The Human Contradiction: How Complex Characters Drive Great Screenplays

In a great screenplay, characters are never entirely what they seem. A confident politician might be driven by secret insecurities. A hardened detective might harbor a quiet tenderness he cannot show. A villain might long for redemption even as she orchestrates chaos. These are not inconsistencies or flaws in writing—they are, in fact, signs of a writer in command of one of the most powerful tools in the screenwriting arsenal: dramatic contradiction. This technique gives life to characters, transforming them from flat archetypes into emotionally layered individuals. And while mastering this approach can be challenging, a screenwriting consultant can offer invaluable support in helping writers identify, build, and sustain contradictions that feel both surprising and inevitable.

Dramatic contradiction means the intentional creation of opposing traits or desires within a single character. It allows a writer to explore the internal complexity of a character by showing that they are capable of contradictory impulses—pride and shame, cruelty and compassion, confidence and doubt. In life, people are inconsistent, conflicted, and unpredictable. Good screenwriting reflects this truth by embedding such tensions into the core of a character’s identity, allowing those contradictions to surface through action and dialogue rather than expository explanation.

Consider Michael Corleone in The Godfather. He begins the film as a quiet, honorable outsider—disinterested in his family’s criminal empire and clearly uncomfortable with violence. Yet by the end, he has become more ruthless than his father ever was, orchestrating assassinations while sitting in serene silence. This transformation is not a betrayal of character but the fulfillment of a latent contradiction. Michael is both a man of principle and a man of legacy, torn between who he wants to be and who he is destined to become. The contradiction was always there—his capacity for brutality hiding under layers of restraint—and it is the tension between these opposing selves that makes his arc so compelling.

Dramatic contradiction does not require a character to undergo a full transformation. It can also play out in micro-reveals, where a character’s contradictory traits are exposed in moments of stress, vulnerability, or intimacy. Think of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. For most of the film, she is cold, imperious, and demanding—a caricature of the powerful fashion editor. Yet in a quiet hotel room scene late in the film, we see her without makeup, facing a crumbling marriage and emotional fatigue. It’s a small moment, but one that shifts our understanding of her. She is not softened or redeemed, but she is humanized. The contradiction between the persona she performs and the person she hides allows the audience to feel both intimidated by her and empathetic toward her.

A screenwriting consultant can help a writer harness this technique by asking the right questions during script development: What does your character want, and what do they fear? What public face do they show, and what private reality do they conceal? Are they behaving in complex ways, or are they simply reacting to the plot? In doing so, the consultant encourages the writer to think more deeply about motivation, backstory, and the internal logic of human behavior. Rather than forcing change onto a character to create drama, the writer learns to mine drama from the contradictions that already exist within them.

One of the key challenges in using dramatic contradiction is ensuring that it feels authentic rather than arbitrary. If a character behaves in ways that feel disconnected or unjustified, the audience may view the story as incoherent or manipulative. A screenwriting consultant can provide a crucial outside perspective, helping to identify where the contradiction feels earned and where it may need more narrative support. For instance, if a character who has been portrayed as cowardly suddenly commits a heroic act, a consultant might suggest earlier scenes that hint at a hidden courage—perhaps a story from the character’s past, or a scene in which they protect someone in a minor but telling way. These subtle cues create a foundation for contradiction, making later behavior feel surprising but not implausible.

Dramatic contradiction is also an important tool in ensemble storytelling, where each character can reflect or refract different tensions within the narrative world. In Moonlight, Chiron is a young man whose coming-of-age journey is marked by silence, vulnerability, and the gradual adoption of a hardened exterior. By the third act, he has physically transformed into a muscular, intimidating drug dealer, a far cry from the soft-spoken boy he once was. Yet when he reunites with a childhood friend, his gentleness resurfaces, as does the longing and emotional fragility that have always defined him. The contradiction is not just between who he is and who he appears to be, but between the masks society demands and the person he still aches to be beneath them. A skilled consultant might point out how that contradiction is working thematically—how it speaks to masculinity, race, queerness, and trauma—and encourage the writer to deepen those currents throughout the script.

Importantly, contradiction does not always manifest as moral ambiguity or hidden emotional wounds. It can also emerge in playful or unexpected ways. In Lady Bird, the titular character is simultaneously rebellious and deeply needy, scornful of her suburban life yet desperate for approval. Her biting sarcasm exists alongside genuine sincerity, often within the same scene. These contradictions don’t cancel each other out; they define her teenage experience and make her feel real. A screenwriting consultant might help a writer see that such contradictions are not flaws in the character design but essential features—opportunities to generate conflict, humor, and pathos.

Working with a consultant also helps a writer avoid the trap of flattening characters in revision. Many writers, in the effort to clarify their story or tighten a draft, accidentally strip away the very contradictions that make characters compelling. A good consultant will urge the writer to preserve those tensions, even when they make characters less immediately likable or harder to categorize. Because real people are messy, contradictory, and layered, characters must be allowed to reflect that same complexity. It’s what keeps them alive in the reader’s imagination—and, eventually, on the screen.

Dramatic contradiction is not simply about making characters interesting. It is about revealing the humanity that drives them—their internal wars, their unresolved longings, their self-deceptions and quiet truths. When used thoughtfully, contradiction becomes the heartbeat of a character, pulsing beneath every line of dialogue and gesture on the page. And with the guidance of a screenwriting consultant, writers can learn not only to recognize this heartbeat but to amplify it, crafting characters who resonate not because they are perfect, but because they are achingly, recognizably human.