Jim Hull's Story Fanatic

This is Story Fanatic, a collection of articles covering story structure and analysis for
creative writers. Published weekly.

Tuesday, Feb. 23

The Definition of a Dilemma

It is important to differentiate between solvable and unsolvable problems. The solvable problem is, simply, a problem, whereas an unsolvable problem is called a Dilemma. In stories, as in life, we cannot tell at the beginning whether a problem is solvable or not because we cannot know the future. Only by going through the process of problem solving can we discover if the problem can be solved at all.

A wonderful perspective on what is really going on in well crafted stories.