Why Your Characters Need a Common Enemy
29 October 2026 · 2 min read
Conflict is the engine. Every writer knows it. Drama and comedy both come out of friction, because friction is where the heat is. Nobody wants a scene where everyone politely agrees.
But there is a trap here, and television falls into it all the time.
The bickering problem
Give an ensemble enough episodes and they start to grate. They snipe. They fight. They get on each other's nerves, week after week. And at some point the audience asks a fair question. Why do these people even hang out with each other?
That question is deadly. If your characters can't stand each other, why would we want to spend a hundred hours with them?
Close ranks
The fix is simple. Unite them against a common enemy. Let the group close ranks against somebody else. When that happens, the team becomes bigger than the squabbling inside it.
Sometimes the enemy is a literal rival. In Cheers, the regulars insult each other constantly, Carla most of all. Then Gary's Olde Towne Tavern shows up and suddenly they're a team. And we get to be on it.
Sometimes the enemy is a situation. Community is a pile of very different dysfunctions. What holds them together is the insanity of the college itself. Fighting it turns them into a found family.
In M*A*S*H, nobody much likes anybody and nobody wants to be at the war. But in the operating room they work as one. The war is the enemy. Everything else is noise.
My favorite example is from Silicon Valley. A room full of brilliant, prickly nerds who do not get along. Then they're handed a very unusual hypothetical problem. I won't describe it here. Let's just say it is a question of efficiency. And the group dynamic starts to sing. Inspiration strikes. It's one of the funniest scenes on television, and for obvious reasons I have never been able to show it in a classroom.
So when you write your ensemble, keep the friction. Just don't make it the only thing. People want to hang out with your characters. Give us a reason to want to join the team.
The video above has the full Silicon Valley scene. Watch it somewhere private.
Watch it
