a critical survival skill for distracting Nazis and protecting children.
• Conflict Brings Out True Nature Conflict: Klaus confronting Helene about her resistance activities Potential Insight: Moral courage is defined by actions in moments of extreme pressure Scene: When Klaus threatens Helene, her response (quoting Biblical scripture and refusing to cooperate) reveals her true character – someone willing to risk everything for a higher moral purpose.
• Conflict Uncovers an Emotional Issue Conflict: Margot’s internal struggle with moral compromise Potential Insight: Resistance is not about being fearless, but about acting despite fear Scene: Margot’s discomfort with lying (referencing the Rahab story) reveals her deeper moral dilemma – that sometimes protecting life requires actions that challenge one’s own moral boundaries.
• Dilemma as Conflict – Conflict: Lise’s moment of potential betrayal in the toy shop Potential Insight: Survival is complex, and judgment is easy from the outside Scene: When threatened with torture, Lise appears to betray Helene, but actually maneuvers to protect the resistance network. This conflict reveals the nuanced choices people make under extreme duress.

[Jennifer Quintenz-Berry]

Jenn Delivers Insights Through Conflict

What I learned doing this assignment is:
• First Breakthrough: having one of my other characters telling Taylor an “uncomfortable truth,” demonstrating that being honest about painful things won’t destroy relationships; vulnerability can make connections stronger. Thinking through this exercise actually helped me refine and strengthen a character I hadn’t even known needed it.
• Second Breakthrough: the scene where Dominique gets them permission to paint a mural in the Game Room – leading to the insight that people want to be part of something amazing. It’s not something I’ve ever articulated before, but I feel it deeply.

Old Way: "I was just born unlucky." leads to Insight: “What if everything happens for a reason?”
Conflict: After Riaz and Taylor share an unexpectedly intimate moment, Taylor laments to Carrie that she’s cursed: she’s finally found her perfect match, but they cannot be together because he’s her doctor. Carrie points out that she never would have met Riaz if she hadn’t developed this condition, and while it sucks now, there could still be a future for them once she’s better and he’s no longer her doctor.
Insight Delivery: A confrontation where Carrie might snap, “Enough with the pity party. Unlucky? You’re looking at it wrong! Let’s pretend he really is your one and only soulmate. You think you’d just bump into him grocery shopping? You have this crazy condition, and Riaz is the only guy in the world that can help. Maybe this is how you were supposed to meet. You ever think about it like that?” This forces Taylor to acknowledge her agency and shift her mindset.

Old Way: "Getting close to people just invites grief." Leads to Insight: “Love and loss are intertwined, but they give life meaning”
Conflict: Carrie and Taylor become roommates and Carrie tries to engage her, but Taylor isn’t interested. Carrie gets into her stuff, and Taylor gets more and more frustrated. Finally they have a big fight. Carrie can say “You need a friend.” Taylor says “I had awesome friends, and now they’re gone, and I’m not doing it again!” Taylor is quivering with furious emotion. Carrie nods, understanding. “Ah, I see.”
Insight Delivery: Carrie could deliver a poignant line, like, “But closing yourself off from other people doesn’t just protect you from grief, it deprives you of love, and love… that’s the whole ballgame, kid.”

Old Way: “I need someone to save me.” Insight: “No one can live my life for me.”
Conflict: After Taylor barely survives a lapse during which she flatlines twice, Riaz agrees with Strove that it’s time for her to go on medication to eliminate her emotions in order to prevent another lapse. Taylor tries to reason with him but he’s insistent – he has a vial of medicine and a syringe. Taylor grabs the vial of medicine and hurls it across the room, it shatters. Riaz yells at her, frustrated, "You could’ve died, Taylor! For what? A dream you can’t even prove is real? Just take the medicine, please. It will buy us time for me to find a cure.” Taylor: “I’ve already wasted so much time dwelling on all the things I’ve done wrong. I don’t want to waste any more.” Riaz: “This will keep you alive.”
Delivering Insight: Taylor responds: "But that isn’t the same thing as living. I want to live.”

Old Way: "Telling people the uncomfortable truth will destroy our relationship." Leads to Insight: “Vulnerability builds connection.”
Conflict: Riaz is struggling with an ethical dilemma and finally breaks down, telling Taylor they need to talk. He says after careful deliberation, he needs to stop treating her because he’s falling in love with her and it’s unconscionable for him to continue acting as her doctor. Taylor pleads with him to stay, saying he’s the only one who can help her. She understands they can’t cross any lines while he’s still her doctor, but she hopes that once she’s cured, they’ll be able to pursue a real relationship. Riaz is reluctant, he can’t guarantee his feelings won’t compromise her care. Taylor says he’s literally her last hope, and if he can’t save her… she’d rather spend the last few weeks of her life with him. Taylor takes his hand. Riaz softens – he admits he was terrified to tell her the truth.
Insight Delivery: Taylor realizes that telling people an uncomfortable truth can make their relationship stronger.

Old Way: “The world is out to get me.” Leads to Insight: “People want to be part of something amazing.”
Conflict: Dominique catches Taylor and Carrie painting the mural. At first, Dominique threatens to report them. Taylor tries to handle it herself, only to fail and risk losing the mural altogether. Frustrated and defeated, she turns to Carrie to help mediate. Carrie, in turn, persuades Dominique with her charm, showing Taylor that asking for help can lead to meaningful solutions she couldn’t achieve alone.
Insight Delivery: Dominique goes out of her way to get them permission for the mural in their room… and one in the Game Room, too. When they’re done with the mural, Taylor tells Carrie she doesn’t get why Dominique did this for them. Carrie says, “People want to be part of something amazing. You just have to give them the chance.”

~ end

[Mark Roeder]

Mark Roeder Delivers Insights Through Conflict

What I learned doing this assignment is possible ways to use conflict to express insights.

(Note: the dialogue in these examples isn’t the exact dialogue that will be in the script, but an example of what it could be like.)

1. Insight: Blaze kills pandas.

Type of conflict: argument

After Blaze rescues/kidnaps Rosemary and her panda son Kyo from the pandas, while Blaze drives them away.

Rosmary: Take me home.

Blaze: You can’t go back there.

Rosemary: I can control ‘em.

Blaze: You can’t.

Rosemary: Where are we going?

Blaze: To rescue someone else.

Rosemary: Why’d you bring that thing?

Blaze: That’s your son.

Rosmary: But it’s impossible. Even though it’s true.

Blaze runs over a panda.

Rosmeary: You just killed a panda.

Kyo cries.

Blaze approaches other pandas on the road. She grabs the wheel and steers them away. They wreck. She passes out.

2. Insight: Pandas experimented on Rosemary and inseminated her.

Type of conflict: misunderstanding/ plan goes wrong

Rosemary wakes up. Wanders around the big camper. Blaze and his women warriors eat. Some Repair the camper. There’s dead pandas outside.

She opens a door to get out. But it’s a door to a closet. She finds a jar with a panda/human hybrid in it. She SCREAMS. They hear. She tries to get out. They stop her.

Rosemary: You’ve been experimenting. You put that thing in me.

Blaze: Is that what your nightmares have been telling you?

Rosemary denies her nightmares. Another woman explains she had nightmares of getting abducted by pandas and experimented on. Rosemary calls her paranoid, even though she has had the same nightmare.

She’s told by a woman she’s in denial. Another woman says we all nightmares like that and they’re not just nightmares.

Then Rosemary says she knows they’re not.

Woman: So you admit it. You’ve had them.

Blaze: They’re memories. My wife was abducted. I followed her, filmed her.

Rosmeary: You filmed her instead of rescuing her?

Blaze: I did both.

Blaze’s doc shows pandas experimenting on his wife, inseminating her.

3. Insight: Rosemary’s son Kyo is an alien creation:

Type of conflict: Plan goes wrong

Blaze rides through the jungle. Rosemary’s in the passenger seat. She tries to open the handle, but it’s locked.

Blaze: You think you know where pandas come from.

Rosmary: They’ve been in China for millenniums.

Blaze turns off his lights. Approaches a globe shaped lab of some kind.

They sneak up as Blaze films his doc and they are going to try to stop it. Rosemary follows, reluctant, but her curiosity gets the best of her. Her scientific mind needs to find out what’s going on.

Through a window, they see a woman being experimented on by pandas. Being inseminated.

The pandas see Rosemary, and the globe lab wiggles, shakes, the spins. It rises into the sky.

Rosemary: I knew there was something about them. They’re aliens.

Kyo runs out of the trailer toward them.

Blaze: Your son’s an alien creation.

4. Insight: All pandas are aliens:

Type of conflict: Stakes raised

The ship above fires and hits a tree near them, which catches fire.

Blaze: That was just a warning shot. If they wanted to kill us, they would have.

Rosemary: Why didn’t they?

Blaze Points at Kyo.

Rosemary: What’s so special about him?

Blaze: If they knew the truth about him, they wouldn’t let him live.

Kyo climbs up Rosemary’s leg. She shakes him off. Approaches him.

She throws up.

Rosemary: What gives them the right to inseminate us? To put something alien inside of us? They can’t do this to us.

Blaze: They crash-landed on a Tibet mountain. Pandas came out. Slowly spread through Asia, thriving most in the bamboo forests of central China.

5. Insight: Alien pandas have a hidden agenda to dominate Earth.

Type of conflict: stakes raised

Rosemary: They do more than eat bamboo and poop. They put that thing in me.

Blaze: Your son.

The fire spreads.

Rosmeary: But they’ve been passive for thousands of years. Eating bamboo. Biding their time.

Blaze: That was the first phase of their plan. Fool humans. Make us protect them. Eat bamboo. Something awakening in them. They found the old ship. Got it working.

Rosemary: They fooled most humans, not me.

Blaze: They inseminated you. That’s phase 2.

Rosemary: They’re cold. Their heartless.

A woman says like someone else I know.

Blaze: Phase 3: kill or enslave the rest of us.

6. Insight: Blaze believes Kyo is the promised panda.

Type of conflict: physical confrontation.

Rosemary: I won’t be a mother. I was right to try to kill him.

She approaches Kyo.

The women get between her and the baby panda, Kyo.

Blaze shows her a doc on his phone. Of his wife giving brith to a half human, half panda.

Blaze explains that his wife died during childbirth. He ran away with her hybrid son, who bit him. Blaze had a hallucination in which the hybrid spoke. He said the first full panda born from a panda would stop the invasion. Blaze says that’s Rosemary’s Panda, Kyo. She can’t kill him.

Rosemary: that was a hallucination.

Blaze says Rosemary has to raise him, protect him. Blaze will train her to fight the alien pandas. Her son is the key, the Promised Panda.

Rosemary runs away.

7. New way: Insightful. Rosemary believes Kyo is the promised Panda.

Type of conflict: physical confrontation

Rosemary fights Kyo, then stops, lets him scratch her. Protects him from humans and says you turn against him so fast. What happened to your vision that he’s the promised panda? Give him a chance to show who he is. Incisor attacks Blaze and Kyo protects Blaze by fighting Incisor.

8. Insight: Incisor is Kyo’s father

Type of conflict: physical confrontation/competition/love triangle

Incisor attacks Blaze and Kyo protects Blaze by fighting Incisor.

Incisor does a hand stand and uses scent glands under his tail to leave a waxy mark on the tree. Kyo looks at it. you biggest panda. Incisor points at it. Kyo chirps you’re not my father. Incisor nods his head and growls. Pats Kyo on head. Or Kyo shakes head profusely points at Incisor. Kyo speaks his first words. Father. No. You not.

Rosemary says he’s the one who inseminated me.

Maybe Kyo leaves scent mark too and they have same biology, she looks too.

9. Insight: Kyo can regenerate Rosemary back to life/he is the Promised Panda.

Type of conflict: physical confrontation/loss

Rosemary steps in the way of a beam that would obliterate Kyo. She dies. He nibbles her neck. She regenerates back to life.

[margo meck]

Margo’s Delivers Insights Through Conflict

“What I learned doing this assignment is…?” The power of asking “what do I want the audience to experience?” I looked at my New Ways / Insights in a new way based on asking this question.

What is the New Way / Insight you want to deliver?
Brandi goes from being very dependent and being taken care of to being independent and self-sufficient. The New Way I want to deliver is Brandi becoming more and more independent.

Five different ways using conflict to express an insight:

1 Brandi is still living at home, doesn’t have a job, doesn’t even have a driver’s license. She has a fight with her mother and moves out.

2 Brandi, has no place to live and no means to support herself. She goes to her minister and asks for help. Brandi has become a pariah because of the news that she is a child of incest. The minister wants her out of his church and refuses to help her.

3 An old friend of the family lets Brandi stay in a small room in his hanger and pays her to be a go-fer. She is late with an important delivery because her only transportation is a bicycle. Her boss comes down on her. Angry about the late delivery he threatens Brandi: “either get a driver’s license or leave.” She studies and successfully gets her license. This is a big shift toward independence.

4 Brandi’s big dream was marriage and having a family. She goes to her doctor who tells her because of genetic complications from incest, she shouldn’t have children. This internal conflict is resolved and shows independence when she does research to find out about adoption or even foster care.

5 At the end of the story Brandi has a major dilemma. In a national competition her primary competition threatens to go to the press and release her background if she doesn’t withdraw from the competition. This not only is a threat to her, but it also puts a spotlight on her mother. Her decision on how to react to this threat shows at the climax her New Way of independence.