If you are not a combative or confrontational person, it feels more natural to resolve your interpersonal conflicts quickly and shy away from the hard consequences of failing to do so in your story.
Unfortunately, this is opposite of drama, which is what the story is for. Direct, no bullshit, one-of-us-is-going-to-lose conflict is exactly what you need.
When it doesn’t happen, it reads on the page as indirect, as if the combatants are presenting their cases to the reader to establish who holds the moral high ground, rather than fighting a cage match. It’s dry and rational, unemotional, already processed.
If you want it ragged and emotional:
- Forget speeches. Angry people don’t compose elegant strings of dependent clauses, they are machine guns, spraying out words that they’re going to regret.
- Forget squabbling. Squabbling is not conflict. People disagreeing is not conflict. It has to be about something important to be conflict.
- Forget the status quo. Big disagreements change everything. That’s the point of them in drama.