My acting past is coming back to haunt me. I found the following advice about screenwriting on a new website.

Hal Ackerman:
Bob, the most important thing to think about in scene writing (and incidentally my book, Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way, is broken down into 2 sections, The Big Picture, which is about the telling of the story and The Small Picture, which is about scene writing) is that there is one purpose for every scene that we write, and that purpose is not what you think it is -
it's not for the characters to say stuff that you want them to say.
It is to create an arena for the character or character to do everything
that they can to get what they want in that moment.
I call it the WADOOGEE:
And it means:
- WHAT do the characters want?
- What do they DO?
- To GET it?

I call this the character objective, and when the 2 characters in the scene have opposing objectives, then what is created is the life blood of every scene, which is conflict. Think about 2 coyotes and one bone.

This is right out of my actor training, when I could I hear my director who used to teach at ACT screaming at me "what does your character want and what are they prepared to do to get it?" It's like neo-marxism all over again, thinking every damn scene in a play is about the conflict between one person wanting one thing and the other person wanting the exact opposite thing.

And I don't I ever got this concept in acting because the whole time I kept thinking, why does life always have to be about conflict? Why can't two characters want the same thing? And why can't they agree to disagree if they don't?