At the heart of every story lies a dilemma. It is not a question of whether or not your protagonist has a dilemma, but rather, how effectively it has been explored. By exploring your protagonist’s dilemma, you are led to the most dynamic version of your story.
The dilemma is your story’s source, from which all tension and conflict arise. Exploring the dilemma helps distill your story to its clearest meaning. It sheds light on what does not belong, those random digressions that are not germane to the central conflict and may obfuscate its meaning. The dilemma offers clues to what still needs rewriting, and leads you to the most effective order of events.
By definition, you cannot figure out a dilemma. In order to connect to it, you must become invested in your characters.
Sometimes you can hold so tightly to your idea of your characters that you choke them into submission. You are left with two-dimensional versions of what they could have been. By inquiring into the dilemma, you are free to explore your characters in surprising ways. Your screenplay can move inexorably to a climax that reveals a transformation.
STORY MAXIM #1: The purpose of story is to reveal a transformation.
An understanding of transformation is crucial to having anything more than an intellectual relationship to your story’s dilemma.
When you think of the word transformation, it may conjure images of some grand occurrence, a vision of enlightenment, but transformation is simply a shift in perception. It is the moment that you see something in a new way. Yet, when you have seen something a particular way your entire life, and then, in an instant, see it differently, it is both miraculous and as common as dirt. When a transformation occurs, the tension vanishes, the fight disappears, and you are left with a new understanding.
WHAT IS A DILEMMA?
A dilemma is a problem that cannot be solved without creating another problem. Many writing books talk about the dramatic problem, the thing that the protagonist is attempting to solve or overcome throughout the story. However, after years of working with screenwriters and novelists, I have discovered that the notion of a dramatic problem actually limits the writers understanding of their story. When you approach your story as if your protagonist is struggling with a problem, you try to “fix” it. This can short-circuit your work because underlying your protagonist’s apparent problem is a dilemma. By inquiring into the dilemma, you begin to understand the nature of your theme. Consequently, you see your story from a wider perspective.
STORY MAXIM #2: Problems are solved, while dilemmas are resolved through a shift in perception.
It is unlikely that most screenwriters are even conscious of their story’s dilemma. In fact, I have talked to successful writers who only seem to have a vague sense of it. They are aware of the mechanics – that each scene must contain tension, and that this tension should build through the story to its eventual climax. But this alone is not always enough to create a thoroughly satisfying story. By exploring the nature of the dilemma, you are led to more dynamic situations for your characters.
PLOT VERSUS THEME
Plot can be defined as the series of obstacles your protagonist encounters and overcomes throughout the story. When you explore these problems as a whole, you begin to notice underlying patterns that reveal the dilemma.
Typically, you tend to see your situations as problems. You may believe that if only you got the promotion, your life would be better. If you lost weight, or quit smoking, or got a new relationship, or moved out of your parents’ basement, then everything would be just fine. Beneath these apparent problems is a deeper reason for why you have not accomplished your goal. The fact is that the meaning you attach to your goal actually prevents you from achieving it. It is not that your desire is bad or wrong, but rather until you reframe your reason for wanting something, you are forever in bondage to the object of your desire.
If I believe that when I find true love I will be complete, I may set out on a quest to find a mate only to discover that no one makes me feel complete. I end the relationships, only to repeat the pattern again. It is only after I reframe my relationship to completeness and recognize that the experience must come from within that it becomes possible to find a lasting relationship.
Or I might think that when I get a promotion, I will find validation. Until the validation comes from within, however, my search for approval will never end. In other words, it is literally impossible for me to experience validation through my goal of rising through the ranks. It is only by resolving my dilemma through reframing my relationship to validation that it becomes possible to get the promotion, if the promotion belongs in my life.
Sometimes, at the end of the story, the protagonist discovers that the thing they wanted no longer matters to them and that the journey was necessary simply for them to reframe their values.
WHERE DID YOUR STORY COME FROM?
Perhaps your story began as a premise, a character, or even a single image. But beneath these impulses was a subconscious quest for resolution. The creative impulse seeks to make order from chaos, to contextualize a series of events with the intention of making new meaning from them. As storytellers, unresolved situations draw us in: Will Jimmy Stewart leave Bedford Falls? Will Dorothy’s dreams come true somewhere over the rainbow? Will Harry Potter triumph over Lord Voldemort?
These questions appear to present a problem, but they actually provide a context through which you can explore the resolution to a dilemma. If Jimmy Stewart did leave Bedford Falls at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life you would feel disappointed. He would not have resolved his dilemma and learned that his life was already wonderful. Similarly, if Dorothy’s dreams did come true somewhere over the rainbow, you would miss the point. If Harry Potter simply destroyed Lord Voldemort, and that was the end of it, there would be no context for the theme, which is that good and evil must coexist.
STORY MAXIM #3: The desire to write is connected to the desire to resolve something you seek to understand.
By exploring the dilemma in your screenplay, you often see where it exists in your life. By exploring its resolution in your life, you often find its resolution in your screenplay.
EXAMPLES OF DILEMMAS
A dilemma is not a theme, yet, it is the vehicle through which you explore every theme. It provides the ongoing conflict that leads to the protagonist’s surrender of their false belief and, finally, their shift in perception, where the dilemma is resolved.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of examples.
• I want love and acceptance, but I don’t want to reveal myself. (Roxanne, Catch Me if You Can, Lars and the Real Girl, City Lights, Burn After Reading, The Breakfast Club, Tootsie)
• I want to succeed, but not at the expense of losing my integrity. (The Social Network, The Candidate, Wall Street, Working Girl, Network, Say Anything, The Ides of March, Jerry Maguire, Man on the Moon, Amadeus)
• I want to move on, but I cannot say goodbye. (Ordinary People, The Lovely Bones, The Sixth Sense)
• I want to know what happens when I die, so that I will know how to live. (Harold and Maude)
Notice that dilemmas are visceral. They engage the imagination and create an emotional response. Notice, also, that every single character in the story wants the same thing. This desire manifests itself in very different ways, but it’s there. This is because your characters are all a function of the story, thus they’ll constellate around the dilemma.
For example, each character in The Godfather struggles with loyalty. It’s not just Michael Corleone who feels torn between his love for Kay and his loyalty to his mafia family. His father, Vito, struggles with his loyalty to his past values, and the new wave of drugs that threaten to disrupt his family business. Kay is loyal to Michael, even as she watches their love dissolve. Hot-tempered Sonny is loyal to “Pop,” even as he is passed over as head of the family. Each character constellates around this struggle for loyalty. In the climax, the theme becomes clear: The desire to be loyal at the expense of your core values leads to the betrayal of self and others.
DILEMMA TRANSCENDS GENRE
Dilemma is not a function of genre. Although there are basic rules to genre — in a romantic comedy, the couple will probably end up together, and in a thriller the protagonist will discover that they’re incapable of overpowering the villain through force and must change in order to succeed — there is no formula you can apply in exploring the dilemma at the heart of your story. Each dilemma has infinite manifestations, and yet, when distilled to its nature, it is universal.
Learn more about marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of structure in The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, or The 90-Day Screenplay workshops.
Writing the Forbidden