Use caution when writing a Man vs. Society conflict into your script.
If you don’t think through what a Man vs. Society conflict will cost your hero, you will wind up with a Man vs. Nature conflict instead. …except your storm will be made up of human faces.
Last week, Chris talked about Man vs. Nature, the conflict that pits your protagonist against an unintelligent force. The world-ending earthquake does not willfully attack the hero, nor does the hero have complicated emotions toward it. “This is bad,” will usually suffice.
If you take society at a surface level, you can accidentally end up with such a force of nature instead of a complicated, multifaceted group of people, pressures and expectations. You get Indiana Jones vs. The Nazis. “Nazis are bad,” and so they act like The Borg in your script.
(Note from Chris: Lora and I both think Indy is amazing. We’re just saying that the Indy-version of the Nazis are more a force of Nature than they are a complex Society.)
You might miss this oversimplification in a script (even your own) if one or two members of the societal group are used as villains, in a Man vs. Man conflict (which we’ll address in an upcoming post.)
But if these characters are simply photocopies of the larger group with a more menacing snarl and a fancier name, you’ll never get deeper into the real magic a Man vs. Society story can conjure.
Avoid this two-dimensionality by addressing the sacrifices that your protagonist must make when he stands against a society.
