Jim Hull's Story Fanatic

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

Thursday, Feb. 25

What is 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.

This perfectly describes the simple purpose behind storytelling.