The Dilemma in Act 1

Catalyst? Inciting Incident? It’s all about the Dilemma.

Your past choices have led you down a path, and now you confront a fork in that path. Will you go left? Will you go right? Time moves forward. You must choose. How will you choose? This is your dilemma.

If you’re reading these entries in order, which I recommend, then we’ve got our hero and the spark, the hero’s setup desire and life dream, some logline templates, and an overall, hazy sense of the four acts in a story that correspond to the hero’s stages of transformation.

But what kickstarts the story? 

That’s the catalyst . . . and the dilemma.

I learned about the dilemma from Alan Watt’s book The 90-day Screenplay. You can find a discussion of it here.

I love it. It’s a great insight.

The dilemma!

This is also an example of why I continue to read how-to books on writing from all kinds of writers. You never know what kernel of wisdom you can pluck from another writer’s brain and incorporate into your own system.

The dilemma is one such kernel of wisdom for me.

The dilemma is a great expression of the function of the catalyst or so-called inciting incident.

What’s a catalyst?

A catalyst is a person or thing that precipitates an event, if you’re looking for the dictionary take on it. In stories, the catalyst serves a precise function. The catalyst is the outside world knocking on the hero’s door. A catalyst is something the hero has no control over. It’s the world saying, “Ready or not, here I come.” 

The best catalysts are personally directed to the hero. In the pattern of story referred to as the “Hero’s Journey,” the herald brings important news to the hero, and the hero must respond to this call to action. The herald doesn’t deliver the news to anyone and everyone. The hero alone is called and called now. These are the best catalysts because the hero cannot ignore them and go about their day.

What’s an inciting incident?

It’s a six-syllable synonym for catalyst. For some reason unknown to me, certain screenwriters switched to this unwieldy phrase. I find it vague, confusing, washed-out, and a bit pretentious. An inciting incident also seems like small potatoes. It’s just an incident, which is defined as an event or occurrence: pretty generic. To incite means to encourage violent or unlawful behavior: yikes. That doesn’t seem to fit most stories. So inciting incident means “an event that urges violent behavior.” Maybe that applies to revenge stories but not many others. 

On the other hand, a catalyst is a chemical metaphor: something added to the Erlenmeyer flask of the story catalyzes action in the hero.

What’s the dilemma?

The catalyst presents a dilemma to the hero. The catalyst is something that happens in the world. The catalyst is external to the hero. The dilemma is what the hero experiences. The catalyst puts the hero in a tough spot. The hero cannot wriggle out of this. If the hero stays where they are, they pay a price. If they seize the opportunity presented by the catalyst, they know there will be a catch. There’s always a price to pay for making a choice. The hero must make this choice and pay a price, one way or another. That’s the dilemma.

If the catalyst doesn’t present a real dilemma to the hero, it’s not a good catalyst.

I love this concept of dilemma. 

The concept of the dilemma really cleared up for me what the function of the catalyst was and, therefore, enabled me to distinguish between types of catalysts, between good ones and bad ones.

If the catalyst is generic, the hero can walk away because someone else can respond. 

If the catalyst isn’t urgent, the hero can stall and delay and put off the decision for a really boring length of time. 

If the catalyst is too forceful, the hero doesn’t have time to debate their options and make a heartfelt choice. They only have time to react, which means the hero will not experience a meaningful transformation in this kind of story.

Bad catalyst: generic, applicable to anyone, no costs or catches, no urgency, or so forceful it overrides the hero’s chance to debate

Good catalyst: personal, applicable only to the hero, costs attach to all choices, urgency, and forces the hero not toward a particular choice but into a real debate

The other clarity I found with the dilemma is that I realized, as a writer, that it is NOT my job to put the hero into a solvable situation.

The hero doesn’t solve the dilemma. You choose A, and you pay. You choose B, and you pay. It’s not about solving a problem. The dilemma is about testing the hero. The dilemma tests the hero to see how badly they want something. How strong is the hero’s desire? Does the hero want it badly enough to break through the dilemma, to risk the catch, to pay the price?

You can’t just say you want something. You have to prove it.

The hero has to act.

If the hero’s setup desire is so weak that they can’t even make it past the dilemma, well, the story’s over. We stay in Act 1 and believe whatever we want to believe, to paraphrase Morpheus in The Matrix. But we want to break into the second act. We want the adventure!

And as writers, we know how important it is to create a hero with a strong desire. They really, really, really want something! That kind of hero will make it past the dilemma. They may kick and scream, like Andy in The 40-year-old Virgin (2005), but our hero will make the hard choice. They have that spark! Our hero with a spark will start the adventure. Our hero will make a judgment call and act, knowing they’ll likely pay a price later.

If the catalyst doesn’t present an urgent personal dilemma to the hero, the hero’s choice to enter the Act 2 adventure isn’t very dramatic because it doesn’t show us a test of the strength of the hero’s desire and will likely not result in a serious, permanent transformation of the hero.

Or restated as a positive:

The catalyst presents an urgent personal dilemma to the hero so that the hero’s choice to enter the Act 2 adventure proves the strength of the hero’s desire and will likely result in a serious, permanent transformation of the hero.

We all experience dilemmas in life. Dilemmas force us to balance our priorities. You can’t have it all, do it all, or keep it all. You go one way. You cannot go back in time and go the other way. Our time is limited. 

So we balance our interests, desires, values, priorities: love, money, adventure, safety, family, justice. 

We can’t have it all in equal proportions all the time. We have to give up something to get something, and our calculations may change over the time of our lives. I may resolve a dilemma when I’m twenty-two in a very different way than I’d resolve that dilemma when I’m fifty-two.

So a dilemma is not something the hero has to solve. The dilemma forces the hero into a judgment call about what’s important to them at that moment. The hero has to make a calculation of what’s most important at that moment and choose accordingly. The dilemma backs the hero into a corner and asks, “How badly do you want it?”

You might see the following expression a lot. I’ve used it myself. “The hero wants to go on the adventure of a lifetime, but there’s a catch: they’ll have to take their spoiled cousin . . . their overbearing boss . . . their ex-lover . . . or a talking skunk.”

Whatever. You get the idea.

Having to drag along an annoying sidekick is a cost the hero has to pay to prove they really want to go on this adventure.

That “but there’s a catch” is the price inherent in the dilemma presented to the hero by the catalyst in Act 1. The hero wants to search for treasure or take the case, stay home alone or get on that ship, but there’s a price to pay, now and probably later, too.

You only live once. What’s it going to be?

Maybe the hero’s wife is about to give birth, and he’s gotta get home. Well, we don’t want to see him enjoy a drink and a nap on a first-class flight. We want to see the hero take a cross-country bus with a talking skunk.

How badly does he want it?

Pretty stinking bad.

_____

PHOTO: This is from years ago when my younger brother Mike, now a film-school grad in New York, and I wore UNC-Chapel Hill jerseys to support my son who played college football