Obstacle Vs Dilemma - Screenwriting MUST KNOW and how to use them. 

Great video, Craig! Your "obstacle vs dilemma" advice and insight are gonna really help with my next script. Thanks!

It seems you might be a bit confused. Let's not let that confuse others. Maybe it's simply that you are using uncommon definitions for things that have other, common definitions. Clarity is the goal here. There can be no 'vs' when the things being compared are this entirely different from each other. An obstacle and a dilemma are two completely, distinctly different things that occur in distinctly, completely different places on a story timeline. They are not alike, not even similar. An obstacle typically appears during the inciting incident of a scene, the moment in every scene when the status quo is disrupted by a change in the ordinary world of the protagonist. That is not a dilemma. There can also be inciting incidents that begin an entire sequence or even an entire story arc. Those are not dilemmas, either. Other obstacles can progressively complicate things. Those are not dilemmas. A protag reaches a turning point in the scene, deciding that they must do something to cope with change (typically obstacles) brought by inciting incidents and progressive complications. This raises a crisis question-what will they do? The action, what they do in response, is the climax of the scene. A dilemma is what sometimes can result from that crisis question, directly before they act. A dilemma is essentially a difficult choice-either the best of two bad choices or the best of two reasonably good choices in what to do. If it even exists, and it absolutely does not need to exist, it sits on the timeline between the crisis question and the climax. A dilemma is not an obstacle. Obstacles can indeed instigate dilemmas, but they are not in any way the same thing or similar in any way. Every scene does need change, a turning point, a crisis question, and a climax. But does there need to be a dilemma in every scene? According to at least three 'guru's who have no idea what they are talking about, your scene won't work without one. What would a great author do to create a novel that could be revered and in the canon? If they have scenes that 'don't work' bc they don't have dilemmas in them, how in the world could they reach that status? My favorite of countless examples is The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, one of the best-loved and revered novels of the 20th century. There are 33 scenes in 32 chapters, IIRC. I read it (for the 5th time at least) and looked specifically for dilemmas, and rated how difficult it was for Philip Marlowe to decide what to do in every instance, on a scale of 1 to 10-inconsequential to life-threatening. The result was not an 8 or a 9. It averaged out to about a 1.2. One instance actually rated a 3. Philip Marlowe easily knew what to do, every single time. No decision made by him was difficult for him. He's a seasoned private detective who knows instinctively what to do. And he does it. Does that detract from the story or make it weak? Hardly. If it's good enough for Raymond Chandler, shouldn't that be good enough for you and me? All seven of Chandler's novels follow this same paradigm. There are plenty of obstacles, challenges, and conflict, but no scene has a dilemma of any real consequence in it, yet every single scene, still works just fine. What you may be talking about is something entirely different and originally mentioned in the monomyth-the Hero's Journey story structure-known as 'The refusal of the call to adventure'. Not all stories follow this structure, but a great majority do follow most tenets of it, and most other story structures are not all that different from the Hero's Journey. It's not a dilemma, either. Or an obstacle. It's the reaction to a dilemma. What this refers to is a protag knowing they must act, yet delaying their action as long as possible. This is actually how every human being acts when faced with a choice of how to act, even if that moment in time is only a second or two. It's a built-in survival mechanism. That's why it makes sense in story structure. But it doesn't have to result in a protagonist chewing their nails off or it complicating their lives if they wait too long to act. People don't like change. It can be scary and dangerous. It makes everyone uncomfortable. Their wishful thinking is everything will return to normal all on its own, or that maybe someone else will fix the problem, at least until they ditch the irrational thinking and accept that they must act. It can last for seconds, or months, or any length of time in between. In a story with a positive ending, the protag eventually acts, and prevails. In a story with a tragic ending, often the protag never acts, and pays a price.