What Is the Challenge Moment?

The method we use to teach storytelling starts with being in the current state and transforming the character to a new elevated state. 

The main character has elevated his position, learned a new concept, or improved their his/her relationship with another character.  There is an underlying transition that takes the character from point A to point B.

The key to moving from one point to another is what we describe as the Challenge.  This is that moment when the main character is faced with the issue at hand that will send them (her) onto the journey to transform (a transformative journey) .

Now, does this need to be a life-shattering moment?  It certainly can be. 

The diagnosis came back positive.

The question I feared most was just asked to me.

I walked into a room, and there were the papers in front of the empty seat and the HR rep sitting across the table.

It can also be a realization that the character has upon reflection.

Can I love someone again?

Why is my life so boring?  Maybe I should take a trip?

I think I’ll run out and grab some groceries.

The Challenge moment is that instance where change is about to happen, and the moment sets off the course in doing so.

One of my favorite ways to capture this in the story is using the climactic scene of your account.  I like to use the idea from one of my favorite movies that outline this tactic.

In Missions Impossible III, the movie opens on a blank screen, and we hear the voices of the main character, Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise), being stunned, and the voice-over says, “I’ve put an explosive charge in your head.”  The scene now opens, and we see Ethan struggling from being restrained and blood coming out of his nose.  “I’m going to count to 10.  You’re going to tell me where the Rabbit’s Foot is, or she dies.”  Now, his guard (played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) is pointing a gun at the head of a woman who we don’t know, but she is also restrained and is crying at the thought of being close to death.

The first 3 minutes of this movie are intense.  What drives the intensity is that we start out knowing the movie’s premise (the title gives it away) and that we need to go from a current state to an elevated state through an impossible task.  Yet, in this story, we are right at the point where that transition is taking place.  In 3 minutes, we are introduced to a new character (who turns out to be Ethan’s wife), a desire to tell where a mysterious object is, and under a timeline where someone will die if the information is not given up.  By the time the scene’s climax hits at the 3-minute mark and the opening credits are rolling, you are bought in to want to know how this situation got to this point and how it will end.

Now, your story doesn’t have to be this dramatic.  Yet, it has to describe this Challenge moment in a way that your audience will (be bought in to) want to know why it has happened.  They will want to gain a better understanding as to why this journey is starting and leave enough desire for them to want to hear what happens to transform the character.

When you are crafting your story, you will want to think of a specific moment to pinpoint the time when the journey has started.  It has to bring the Challenge to the forefront in the audience’s mind to realize the journey is something that they are invested in to know that the change is worth listening to more and get a sense of a desire to understand how the elevated new state looks like at the end.