The Inciting Incident?

[Darkfantasy]

So I’m currently working on my Fantasy book but just need a little help. I’m trying to see if my plot line fits into the three act structure. But I’m unsure of a few things. I need some help figuring out my “inciting incident”

My book opens with my protagonist, Emma, in a conflict because a mysterious disease is affecting the race she lives with. (Emma is human but has lived with magical beings her whole life). This disease seems to be sucking the magic out of magical beings and killing them. Her foster mother has this fatal disease and is suffering. So her mother asks her to end her suffering by using magic to kill her. Humans are forbidden to use magic in my world for many reasons but Emma reluctantly for fills her mother’s request.
However, she is caught for it and shunned by her community. Until the king offers her a reprieve. To go outside their community and try and solve the mystery of this disease and how to stop it.

Inciting Incident
There are two major events that happen in Act I. The first event is the one that changes your protagonist's world/life in a way that cannot be reversed–the Inciting Incident. This is to be the big change that is the catalyst for the story to be possible, the bomb that alters everything.

So would it be her mother’s request to kill her? It’s is unexpected and everything that happens after it only happens because she killed her.

Or would it be when the King offers her a chance to clear herself of her “crime”? Things definitely change for Emma after she accepts that offer.

Is either one a good enough inciting incident or could I add more to make it better?
Thanks again for the help guys

 

[Chessie]

The inciting incident can be either:

-causal
-coincidental

This event has to send her on the adventure, so the mother's request would be a good choice as an inciting incident, imo.

 

[Ireth]

I'd say the inciting incident is when Emma's mother says to kill her. It's definitely good enough on its own in my opinion.

 

[FifthView]

I agree.

I tend to think of the inciting incident as being a type of Rubicon choice. The character can choose to do one thing and more or less remain in the life she currently leads, or the character can choose to do another thing and this choice will change her life irretrievably. So having that type of choice is central to my idea of the inciting incident. (Sometimes, however, the character is not fully aware of having made that choice or how having done so will alter her life entirely.)

So her mother's request seems like a good inciting incident.

 

[Devor]

I don't know if this is going to be a helpful answer or not. Overthinking these things often isn't. But the way I would see it is that you have a subplot - the mother getting sick (inciting incident), her request (call to action), the decision to follow through (midpoint), her death (climax), and so on - leading into the inciting incident of the main plot - her arrest.

The inciting incident is the moment that things first start to change for the character, shaking up the "home" environment. It shakes things up around the character, but it's not what forces the character to change. That's the call to action, which comes next. That's when the character has to make a real choice.

A space ship crash lands next door. That's the inciting incident. Deciding to go look at it? That's just natural. Deciding that it's your job to fix it, fly it, and save the galaxy? That's a call to action. (Realizing that doing so was totally stupid because you're not ready? That's the Midpoint.) There's a gap between the two which makes up the bulk of Act 1.

So I think in this case, the inciting incident is the mother getting sick.

 

[FifthView]

So much depends on how you want to write it.

I'm unclear as to whether the mother is ill already when the story starts or falls ill shortly after it starts. Devor makes a great point if the mother falls ill after the story starts; that would be a great inciting incident. But if the mother is already ill when the story starts, then her request may be the inciting incident.

Not knowing fully how this starts, I am still struck by a kind of sad or tragic shape to the tale: The king's offer sets Emma on a trajectory to find a cure or stop the disease, and presumably she will do this eventually, but she's already killed her mother by that point. So her own mercy killing of her mother could still be playing a role in her choice to take the king up on his offer and even much further into the story to the degree that her mother's request still reverberates during her quest.

 

[Darkfantasy]

@Fifthview - yes the mother was all ready sick when the book begins.

 

[Penpilot]

My opinion on this is in an inciting incident, the character must make a choice, knowingly or not. If that choice isn't made, then there's no story.

So to me, the inciting incident involves her choice to kill her mother. Without her choosing to do that, her life will remain normal--well, as normal as having to deal with a sick parent is--and she won't enter the story world.

 

[La Volpe]

According to my (possibly incorrect) notions of inciting incident, the illness (or perhaps rather the mother's request) is the inciting incident. The point where she accepts the king's task is the first plot point.

As I understand it, the inciting incident is the thing that is setting the story into motion. Depending on how you look at it, this can be the illness starting (i.e. the inciting incident occurs before the story starts?) or the mother's request. The first plot point, or Point of No Return, would be when she accepts the task that she can't turn back from and which sets her life on a new path.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

Do we all agree on what the inciting event is? I've read (Your Book?s Inciting Event: It?s Not What You Think It Is - Helping Writers Become Authors) that it's the Call to Adventure, the moment halfway through the first act (12% of the way through the entire book) when the Normal World is first significantly rocked by the story's conflict, but it's not the point of no return. In reading what others have said above, I think some here would not agree with that definition. The point of no return, aka the First Plot Point, according to my reading, comes at roughly 25% of the way through the book, at the end of the first act.

So what are we really talking about?

 

[Darkfantasy]

Interesting, well the definition of inciting incident that I found is
'The first event that can be referred to as the inciting incident is the event that gets your story started. It's the event that occurs within the first couple of pages that alerts the reader that this is it, the story has begun. It is not description or setting detail, it is event.'
(before the call to action in the three acts)

 

[Penpilot]

Do we all agree on what the inciting event is? I've read (Your Book?s Inciting Event: It?s Not What You Think It Is - Helping Writers Become Authors) that it's the Call to Adventure, the moment halfway through the first act (12% of the way through the entire book) when the Normal World is first significantly rocked by the story's conflict, but it's not the point of no return. In reading what others have said above, I think some here would not agree with that definition. The point of no return, aka the First Plot Point, according to my reading, comes at roughly 25% of the way through the book, at the end of the first act.

So what are we really talking about?

I think I can more or less agree with the components she identified. I use slightly differently labels, but potato-po-tah-toe, but here's my quibble about how she defined an inciting incident, which does generally fall in line with how I think about it. Her definition is passive. The main character isn't required to have agency. It gives the impression that the story can happen to the main character without their choice in the matter, not that they choose to participate in it, which like I said have a quibble with.

She identifies that in Raiders that the inciting incident is when Indy meets with the U.S. government, but doesn't place any emphasis on the choice that Indy makes. He chooses to help army intelligence. If he doesn't, he stays home, teaches his classes, and his story doesn't unfold, and to me that's the most important part.

I haven't seen her other movie examples, but in Star Wars the inciting incident by her standards would be when Luke and Uncle Owen go to buy droids. But the key moment is when one of the droids they selected shorts out and Luke makes the choice to have R2D2 replace that droid. That choice is what makes that event the inciting incident. It's the defining feature of an inciting incident.

If we were to change the story of Star Wars a little and say the droid didn't short out or if Luke chose a different droid, then that scene wouldn't be the inciting incident. If we then pretend that R2D2 escapes later on and shows up at Luke's farm, leaving Luke with the choice of turning R2D2 away or taking him in, then that IMHO would be the inciting incident.

my 2cents

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

If you're asking about which event should be used in the first couple of pages to get the story started, that's what Weiland would refer to as the Hook. Personally, I'd not choose either of the events you've listed as the Hook event. I'd save those for the 12%-point event (whatever you want to call it, but what Weiland refers to as the Inciting Event) and the 25%-point event (which Weiland refers to as the First Plot Point). For the 0%-point event, I might go with someone else in the community of magical beings contracting the disease, before the foster mother does. This allows you to show the MC in the Normal World, how she and her foster mother interact before the disease strikes the mother, but also show the devastating effects of the disease. The person who contracts the disease in the Hook event could be someone relatively close to the MC, so you can better show the emotional impact on the MC.

At the 12%-point of your novel, the mother could contract the disease. This sets the ball rolling, but the MC still is able to choose her own path forward. Between the 12%-point and the 25%-point, the foster mother asks the MC to put her out of her misery. The MC complies. She is shunned by the community. Still at this point, she could turn away from the adventure to come, staying in her Normal World, in which her community is dying of a disease.

At the 25%-point, the king comes and offers the MC a chance at redemption. He makes it clear to her that everyone in the community she has lived in for so long will eventually die if something is not done for them. Turning down the king's quest leaves the MC in her Normal World, where her friends are dying from the disease. Accepting the quest puts her on the path to saving the community, forcing her to leave her Normal World in an attempt to change it, hopefully for the better, in which her community is saved from the disease and she would possibly be welcomed back into it. Accepting the quest would be the point of no return, for to turn back from the quest once accepted would be equivalent on an emotional level to her personally destroying the community.

That's how I see it, based on what you've told us. Hope the above is of some help.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

I think I can more or less agree with the components she identified. I use slightly differently labels, but potato-po-tah-toe, but here's my quibble about how she defined an inciting incident, which does generally fall in line with how I think about it. Her definition is passive. The main character isn't required to have agency. It gives the impression that the story can happen to the main character without their choice in the matter, not that they choose to participate in it, which like I said have a quibble with.

She identifies that in Raiders that the inciting incident is when Indy meets with the U.S. government, but doesn't place any emphasis on the choice that Indy makes. He chooses to help army intelligence. If he doesn't, he stays home, teaches his classes, and his story doesn't unfold, and to me that's the most important part.

I haven't seen her other movie examples, but in Star Wars the inciting incident by her standards would be when Luke and Uncle Owen go to buy droids. But the key moment is when one of the droids they selected shorts out and Luke makes the choice to have R2D2 replace that droid. That choice is what makes that event the inciting incident. It's the defining feature of an inciting incident.

If we were to change the story of Star Wars a little and say the droid didn't short out or if Luke chose a different droid, then that scene wouldn't be the inciting incident. If we then pretend that R2D2 escapes later on and shows up at Luke's farm, leaving Luke with the choice of turning R2D2 away or taking him in, then that IMHO would be the inciting incident.

my 2cents

For me, the 12%-point event doesn't have to force a decision at the moment that it happens. The event demonstrates what will happen if things continue as they are in the Normal World, but the MC may still be in doubt about what to do about it. For me, it's not until the 25%-point that the MC must make a decision to act. At the 12%-point, in the middle of the first act, we're still building up to the point when the MC takes that first big step. But the 12%-point event has impacted the MC emotionally, and gives the MC the motivation to make the decision to react as she does when the big, story-changing event happens at the 25%-point.

I can't think of an example right now, but I'm pretty sure I've read stories where the MC goes with the flow at the 12%-point, uncertain how to proceed. But the event weighs on her mind, until at last she takes action when the 25%-point event occurs.

 

[FifthView]

Her definition is passive. The main character isn't required to have agency. It gives the impression that the story can happen to the main character without their choice in the matter, not that they choose to participate in it, which like I said have a quibble with.

She identifies that in Raiders that the inciting incident is when Indy meets with the U.S. government, but doesn't place any emphasis on the choice that Indy makes. He chooses to help army intelligence. If he doesn't, he stays home, teaches his classes, and his story doesn't unfold, and to me that's the most important part.

I would like to say I'm ambivalent about this, but the truth is probably closer to "I'm confused, argh!"

My feeling is that the inciting incident is absolutely tied to the decision-making process, the character's choice, and that it's a kind of Rubicon. The character is proceeding normally (where we get set-up for the "old world") but comes to that river, the Rubicon. But the decision can be delayed; he may not decide to cross it right away.

Well, there are these two parts: incitement and decision.

I liked Devor's example of the spaceship. But I'm also thinking about the first Harry Potter book. I haven't read it in a long time and have watched the movie many times since, so I could be confusing the two. But from memory, I'd say that the inciting incident is when the letters from Hogwarts start showing up. This is not exactly a single incident; it's multiple occurrences of letters showing up and Harry's aunt and uncle going nuts. But something is up. Change is afoot. The family even runs from their home, hides out. The story has begun, even if we don't know what exactly has begun and Harry hasn't yet made the crucial decision. Hagrid shows up, which seems to me to be the culmination of the inciting incident(s) and at the end says something to the effect, "Well, are you coming?" And Harry follows him.

I suppose my ultimate confusion is whether inciting incident is defined purely through a character's immediate awareness of its significance or whether it's really the reader's awareness of the "change afoot" that is occurring within that world. Yes, the character will ultimately be forced to make a decision vis-a-vis that change; so I do believe that decision-making process is intimately tied to the inciting incident.

 

[Devor]

Interesting, well the definition of inciting incident that I found is
'The first event that can be referred to as the inciting incident is the event that gets your story started. It's the event that occurs within the first couple of pages that alerts the reader that this is it, the story has begun. It is not description or setting detail, it is event.'
(before the call to action in the three acts)

^This is the definition I'm most familiar with. But any confusion here is not just ours. I've definitely seen different definitions given by different sources.

 

[Penpilot]

For me, the 12%-point event doesn't have to force a decision at the moment that it happens. The event demonstrates what will happen if things continue as they are in the Normal World, but the MC may still be in doubt about what to do about it. For me, it's not until the 25%-point that the MC must make a decision to act. At the 12%-point, in the middle of the first act, we're still building up to the point when the MC takes that first big step. But the 12%-point event has impacted the MC emotionally, and gives the MC the motivation to make the decision to react as she does when the big, story-changing event happens at the 25%-point.

I can't think of an example right now, but I'm pretty sure I've read stories where the MC goes with the flow at the 12%-point, uncertain how to proceed. But the event weighs on her mind, until at last she takes action when the 25%-point event occurs.

Most definitely at the 25% mark the character makes another choice. I call it breaking into act-2. But from what I find, at this point the story has started and change has happened. This is just them making the leap into the story world, a chance to turn back. In Star Wars, it's right after Luke's uncle and aunt are killed by storm troopers and chooses to go with Ben to Mos Eisley. In the first LOTR movie it's shown when Sam stops in the middle of a field and declares to Frodo that if he takes one more step he'll be the furthest he's been away from home. It's the symbolic stepping out of the normal world into the story world, from act-1 into act-2.

It's been a while since I've seen Raiders, so I may be off a little, but I'd say the 25% mark is probably when he goes to visit Marion to retrieve the staff head.

I'm thinking we're talking about the same things, but we're just using different labels for them.

 

[La Volpe]

If you're asking about which event should be used in the first couple of pages to get the story started, that's what Weiland would refer to as the Hook. Personally, I'd not choose either of the events you've listed as the Hook event. I'd save those for the 12%-point event (whatever you want to call it, but what Weiland refers to as the Inciting Event) and the 25%-point event (which Weiland refers to as the First Plot Point). For the 0%-point event, I might go with someone else in the community of magical beings contracting the disease, before the foster mother does. This allows you to show the MC in the Normal World, how she and her foster mother interact before the disease strikes the mother, but also show the devastating effects of the disease. The person who contracts the disease in the Hook event could be someone relatively close to the MC, so you can better show the emotional impact on the MC.

At the 12%-point of your novel, the mother could contract the disease. This sets the ball rolling, but the MC still is able to choose her own path forward. Between the 12%-point and the 25%-point, the foster mother asks the MC to put her out of her misery. The MC complies. She is shunned by the community. Still at this point, she could turn away from the adventure to come, staying in her Normal World, in which her community is dying of a disease.

At the 25%-point, the king comes and offers the MC a chance at redemption. He makes it clear to her that everyone in the community she has lived in for so long will eventually die if something is not done for them. Turning down the king's quest leaves the MC in her Normal World, where her friends are dying from the disease. Accepting the quest puts her on the path to saving the community, forcing her to leave her Normal World in an attempt to change it, hopefully for the better, in which her community is saved from the disease and she would possibly be welcomed back into it. Accepting the quest would be the point of no return, for to turn back from the quest once accepted would be equivalent on an emotional level to her personally destroying the community.

That's how I see it, based on what you've told us. Hope the above is of some help.

I agree with this 100%. This is how I understand it as well.

The inciting incident is the event that shakes up the Normal World and starts the ball rolling to the point (the First Plot Point) where the MC will make a life-changing decision.
E.g. To co-opt Devor's example, when the spaceship lands/crashes/whatever, the Normal world is disturbed, even though the MC hasn't made any decisions about it as of yet. I.e. that's the inciting incident. When the MC decides to fly into space with aforementioned spaceship, that's the First Plot Point.

 

[Darkfantasy]

somewhat confused now...

 

[Mythopoet]

I don't know if this is going to be a helpful answer or not. Overthinking these things often isn't. But the way I would see it is that you have a subplot - the mother getting sick (inciting incident), her request (call to action), the decision to follow through (midpoint), her death (climax), and so on - leading into the inciting incident of the main plot - her arrest.

The inciting incident is the moment that things first start to change for the character, shaking up the "home" environment. It shakes things up around the character, but it's not what forces the character to change. That's the call to action, which comes next. That's when the character has to make a real choice.

A space ship crash lands next door. That's the inciting incident. Deciding to go look at it? That's just natural. Deciding that it's your job to fix it, fly it, and save the galaxy? That's a call to action. (Realizing that doing so was totally stupid because you're not ready? That's the Midpoint.) There's a gap between the two which makes up the bulk of Act 1.

So I think in this case, the inciting incident is the mother getting sick.

I'd even go so far as to say the inciting incident is the appearance of the disease itself. It's what changes the world around the MC. The inciting incident doesn't have to be part of your plot. It can happen before your narrative begins. Think of all the old epics that begin "in medias res". Paris steals Helen (inciting incident) long before the narrative of The Iliad begins. A more recent example would be Roger Zelazny's classic Nine Princes in Amber where the "inciting incident" would be the accident that gives the MC amnesia and lands him in a care facility where he is basically a prisoner. But the narrative doesn't begin until he's waking up from the drugs that are keeping him sedated and decides to escape.

But I also agree with others that you shouldn't worry about it too much. You don't need to make your story conform to some formula. In fact, you probably shouldn't. You should just try to tell it in the way that feel right to you. The inciting incident will be in there somewhere, even if you don't label it.