A statement or situation that seems to contradict itself but reveals a deeper truth when you think about it.
A paradox is something that appears logically impossible or self-contradictory but actually expresses a genuine insight. 'You have to spend money to make money.' 'The only constant is change.' 'I must be cruel to be kind.' These statements should not work, but they do, because they capture the messy, contradictory nature of real life. In fiction, paradoxes appear both as clever lines of dialogue and as structural elements - situations where characters face impossible contradictions that cannot be resolved simply.
The best stories often center on paradoxes. A character who must be honest to save a relationship but whose honesty will destroy it is living inside a paradox. These impossible situations create compelling conflict because there is no clean answer. Learning to think in paradoxes helps you create stories with real depth and complexity, where the reader finishes the book still turning the central question over in their mind.
The novel is built entirely around a paradox. The 'catch-22' itself is an impossible logical loop that traps the characters, and Heller uses it to expose the absurdity of war and bureaucracy.
Hamlet's central paradox is that thinking too much about action prevents action. His intelligence becomes his prison, and the play explores how the pursuit of certainty can lead to paralysis.
The novel ends with a paradox: two versions of the same events are presented, and the reader must choose which to believe. The 'better story' may be less true, but truth itself is shown to be a matter of choice.
A good paradox makes you think. A bad one just makes you frown. After writing a paradoxical statement, ask: does the contradiction actually reveal something true? If not, it is just a confusing sentence.
The power of a paradox is that it resists easy resolution. If you give your reader a clean answer to an irreconcilable contradiction, you rob the story of its complexity.
A character who says 'I love cats' in chapter one and 'I hate cats' in chapter three is not a paradox - that is an inconsistency. A paradox requires that both contradictory elements are simultaneously true.
Write a 500-word scene built around a situational paradox. A character can only achieve what they want by giving up what they want. For example: a person can only prove they are trustworthy by admitting they lied, or can only keep a friendship by ending it. Make the paradox feel inescapable and let the character wrestle with it without reaching an easy resolution.