The Mysterious Inciting Event

[Rhondazvous]

I’d been hearing about this thing called an inciting event, but no one could explain exactly what it Is. then Katie Wiolanddid a masterful job of explaining it on her website Helping Writers Become Authors.



She describes the inciting event as a call to action and the characters refusal of that call. That was something I could work with. It gave purpose to my introduction of the character and her world. Starting with the hook, I’m establishing my character as the kind of person who would refuse the call to action.



Unlike the first plot point, which is the point of no return, with the inciting event, the character still thinks he can maintain his status quo, it’s the efforts he makes to keep things normal that leads to that point of no return just like Oedipus’s efforts to run away from his fate led him straight to it.



Some may advise that we begin with the inciting event. I wonder though, how can we establish the inciting event as a change if we haven’t taken the time to show what’s being changed and why this change means something to the character.

 

[pmmg]

The inciting event is just the thing that causes all the stuff to start happening.

You can introduce the change right away, because readers can already assume the mundane is present. I don't need to show a farmboy's life on a farm for readers to know that orcs stealing his sister and setting his house on fire is something he needs to address.

Alternatively, the inciting incident does not even need to be known for it to be causing changes that have the characters act. You can tell the whole tale and only show it at the end, if it makes story sense. Suppose the orcs raided his home because a demon moved into their cave and demanded a virgin sacrifice? Do I need to know about the demon to know the orcs made the farmboy mad? Nope, it can come out later. What was the inciting incident? well, the one that started all the motion.

 

[Penpilot]

From my understanding, the inciting incident is simply a choice that must be made by the main character. The character chooses one way, they never enter the story. They go back to their normal life and nothing happens for them. The story passes them by. They choose the other way, they enter story and stuff happens. In Star Wars, it's when Luke chooses R2-D2 as the replacement for the other R2 unit with the blown motivator. If he doesn't choose R2-D2, everything passes him by. No secret message from the princess. No Deathstar plans. No going to see Ben. He remains on the moisture farm.

You don't have to start with the inciting incident, but you want to start as close to it as possible. The inciting incident takes place in the first act. The first act is supposed to show your main character living their normal life. It sets up the before. It sets up what they want. It sets up what they have to lose. When they exit the first act and enter the second, they're exiting their normal life and enter the story world. The first act can be one scene or multiple. It's as long as it needs to be for the type of story you want to tell.

In broad terms, the first act is 25% of your story. The second act is 50%, and the third is 25%. These are guidelines that can be changed, but a lot of stories fall into this general shape.

 

[Devor]

She describes the inciting event as a call to action and the characters refusal of that call. That was something I could work with. It gave purpose to my introduction of the character and her world. Starting with the hook, I’m establishing my character as the kind of person who would refuse the call to action.

So, the Inciting Incident and the Call to Action are two separate events. The Inciting Incident is the event which brings the story to the character and disrupts their home life. The Call to Action is the moment when the character realizes there's a clear choice - rise up to the challenge, or pass. They might seem similar, but they are two different things. From the character's perspective, the Inciting Incident might be small - it might help to think of the Inciting Incident as a visitor, often literally, but it works as a metaphor. The Call to Action is when the visitor gets ready to go and says, "Will you come with me?"

Some may advise that we begin with the inciting event. I wonder though, how can we establish the inciting event as a change if we haven’t taken the time to show what’s being changed and why this change means something to the character.

Right, so this is where I think the writing theory can kind of start to get in the way by giving the impression of a formula. You want to start with a hook, and an inciting incident, and show the character's home life, and find some balance to each of those. There's a lot of ways to do that. But there's one that I'll mention. If we think of the Inciting Incident as a Visitor, it's okay to bring in the visitor early, and still take time to show it around.

Penpilot mentions Luke selecting R2-D2 as the Inciting Incident of Star Wars. We see a little of Luke's home life before this, but we continue to see that home life even after this point. The Inciting Incident doesn't just end the normal life right away. Harry Potter returns to the Dursleys after Hagrid tells him he's a wizard and takes him shopping in Diagon Alley. Frodo spent 17 years with the one ring in a hidden envelope before Gandalf returned with the Call to Action.

We don't have to lurch from one point to the next. Take some time. Blend things together. Let things play out.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Study screenwriting and the inciting event becomes less mysterious. It isn't one thing. The call to action and the refusal is better associated with the Hero's Journey. Inciting Incident is better associated with the 3 act structure and all its relatives.

 

[Finchbearer]

My understanding of it is that it needs to be a significant or pivotal moment that sets the story in motion, and there will be several instances of ‘inciting events’ throughout a story

 

[Demesnedenoir]

For the main plot, there is—most often—going to be one Inciting Event, however, subplots can also have them. That said, what constitutes the Inciting Event is up for debate. The main thing is that you have something to call an Inciting Event. And to be honest, writing a (good) story without one would be tricky unless it's a literary character piece. The Inciting Event doesn't have to be "onscreen" either. For LoTR, one could consider Gandalf's proving the ring is the One Ring as the inciting event, or you could consider that the inciting event of the collection of The Hobbit and LoTR as the moment Bilbo found the ring. The Inciting Event might be considered the moment in Rivendell when they decide to destroy the One Ring. Is the Inciting Event the murder? or the detective arriving on the scene. Or, is it the moment they realize it's a serial killer? If you keep the changes flowing you will not only have an inciting event, but people can argue about what it is, heh heh.

My understanding of it is that it needs to be a significant or pivotal moment that sets the story in motion, and there will be several instances of ‘inciting events’ throughout a story

 

[Finchbearer]

For the main plot, there is—most often—going to be one Inciting Event, however, subplots can also have them. That said, what constitutes the Inciting Event is up for debate. The main thing is that you have something to call an Inciting Event. And to be honest, writing a (good) story without one would be tricky unless it's a literary character piece. The Inciting Event doesn't have to be "onscreen" either. For LoTR, one could consider Gandalf's proving the ring is the One Ring as the inciting event, or you could consider that the inciting event of the collection of The Hobbit and LoTR as the moment Bilbo found the ring. The Inciting Event might be considered the moment in Rivendell when they decide to destroy the One Ring. Is the Inciting Event the murder? or the detective arriving on the scene. Or, is it the moment they realize it's a serial killer? If you keep the changes flowing you will not only have an inciting event, but people can argue about what it is, heh heh.

Just rolling continuous inciting events

 

[Mad Swede]

Um. The inciting event. I wrote in another thread that your story needs to start with something which draws the reader in and then keeps them there. That can be the inciting event or it can simply be a start which piques the readers curiosity.

To take an example, Finn Family Moomintroll (Trollkarlens hatt in the original Swedish) starts with the Moomin family going into hibernation when the first snow comes... That is an interesting start to the book, but it isn't the inciting event. That comes later when they find the Hobgoblin's hat, but in the story it isn't immediately obvious that this is the inciting event simply because what they find is an old top hat and it is only later that they realise that the hat is magical.

This way of disgusing the inciting event is something which is quite typical of Tove Jansson's writing, and it shows that you can both draw the reader in and make the plots and sub-plots quite complex without making the underlying story structure apparent.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Not really. It's more useful as a writer's tool than anything else. Knowing what you consider the Inciting Event is what matters, and scholars can debate it later, heh heh. If looking at it as a screenwriter, LoTR's Inciting Event is Gandalf's discovery of Bilbo's ring being the One Ring. The story can spin from there, but that is the whopper that kicks it off, IMO. It could be framed otherwise, but, I'll stick with that.

Just rolling continuous inciting events

 

[Rhondazvous]

What you guys are saying sets me free from the idea that there is such a thing as THE inciting event and that it has to occur at exactly the 12 percent point of the story.



Now I’m looking back at the novel I published a few months ago, and there was a visitor whose actions led to the call to adventure that led to the first plot point. I find that things fall into place better when I just write than when I agonize over the exact placement of my points.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

This is probably true. As I recall, the more important part is to not have the Inciting Event too late.

What you guys are saying sets me free from the idea that there is such a thing as THE inciting event and that it has to occur at exactly the 12 percent point of the story.



Now I’m looking back at the novel I published a few months ago, and there was a visitor whose actions led to the call to adventure that led to the first plot point. I find that things fall into place better when I just write than when I agonize over the exact placement of my points.

 

[FifthView]

Isn't it all about character motivations, ultimately?

More than the inciting event piques a character's interest, or the character is a boring character and pretty much worthless.

A character should seem real, so that even boring events like rising early and milking the cows for the 834th time needs a corresponding something within the character motivating the character to do so. Habit is not a good answer. Something behind the habit, some consequence, some desire, some motivation must be, er, inciting the character to act.

I'm not even talking about The-capital-T Inciting Event. Every action a character takes in a story needs two things to correspond: 1) the exterior environment in which we find the character, and 2) the character. That #1 motivates that #2 to do something in some kind of way. For those who like digging through the weeds, this necessary correspondence can be distilled into the idea of the MRU, i.e., the Motivation-Reaction Unit. The exterior world, #1, is the motivating factor, and the character reacts to that reality is some way.

What makes the Inciting Event different from every other motivating reality and corresponding reaction is that it causes a Rubicon to appear instantaneously in the character's life—and the character is going to have no choice but to cross the Rubicon. Technically, we'll often play around with this idea of choice. Will he or won't he? But all that is a process of mere clarification for the character and the reader. The inciting event is like an ultimate, God-infused trigger for the character, and the character is going to be irrevocably triggered by it. When the Rubicon appears, the character will cross it.

It's just a new reality the character can't ignore. Many other things about the character's world might change as the story unfolds, motivating the character to do many things, but this change, the inciting event, encompasses those by being first, heh.

It'd be interesting to break the type of inciting event down by the M.I.C.E. quotient:

(M) ilieu: A doorway or gateway to another world appears in the village square, and a man running from justice leaps through it. Alternatively, a boy stows away on a ship that goes down; he washes ashore in a strange land—if it is a strange storm that causes the ship to sink, the storm would be the inciting event; but if all else is normal, then surviving the ship going down and waking up on the strange shore would be the inciting event. (We could perhaps just say the sinking of the ship is the inciting event.)

(I) dea: The mayor is murdered in the middle of the night and is missing his intestines, but there is no visible break in the skin. Who dun it, and how? Alternatively, all the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere is being depleted and will run out within three years. Why? In either case, whatever introduces the question is the inciting event: the murder, or the discovery that Earth's oxygen levels are rapidly falling.

(C) haracter: Margot, a slave since birth, has always been treated well by the family that owns her, but at 19 she longs to marry and a new guest of the family, a mysterious elf from an ancient family, comes to stay for a summer, capturing her fancy. Alternatively, Robbie, a teenage mutant with pink fur all over his body and seven toes on each foot, lives on the streets in the shadows avoiding people, but he meets another teenager from a wealthy family who is secretly a vampire; if Robbie is "turned," will his mutation be cured? But at what price? In both these cases, meeting the other person is the inciting event. I.e., a new opportunity to completely change one's life appears.

(E) vent: Most fantasy tales are of this variety? An invasion, a kidnapping, the introduction of a heist opportunity, a need for revenge, etc. Some event happens, and the main character must respond to it.

 

[Prince of Spires]

The important thing to realize is that there is no 1 way to write a story. There are plenty of different templates you can follow for story structure, each with their own moments. And you can even not follow any and still end up with a great story (and retro-actively map your story to one of the structures if you want).

For instance, the Call to Action, and the Refusal of the Call are part of the hero's journey. Which is a specific type of story structure, with the original Star Wars being a great example.

However, if you go for 3-act structure, you don't have to have a call to action and the refusal of that call. Instead, you get the inciting incident halfway through the 1st act. You can also go for the 7 act or 5 act or whatever story structure. Each is just a framework you can use to help you craft your story.

One thing to remember is that you don't have to follow a specific structure to the letter. You can have a hero's journey type tale without the hero refusing the call to action for instance. You can move the inciting incident from the middle of act 1 to the first page. These stories are tools to help you, not doctrines to follow to the letter (unless you're writing screenplays I think, in which case you'll find that you have to put your inciting incident on page 12 and do X on page y and so on).

The inciting incident then simply is the event that sets the story in motion for the protagonist. Without the incident, the protagonist would simply continue on with their life. It can be a big event, but it can also be something small. And, as you can see above, it isn't always clear what exactly is the inciting incident. Was it Luke buying R2D2 which was the inciting incident, or was it when he first saw the message from the princess?

My personal take on this is that you should initially just write the story you have in mind. But, when you get stuck, or when you get feedback that something isn't working with your story, then you can look at these tools and see if they can help you understand your story. So if someone mentions that the start of your story feels slow, or perhaps that they were unsure about your plot, then look at your story, search for the inciting incident. Is nothing happening for the first few chapters? Is act 1 to long or short? Is your protagonist going on the adventure just because? Use these structures help you fix this.