Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to write the INCITING INCIDENT

While looking over the How to Start the Story how-to, I realized I never talked about the inciting incident. So here's a short chapter on that.

The inciting incident is the event that changes or threatens to change the MC's established, normal life. It's the point when Harry gets his Hogwarts acceptance letter, when Eragon finds Saphira's egg, when Neo gets the message to follow the white rabbit, when Tony Stark gets kidnapped by terrorists, when Chihiro's parents get turned into pigs, when Scar kills Mufasa, when Mulan's father is drafted for the war and she goes in his place.

The inciting incident gets the ball rolling and gets your protagonist involved in the main conflict.

One mistake novice (and even published) writers make is putting off the inciting incident too long. They have pages and pages, even several chapters, of backstory and set-up before making the inciting incident happen. In most stories, this is bad. Usually, the inciting incident should happen in the first chapter (or second if absolutely necessary). If you take too long to get to the inciting incident, readers tend to get bored and may put down the book. So try to get to it sooner.

Beware of making the inciting incident occur *too* soon in the story, too. In general, a story should first establish the "norm" of the character and their situation. How they live their day-to-day life. And the inciting indent is what turns their world upside down, what introduces conflict and disturbs that norm. Some characters may fight to return their situation back to that original norm, to what it was like before the inciting incident happened. Other characters' lives are already smack dab in the middle of huge conflict, and the inciting incident may be the prospect or promise of a better life--take Harry Potter's situation for instance. His norm was being abused by his family, and the Hogwarts letter was the prospect of improving his situation.

Whatever happens, the character will fight to improve their current situation. If they're living a happy life and something terrible happens to incite conflict, the characters will fight to revert the situation back to the good, happy one. In Attack on Titan, Eren was living an okay life, but the inciting incident of the Titans attacking his town and killing his mother changed all that. The inciting incident drove him to join the military and fight the Titans.

An aside: the "norm" of a character doesn't have to be "The protagonist had a perfect life. She was perfect, had the perfect boyfriend, had a loving family, was loved and cherished by all..." (PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do not start your story with this situation. If I see a back-of-the-book blurb starting with "Character A had the perfect life..." I will put it back on the shelf without another thought. "Normal" doesn't equate "perfect" or "happy". Harry's "normal" was being parentless and living in a household that abused him. That's not to say give all your characters some horrendously sad backstory and make their normal riddled with gut-wrenching conflict. Happy people can be interesting. Fascinating. Happy people can have day-to-day conflicts, too.

Looking at Neo from The Matrix, he was a computer hacker. He was happy, and that life was "normal" to him. But it's fascinating to us.

Try to make your characters fascinating BEFORE the inciting incident happens. Of course, you can also cause the inciting incident to show a new side of your character that is fascinating as well. Either way works, but the former will immediately hook your readers. Otherwise they'll have to wait until the inciting incident to fall in love with your protagonist.

EXERCISE
Try to answer the following questions, and share your results in the comments!

1. What is the established norm for your protagonist?

2. What is the inciting incident that changes their established norm?

3. In what chapter of your story does the inciting incident take place? If it's anywhere other than the first two chapters, you may have started the story too early on. Try starting closer to the inciting incident and see how it turns out.

Be creative with the inciting incident formula. There's no need to follow my guidelines to a tee. I have a story with two inciting incidents: one overall incident in the first chapter that changed the protagonist's (good) norm to a different (terrible) norm, and then a second incident in the next chapter that changed her norm again.