How Writers Can Create A Powerful Dilemma To Make Their Stories Better - Jeff Kitchen

i have a story idea and i'm hoping that we can see ways to make it more wild and and really sort of shake things up from what i have okay i'm trying to shorten it down but my character the protagonist is a male in his 30s we'll call him derek and he's always been a techie he majored in computer science he had a commodore 64. he's always been very heady and flash forward many years later he gets a very lucrative job at a fortune 500 company where he's in uh he's in charge of the sort of i.t department and their security and it's a dream job but he's totally bored there's there's nothing he knows exactly what his life is and he's completely bored he becomes a workaholic he doesn't really meet any romantic partners until one day he goes to a coffee shop and a very attractive young woman asks for help with her computer well it turns out unbeknownst to him he's been targeted by a rival company and they want to use her to seduce him so that they can get into the company's mainframe and find out trade secrets so uh her name is skyler what a perfect name for for that character and at first when he realizes he's being used he's upset and then he realizes he doesn't care anymore and he's willing because his life really wasn't what he wanted and he's fallen in love with this woman and he knows that he's being manipulated and he doesn't care so um he feels that he can change skylar and give her a better life and that anyway help me out here how can i make this story better give it more sort of a wow factor really shock people with it well it's not just mere shock value it's the thing that i would focus on first is um what's his name again derek derrick um would be a good strong dilemma for derek being trapped between two equally unacceptable alternatives a good example of that would be in the movie training day where the ethan hawk character jake is caught in a good strong dilemma between his his ambition to make it on to the denzel washington characters undercover narcotics squad his ambition he's very ambitious and his moral compass because he's willing to do anything to make that squad because he wants to make detective and get his own division you know become a high-ranking cop and his ambition is his weakness so he's overly ambitious and yet he has a strong moral compass too so as alonso drags him deeper and deeper into the basically the trap that alonso has set for him his ambitions are being realized he's moving forward aggressively and seeing a path but that also includes corruption and questionable activities so his moral compass is rebelling so he can't let go of his ambition nothing will make him let go of his ambition but he can't let go of his moral compass either and they're really equally strong so that's an example of a good strong dilemma so i would the first thing i would focus on is a potential dilemma for derek because there's either a dilemma inherent in the story idea that you've pitched or there isn't if it's there then i want to isolate it and then amplify it to maximize its strength if it's not there i would experiment with creating one and and i'm not trying to force a dilemma onto it because the story's the most important thing but a good strong dilemma can amplify the dramatic power of a story and so i look at the possibility of creating one without forcing it or bending the story out of shape in this one it seems like there is a dilemma kind of sitting on the surface in other words i'm not having to go is there one in there i can see it right there because it's unacceptable to go along with the manipulation and generally the dilemma kicks in somewhere and then around the end of act one you have to like live with the character for a while get to know them get to care about the lead pro the protagonist and for the story to develop um to the point where somewhere around the end of act one the protagonist finds him or herself caught in a dilemma of magnitude magnitude means significance to an audience does it hit them where they live does it grab them is it important like you could have a dilemma that it's unacceptable to wash the car it's equally unacceptable to mow the lawn that is in fact a dilemma but it's not going to grab an audience it doesn't have magnitude so so if after a whole act one he's noticing that he's the subject of a manipulation and he's like i'm not gonna allow myself to i'm not gonna i'm not gonna fall for this i'm not going down that road and yet we're looking for something that's equally unacceptable that like it's unacceptable to let go of this kind of wild card that has disrupted his predictable career trajectory which reminds me of the story of the musician sting from the police he was the headmaster of a girls school in england and he said at one point he had a a flash where he could see the whole rest of his life in this really predictable path and he was like like whoa i am not doing that like let me out of here and he's like you know he's like i like music i'm i'm gonna chase that hard so there's something similar in derek going i don't like the trap that she's leading me into but i do like the trap she's leading me into and so there is that's why i'm saying i could see a dilemma sitting on the surface there is a dilemma inherent in the material which then now that we have isolated the the two halves of the dilemma then the next step that i would do would be to experiment with amplifying each of those halves so if i'm him and one way i do it is i i put myself in derek's shoes so if i'm derek and not only all my training in terms of security and i.t and lockdown and watching the companies back and keeping predators out and knowing that they're out there trade secrets and all that kind of stuff that i'm naturally not only a guard dog but an attack dog um [Music] so like it's unacceptable to let anybody outsmart me in this stuff because i'm protecting my master and i'll i'll take a bullet for them you know it's the attack dog the secret service all that stuff is kind of like wired into him and there's a professional ferocity that like nobody's getting around me i'm the goalie nobody's scoring on me and i don't care if i dislocate my arm and i never play again they're not putting that puck in that net the more that that aspect of his personality can be amplified the more what we're doing is we're we're jacking up that side of the dilemma by playing what if with what are the things that it's like putting a jack under it and jacking it up a little and at first it'll go right up and then it'll be like you can still get one more click out of it and like what's the most intense you can make it and and there's a variety of factors that would inform that and go into that one of the things you see often is a past failure where he's not going to let it happen again or and maybe that goes hand in glove with a character defect on himself or but it's really just like like my dog will die to keep you from hurting my kids that kind of thing you are not getting past that watchdog so amplifying that and then and you can see how that it's not that hard to beef that up to make him a ferocious guard dog and and and yet because he's also like bored um dead-ended and potentially also has that kind of revelation that sting had of like oh my god i can see the whole rest of my life and i'd really rather shoot myself than go down that path so there's something that awakens a rebellious streak in him an adventurous streak um a kink you know just a fascinating fascination with this young woman and it's almost like an opportunity presents itself to break out of jail so it's kind of a wild streak in this character it's almost like a tiger that's been raised in a zoo and is domesticated in a lot of ways get its food delivered to it all that stuff but some of its wild instincts arise and it has a profound hunger to pursue that and and the thing to also bear in mind that as i'm playing with this this is wildly unformed in my mind so that i'm literally sitting here with a couple things in my hand and nothing else uh so i can see how to amplify that part of him that is no way you're getting around me over my dead body but then what i'm also looking at and i got that that's not going away that's not so hard we can probably complicate that as the story progresses or we'll stumble over ways that are obvious that we haven't noticed yet to make that even stronger but that's not complicated from one point of view this is an interesting puzzle to make this side of the dilemma more unacceptable more powerful more dynamic and so all the reasons why he can't let go of the opportunity that she presents including her he's just fascinated with her as a possible mate even if he's already married or maybe his marriage is dead and who knows that these are all things to play with as you play what if with the dilemma but that part of him you know for instance like a crazy what if like what if like in lethal weapon he goes home and puts a gun to his mouth and is thinking about suicide like he's so dead end in this job and hates it that maybe he's attempted suicide before and nobody ever knew i don't know maybe he just plays with the rifle with a handgun at home that would complicate it gives him more of a flaw which you tend to want to have and complicates his approach to the riddle that she presents for him internally i think that clearly if he's great at his job that he has several different options like he could just shut her out and walk away and there but then there's no dilemma there's no story but that's one of the options once he begins to notice what she's up to he's like i'm out of here you know screw you i'm how why would you do this to me and you're not my friend and we're not going down this road and he just pulls the plug and it's done maybe they got into a little bit of something and he just covers it back up or changes something and what they got didn't amount to anything and he just drops the firewall on them but what you're suggesting is quite a bit different than that is that that that part of him which is starving for some fresh air can't let go of this opportunity and won't and even if it ends up that he ultimately goes over to the dark side and completely betrays his company and that gets him out of his trap you know it's like the bear chewing its leg off to get out of a leg hold trap that may be one of his options or that may be see there's one thing to be trapped in a good strong dilemma and that generally kicks in around the end of act one after we've gotten to know the character and get the story developed to a point that dilemma builds an intensity all throughout act two until around the end of act two it comes to a critical juncture where it comes to the make or break point because with dilemma you really can't choose either way like jake in training day cannot let go of his ambition and cannot let go of his moral compass the crisis in training day comes when alonzo tries to have him killed by the hillside gang the latino gang in that house up on the hill and they're about to blow his brains out in the bathtub i'm not going to say anything more about the story because i don't want to spoil it for people who haven't seen it but that's part way through it i'm not going to talk about the ending at all but that crisis forces a decision in action about the dilemma so that the crisis demands an immediate decision and action about the dilemma that the protagonist is still stuck in and the protagonist once the dilemma comes to this critical juncture the crisis which is out around the three-quarters point in the story the protagonist has to make some kind of decision and take some kind of action that breaks the paralysis of the dilemma so they're now in a fight to the finish to try to resolve the dilemma so as i'm wrestling with derek's dilemma and looking at amplifying it making it more powerful more riveting to the audience and part of that is playing crazy what if that's what i'm talking about like don't settle for the easy choices how far can you take it how much can you make this protagonist scream because of this dilemma the more impossible it is for them the more the audience comes up on the edge of their seat because this is our hero in this story and they're caught in a bad situation and if that dilemma is universal which you tend to want to do then the audience is sitting there going i understand this dilemma because i'm caught in something like this you know of like a duty versus honor dilemma or whatever that may not be i that's not necessarily and that's probably not a good description of this particular dilemma but let me let me so let me retract and articulate his dilemma with that level of simplicity so duty and honor is definitely there no way they're getting around me but no way am i letting go of this whacked out left-handed opportunity that blindsided me and reawakened my starvation for adventure and freedom and unpredictability so really it's a security versus adventure dilemma which is very universal like no way am i letting go of my security but there's no way i'm letting go of my adventure it's like it sucks being a bank teller but it sucks trying to make it as a painter living on peanut butter sandwiches i can't let go of the security but i can't let go of my need for adventure so i i think that's an accurate representation at first glance of derek's dilemma so his and i would say that he has a part of his personality makeup is a deep-seated need for security and predictability and to be a good watchdog but there's also the contradictory part of his personality that's starving for adventure and fresh air and to get out get out of that cubicle and start really living life so not only does skyler and her masters present an unexpected opportunity but that the deeper derek gets in as you progress through act two and this dilemma gets more and more intense as things keep ratcheting up that it becomes more acceptable to let them get around him but it's also more acceptable more unacceptable to let go of this dynamic once in a lifetime opportunity and you know and some of that would probably have to do with the nature of the business that business that he's protecting and the intentions of the uh predator who's operating schuyler and and you know those are things to play with for instance is the company that derek works for maybe the more derek is exposed to what skyler is talking about and probably what her boss is telling her to say maybe derek begins to perceive that the company he's vigilantly protecting is actually either a criminal operation or is doing something morally reprehensible that makes this side stronger but maybe what they're going to do with it is highly questionable or criminal or whatever so the need to protect so there's there's story possibilities that can go in wildly different directions um and you know so much of that has to do with your intention as a storyteller where you want to steer the story versus listening to the story like it basically comes down to what the tools that you're using as a dramatist suggest in terms of story possibilities and dramatizing the material so that it stays active and gripping to an audience there's like there's like the demands of the story and the demands of the tools and you want to really listen to both of them the tools will suggest certain things the story will suggest certain things and you want to really factor them both in like the the um the technique the techniques of the various tools involved may suggest that you steer the story in this direction but your intention as a storyteller or as the story takes on a life of its own it may really want to go in this direction and you want to really be responsive to that the story is the most important thing the tools are a mere technique that can help you shape the story to make it work dramatically so it's a given take between what the story the energy that the story brings to the table and your intentions for what the story brings versus the technique that you bring to the table so it's kind of like a synthesis of the two and so you know as i work with making the dilemma more and more intense and riveting and entertaining or compelling you know it may be a brutal thriller so it's not like an action comedy at all so entertainment value is absolutely like how's this gonna turn out i can't look away somebody's gonna die here you know it can be brutally intense and really riveting so it's not like entertainment value and like haha funny but it's just like they couldn't pay you to to leave the theater before it ends um so that as i build that dilemma toward the the critical juncture around the end of act ii when that dilemma becomes a crisis and forces an immediate decision in action about that dilemma now that it's gone critical it's like a gun to the head that demands em you don't you don't get to contemplate your dilemma from a distance anymore going what am i gonna do when it goes critical now it has gone critical and it's like the gun is to the head and you got to make a decision right now and take an action and you're like i can't make a decision so that's it's it's riveting but as i'm amplifying the dilemma what i'm looking at is the point on the horizon that it's all going to converge toward at the two-thirds point around the end of act two that what does not what does what is shaping up as the potential crisis as i build the dilemma in other words there could be a whole lot of factors that go into constituting the crisis which informs the trajectory of the dilemma because often a crisis is all the worst possible stuff happening at the worst possible moment and sometimes the crisis can involve that you're it's not like all catastrophic failure all at the same time which is definitely part of a crisis where everything's caving in on you at the worst possible moment but it can also be like that you're right on the edge of succeeding right as it all goes to hell you're like i'm an inch away from pulling this off i had a way out i can do this and it all cascades into failure so it's not all just it's all going wrong but part of it it's all going right and this is the worst possible thing at the worst possible moment so it's a mixture of the two and it's so as i build the dilemma the possibilities for the crisis inform the choices that i'm making because it's like how can i make this as gripping as possible as it gets denser and more complex and more compelling and that's where you know like what i'm talking about about don't make sedate choices you know it's about entertainment value about it's about outrageousness and that doesn't mean just mere wacky stuff or blowing more things up but it's like as he wrestles with his dilemma as things get more and more intense she i would think is perhaps flowering as a person in their relationship that she's like the best thing that ever happened to him but she may also be the worst thing that's ever happened to him like she's creating him she's turning him into a new person but she's also destroying him so that he can't hang on and he can't let go and she's like wildly the love of his life but he still can't jump ship because he's gonna lose his life maybe in the process of making his life so it's an aggressive experimentation with pure storytelling and pure technique and synthesizing the two where the technique suggests ramping up the intensity more and more and more until it's at the like it's like at a point of the engine is screaming and about to vibrate to pieces and then everything really goes wrong at that like at the worst possible moment a whole other monkey wrench gets thrown into the thing so it's all like playing with options um is that helpful yeah i love it i love it and i'm wondering is there something that's just dilemma that's just one part of one of the seven tools but that's where i go first right and i'm wondering what where could like a meteor come from another plant and just like just destroy all expectations because we figure there's probably going to be two outcomes one of two either he's able to quote unquote save her and give her this good life maybe she never had and that's why she would do such a thing and she needed the money and she got in with some bad people or um he's going to he has such a strong moral compass that he's going to say sorry i can't do this i not only am i going to ruin my career but my parents and all my high school friends and college friends they're never going to see me the same and i'm going to end up in the papers and so but then what could be a third thing that could just come from nowhere that we don't see because those seem like two likely outcomes well there's two avenues to explore in that question one of which has to do with informal logic they talk about dilemma as being caught on the horns of a dilemma two equally unacceptable alternatives either one will gore you you can't you can't go either way and they talk about different ways to resolve a dilemma one is that you can pick one of the horns or the other you can pick one of the unacceptable alternatives and go all the way become a revolutionary with her destroy the company that he was in or throw her to the become a more rigorous guardian of the he could he could go he could pick one of those two unacceptable alternatives and go all the way with it and resolve his dilemma or by thinking on his feet he could come up with a radically third alternative in which he's not choosing either one of the things that he was trapped in it's like somebody saying you got to go through that door or you got to go through that door and by thinking on your feet you get a chainsaw and cut a third door and go out that way it's about it by thinking on your feet you come up with a creative resolution they call it the third path in the science of dilemma and so often in a story like this the protagonist does find a third way out um there's a great example of that in the firm but let me just say spoiler spoiler alert and if you don't if you haven't seen the firm which is a phenomenal movie hit pause fast forward a little bit because it's a great example but i don't want to ruin the movie for people either so in in the firm tom cruise is in this high-paying law firm and he finds out it's actually owned by the mafia and he gets put in a good strong dilemma by ed harris this aggressive fbi agent who says you have to um bring us proof that they are involved in a criminal enterprise or we are going to ruin your life and if he brings proof then he violates his oath as a lawyer if he does what the fbi wants he'll be permanently disbarred because he divulged client privileged information but if he doesn't do what they're saying they'll ruin his life it's something like that i i don't know if i'm saying it exactly right but it's very much in the ballpark he finds a creative third way out in that when he when one of the people he's working with mentions that they have been systematically over billing him which they're doing to everybody and they make a lot of money on that and it's criminal the guy that he's the client that he's talking to says what they don't realize is when they put a stamp on this that became a federal crime and tom cruise lies light up and he's like yes and each single act is is punishable by you know ten thousand dollar fine and ten years and each one of those and he goes i just studied that for the bar exam and he's like and so what he does he he does not do what the fbi demands of him but he does not go down with this criminal law firm either is that he gives the fbi proof of them systematically over billing the clients through the mail each of which is a federal crime and it wasn't this huge bust that the fbi wanted but a lot of little busts that have real teeth and add up to a lot of prison time but it's a lot of hard work for the fbi but he gave them by the letter of the law what they were demanding without violating attorney-client privilege so he skated between these two equally unacceptable alternatives by coming up with a radical third alternative that result that's that conclusively resolved his dilemma and made for a satisfying ending to the movie and so that would be the type of thing that could work very well in this type of story so that for instance if for instance there were some questionable activities that his the organization that he's guarding is involved with and the predator wants to get at that it's kind of like the predator is putting him in an all or nothing position but he finds a way to maybe undo some of the questionable activities that his the organization that he's guarding is involved with without violating them without exposing their hard drive it merely opens up to public scrutiny one thing that they're doing that they really shouldn't be doing doesn't and allows the predator to make that public without hurting the company so he kind of skates between the trap that he's in and maybe takes the girl with him as a mate something like that in which he finds a creative third way out of the impossible situation that he was stuck in i like that so he's this that's the door that he's right okay and by thinking on his feet he came up with a creative third resolution possibility where there used to be only two because maybe this this sort of um this this act of espionage that they want them to do is because maybe they've compiled information on their customer base and they really shouldn't have kept that and not disclosed or something so what if he somehow i don't know turns it around so that that that's no longer there or then the customers are notified every so somehow it's like there's a resolution i don't know how that would be done it should also be something of magnitude if it's if it's a minor offense then the audience will go so what who cares so that's where the magnitude where you it gets up to a level of like oh that's important i care about that right but that's just a factor you know that's something to factor in as you build that half of the dilemma and it's informed by if the if the predator who's operating the young woman is showing him things that are questionable about the organization he's guarding and he's like yeah you're right they are you know but you just wanted to come above a certain threshold of questionability right so don't that's all the particulars of the story sure so so forge the third path that sounds like don't take the right don't take the left try to dig that's just one possible resolution for this type of story well it would probably be too predictable don't you think if if i chose one or the other if i chose it where somehow he turned these people in and was able to to still keep his job and then he marries her and they live happily ever after in the suburbs and and i mean that's i don't know if that's really going to work um or if he absconds with her to the cayman islands and then he's hiding for the rest of his life that's not going to work either so right or you know he he escapes the substantial trap that the predator laid for him and escapes the trap of his um rut his career predictable career rut and potentially some criminality that his or that the organization he's guarding was involved in so that he kind of outsmarts his boss and outsmarts the predator and maybe runs away with the girl and they hitchhike around the world i mean like he completely drops out of the whole arena he was in you know it's just a part of a creative a a possible creative solution to the complex trap that he was stuck in and he becomes a consultant that does like white hat pen testing types or he may never look at a computer again they may steal a sailboat and sail off you know with a hundred thousand dollars in cash in the hold and that's all they have but it's he's completely free from everything there's you know there's so many ways you can go with the story ending but you wanted to impact the audience powerfully and make them feel different than the way they came into the theater you know they want to be transformed even transfigured even like to the point where they never think the same way again for the rest of their life it like permanently changes how their brain is wired that's what people hope for in a great story that it completely changes how you see the world forever most stories don't do that but the best ones can do that and it's fun to aspire to you

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 68,223

Keywords: Screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, screenwriting for beginners, screenwriting techniques, screenwriting advice, writing a screenplay, how to write a movie, go into story, Jeff Kitchen, writing teacher, author, writing a great movie, filmcourage, film courage, interview, Enneagram, 36 Dramatic Situations, screenwriting sequence, how to write plot, how to write screenplay plot

Id: R5XVAj27l8s

Length: 40min 19sec (2419 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021