Specifically, two symbols in common. 

I’ll explain in a moment but first, a story to draw from:

“First of all, I wasn’t upset,” I say. “I was amused. “You were being very loud,” I say. “You were yelling,” I raise my voice, “LIKE THIS.”

Mike just looks at me. “You were upset,” he says. “Your whole face was upset.” 

At our Super Bowl party, Mike had four Delirium Tremens and started close-talking again. 

It really was amusing. We all commiserated from a distance. We drank our Millers and watched Mike work the room. We watched him throw his arm over some guy’s shoulder, someone’s friend-of-a-friend. Then he leaned in and asked a question. As usual, it was about the logistics industry: YO, he came in ripped, thundering, YOU SHIP?

His victim, surprised and speechless, trapped, instinctively leaned back, dodging gusts of beer breath and spittle. Mike continued: CUZ I SHIP A LOT.

“C’mon, Mike,” I say, “really, I wasn’t upset,” I’m smiling now. “You’re so money, man—you’re so money and you don’t even know it.” 

He laughs. 
This got him. 
The group laughs, too. xa-xa-xa. 

We’re all at dinner. I raise my glass:

“When it comes to Super Bowl parties,” everyone raises a glass, “some show up for the game, some for the ads—” the group chuckles, anticipating the punchline: “But we all know you are the real show, Mikey!” 

xa-xa-xa.
   xa-xa-xa.
      xa-xa-xa.   

“Never change, buddy. We love you.”

We all cheers and smile at our friend and tell him Happy Birthday. He smiles back. 

“Thank you, guys.”

All compelling stories have these things in common: 

1 → Conflict 
2 → Change

In his excellent book about screenwriting, Save The Cat!, Blake Snyder explains how he uses the symbols “><” and “+/-” to denote conflict and change, respectively, in his scripts. 

Using symbols helps screenwriters visualize these elements within a script.

“The >< symbol denotes conflict,” writes Snyder. “The basic set-ups of Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, and Man vs. Society that you learned in high-school English can all be applied here,” he says. “But only one conflict per scene, please. One is plenty. And whether it’s a large issue or a small one, something physical or something psychological, it must be there. Every scene. Every time.”

“The +/- sign,” Snyder writes, “represents the emotional change you must execute in each scene. Think of each scene as a mini-movie. It must have a beginning, middle, and an end,” he says. “And it must also have something happen that causes the emotional tone to change drastically either from plus to minus or minus to plus.”

Look for these things in the next movie you watch.

Watch for conflict and change. Every good scene has both.

In fact, every good story has both, whether it’s a scene in a screenplay, a chapter in a novel, or a post on social media. Because these things are primal, baked into our psychology: change is human, conflict is human. 

Leverage this to make your stories more compelling.