A Conflict Layer Cake: worked EXAMPLE
Applying the principles in A Conflict Layer Cake to a single story, building dramatic tension and creating meaning through stacked, escalating conflicts.
In an oppressive society, the first open conflict will likely be with a relatively trivial aspect of that society.
Layer 1: The initial problem
A proud intelligent mother of daughters lives in a society that decrees that all women must completely cover their hair in public, and prosecutes that edict harshly.
The Society she lives in is forcing her to make difficult choices. Does she fight for her family’s physical safety, or their psychological integrity? How can she encourage them to grow and flourish as humans without risking their lives? Can she rebel privately and submit publicly, without betraying her values?
If that woman values her individual freedom to express herself how she wants, but at the same time wants to protect her family and stay out of prison herself, she can get around this by compromise – wearing a scarf in public but (at the same time) making it provocatively colourful.
And in semi-private places, amongst people she trusts and who share her views, she might discard it entirely. A resolution of sorts, but only a provisional resolution. It might solve the mother’s problem in the moment, but it’s not enough for a satisfying story.
Provisional resolutions are narratively frustrating. The story needs more layers.
For the story to continue, to go deeper into what it means to live in such a society, this provisional resolution has to expose a contradiction within the character’s intimate relationships and bring it to the surface.
Layer 2: An intimate relationship
Perhaps her oldest daughter, just finishing high school, who has always admired her mother’s feistiness, challenges what she sees as her mother’s moral cowardice. This starts creating tension within the family, who each have their own ways of responding to the constraints of living in such a society.
So, taking a lead from her mother’s values, but rejecting her mother’s compromise solution, the daughter provocatively goes scarf-less at an anti-government demonstration, and is arrested, beaten, and thrown in prison.
So, what does the mother do about this?
Layer 3: Society
Perhaps the mother’s story now goes back to the conflict with society.
Having tried and failed to get her daughter released, the mother could take her daughter’s place at the protests outside the prison where her daughter is held, but without going so far as to risk her own freedom. But this is ultimately just repeating the same beat. It looks like escalating the issue, but in reality it’s just turning up the volume on the same issue.
To move forward, the conflict needs to move from the arena of conflict with society, back into conflict with intimate others.
Layer 4: Back to Intimate relationships
Plenty of options here. Conflict with her husband. Conflict with a more cautious and compliant sibling. And all of these are useful, and probably should be explored.
But in the end, the conflict needs to be with her imprisoned daughter.
Perhaps the mother plays by the regime’s rules so she can gain access to her daughter and persuade her daughter to do the same. To plead guilty and ask for clemency.
“This is what you have to do. This is how powerless people like us deal with oppressive societies. Rebel in private. Submit in public.”
And then perhaps the daughter goes along with this advice. She humiliates herself in court, retracting her defiance, pleading guilty, and begging for clemency.
Layer 5: Society flexes its muscle again
But rather than respond as the mother said they would, the regime flexes its muscles.
Perhaps the judge sentences the daughter to house arrest and forces her to swear an oath of allegiance to the regime and promise never to challenge the regime’s authority again.
Another resolution, but again only a provisional resolution. And this time the cost is greater. Which is good – you want the costs to escalate as the story progresses.
Layer 6: Inner conflict
So, now the mother has mollified her husband, and saved her daughter from prison. But at the cost of her daughter’s shame and contempt. Both of which she can identify with.
She can see that the daughter she was trying to protect has suffered psychological harm. The daughter has lost faith in herself, in her mother, and in her ability to change the world for the better. And the mother can see that these psychological wounds are poisoning the whole family.
But worse, she can also see that it might push her daughter to become more radicalised and take even bigger risks. Especially when some of the friends she was demonstrating with are secretly arrested and disappear.
What does the daughter do now? What does her mother do?
The mother wants to model and live the values that she has taught her daughters. But at the same time, she wants to protect those daughters from the regime.
And the daughter wants to live the values that her mother has imparted, but at the same time respect her mother’s wish to protect the family.
The second act is starting to have real meat. But it’s not over yet. Once again, the real problem has only been postponed, not resolved. Which, once again, is good.
More possible layers
For example, the family may smuggle the daughter out of the country. Problem solved. Or is it?
There are many possibilities here. But you can’t leave the story where it is and satisfy the audience.
In a society where dissent can mean life or death, the story is not over until our central character faces life and death consequences herself. The story demands that she makes her choice and acts on it, in full knowledge of the risks.
What if the daughter uses her new freedom to openly attack the regime from abroad? What does that do for relationships within the family stuck back in the society?
And what if the regime kidnaps her from abroad, and forces her to face what passes for justice back home?
Or perhaps, even better, what if one of the daughter’s colleagues, a leader in the struggle, is killed during a demonstration, and the daughter steals back into the country to take over her role?
So, she lives out the values her mother taught her, but at the same time she puts her entire family at even greater risk. Where does the mother stand now?
In the end? What’s the cherry on this cake?
Eventually, the story must force the mother to choose. Between her family’s life, her daughter’s life, and her own values.
How much does her daughter’s hunger for freedom matter to her? How much does her sense of integrity and her core values matter to her? More than the safety of her family? More than the life of her daughter? Or her own life?
Which forces the mother’s core internal conflict to finally plug back into that first minor external conflict, the conflict with the society.
Rejecting the compromises she made in order to survive and at the same time keep her integrity, the mother chooses to take on and defeat the all-powerful oppressive society and its instruments to give her daughter the life she wants, and the life her mother believes she deserves. Even if the mother dies doing so.
Which then leads the audience to your premise:
In an oppressive society you can’t hide behind small compromises – sooner or later you will be forced to make a choice about the big things.
Ending with a Question
Could you end this story with a question rather than a conclusion?
For example: ‘At what point does complicity to survive become submission and enabling? And who gets to decide?’
Flipping Protagonist/Antagonist
You could flip this: make the daughter the protagonist and the mother the antagonist.
How would the flipped story play out? Would we find the same fault lines emerging? Want to try it?
