In novels and movies, the catalyst is the event, the point in time, where an event occurs that alters the life of the protagonist. It’s the harbinger of change. Jessica Brody, in Save the Cat Writes a Novel, writes, “The Catalyst will crash land in your hero’s life and create so much destruction, your hero will have no choice but to do something different. Try something new. Go somewhere else.”
Each of us is the protagonist in our own story. And most catalysts involve synchronicity.
The Catalyst is one of the fifteen beats that screenwriter Blake Snyder identifies in story telling in Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need. It can come as bad news, a divorce, getting fired. It may arrive in the form of seeing the spirit of your dad in the back seat of your car, a Near Death Experience, an alien encounter, a spiritual or creative epiphany. But all catalysts have the same thing in common: you’re kicked out of your status quo thinking and banished from your comfort box, the matrix where you’ve been living.
In the movie Romancing the Stone, the catalyst occurs with the package delivered to Joan Wilder – Kathleen Stone. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, it’s the arrival of mysterious letters that Harry’s Uncle Vernon won’t let him see and the arrival of Hagrid, announcing that Harry is a wizard and has been accepted into Hogwarts.
In Stephen King’s Misery, Brody identifies the catalyst as the moment when Annie Wilkes finishes Paul’s Misery’s Child and discovers that Paul “killed off the main character, putting an end to her favorite series…she goes ballistic…then storms out of the room and tells Paul she’s leaving before she does something unwise.’”
What’s the equivalent in our lives now? Well, for us, it’s the January 20 Inauguration.
Stay tuned! Our newest book is based on the ideas in our Mystical Underground podcasts.
COVID is also a catalyst of sorts, though it’s rather heavy handed as a personal message. I call this type of catalyst outer contact because it has an impact on planetary consciousness. Animals have been infected by this virus. Is it one of the reasons extraterrestrial contact has become more overt or more publicized lately? Does coincidence even exist?
Wilbur Allen says thousands of people have gone missing in the last two years, taking their cell phone signals with them. He finds this interesting because cell phones give out a gps signal when they are turned off. Apparently cell phones can be tracked even when the battery is dead. Allen is an abductee himself and believes UFOs are responsible. He’s been tracking UFOs for years, especially in the Washington DC area, which is close to his home.
Millions are dying, thousands are disappearing. Both catalyst and paradigm shift.
It definitely is a catalyst.