How to Create the BEST Inciting Incident for Your Novel (According to Brain Science)

Gina Kammer Author

Once you’ve hooked readers in the opening lines of your novel, an event acts on your character, getting the adventure/story rolling.

How to Create the BEST Inciting Incident for Your Novel

What Brain Science Says about Writing with Story Structures #5

The insights from cognitive psychology can help us understand the effects and usefulness of story structures, and this is what I break down in this series. In these articles on story structure elements, I dive into the effects of story on readers and how these structures play a part in that. I also offer suggestions for what writers can do to have the best of both worlds — both the joy of just writing and creating a tale readers will want to read.

Once you’ve hooked readers in the opening lines of your novel, an event acts on your character, getting the adventure/story rolling. It will also force the character to face an impossible decision.

What Is an Inciting Incident?

It’s a catalyst moment for change that happens at about the midpoint of Act I in a simple three-act structure. (Also note that this event happens to the main character, it’s not something your main character does.)

The inciting incident puts the main story in motion. But now what does that mean? What is the main story? We have all kinds of “stories” going on. The story starts on the page in media res, meaning somewhere in the (very loose) middle of the character’s ongoing life—this story starts at a point in the life of the main character where things are about to get interesting.

But the character has been living life with all sorts of other growth and experiences up to the point at which the story starts recording events on the page. So we not only have the story before the story, but we also have the current story, which is where readers first start.

And where the readers pick up the events of the main character’s life, the character is already struggling with some inner conflict (assuming the author has created a proper hook to get readers to care). The character wants something deeply. Yet, more often than not, the main character’s inner flaw is somehow all tied up with the thing that stands in the character’s way.

But this “hook” story is usually a continuation of the one that had been going on all along before the book began. This is true even if the hook portion is quite exciting and compelling. In some defined story structures, this bit might be establishing the old world of the character, or the “normal world,” or some other status quo. But it’s not yet the main story, although it is closely connected.

The main story—the one we care about as readers and the one the inciting incident kicks off—is the one in which the main character is compelled to begin a journey of transformation. The inciting incident is the event that causes the story up to that point to turn. More importantly, this event is usually some outside force that pushes the main character to make an impossible decision.

Everything from that point forward is the path of change for the character, and therefore, it’s the start of the main story.

Why Is This Main Story, the One Begun by the Inciting Incident, the Important One?

Knowing the answer helps us understand what makes a story compelling with a strong impact. In light of that knowledge, we can better figure out how to craft the best inciting incident possible for the story.

This is where the insights from brain science offer a leg up. We most effectively enter a story through the lens of a character. In this way, we know what to care about and how to care about it in the world of the story (because of what the character knows and cares about).

Why do we care in the first place? Because we care about ourselves and story draws on our own emotional memories. We also prefer knowing how to get out of or overcome adverse situations by filing away the vicarious experience for later. Who knows when you’ll need to find a way to outwit a dragon!

I’m shortcutting all the processes here, but the point is that we’re looking, as readers, for the change — for the transformation to overcome obstacles and adversity. This change starts internally in the character and is played out metaphorically in the plot. So, this provides fodder to help you, the author, come up with an inciting incident that can launch the story into one with strong impact.

The Best Inciting Incident for Your Character

You know what your character wants and (more importantly) needs. You know what inner flaw is holding the character back. So now, what incident could most directly prod at your character’s inner conflict to all but force the character to face it, as uncomfortable as that will (and should) be for that character?

The incident should be uncomfortable because it shoves the character toward a new world, or something unfamiliar — something other than the status quo that’s been set up in the pages before this point. I tend to get a lot of life-and-death scenarios in response to this or similar questions. And I agree — those work. But often, it’s clear that such a situation would epically suck for any character.

Dig a bit deeper. What would make such an event pinch a pain point or other point of discomfort even harder for your character, specifically? Even if it is a matter of life and death, why is facing death in this way particularly fear-inducing for your character?

However, I need to clarify that not all inciting incidents are quite as showy as life vs. death. Often, they’re actually understated events:

• The Hobbit: Gandalf and the dwarves show up and urge Bilbo to join their adventure.
• The Lord of the Rings: Bilbo “vanishes” at his birthday and leaves the One Ring to Frodo.
• Harry Potter: “Yer a wizard, Harry”—Harry is invited to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
  

But some are showier:

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Lucy Pevensie opens the wardrobe and stumbles into the land of Narnia.
• The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy’s house crashes down… somewhere.
• Howl’s Moving Castle: The Witch of the Waste curses Sophie Hatter.
  

As you may note, none of these speculative classics have inciting incidents that are matters of life and death. However, I can think of a clear example that is:

• The Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen’s sister is selected for the Hunger Games.
  

For Katniss’s kindhearted sister, Prim, the likely outcome of this event is death. But also note how this inciting incident isn’t yet a matter of likely death for Katniss. It does, however, very neatly prod a major pain point for Katniss. Katniss feels she is solely responsible for keeping Prim safe. Katniss now has a choice. She can let events happen and let Prim go or she can take her place.

Even the second option is precisely pinching a pain point for Katniss in that leaving Prim means no one is left to protect her (since their mother is rather out of commission). So even when Katniss does make the choice to face death herself, she might fear dying just as anyone might. But she fears it even more because her death means no one to return to continue protecting and sheltering Prim.

And in the other examples, the inciting incidents are also perfectly tailored to prod the protagonists’ fears or pain points. Bilbo’s cozy and neat life is thrown into disorder and talk of messy, decidedly unsafe adventures. Likewise, Frodo is suddenly left without his beloved cousin—the real adventurer. Frodo must leave the safety and love of home in order to keep what he loves safe, even if he must sacrifice himself to succeed in such an impossible task.

Harry always knew he was different, and now he knows just how different he is. Lucy is similar. She is rarely taken seriously and now she is thrown into a situation that surely no one will believe is real.

Dorothy doesn’t feel she fits in on the farm and longs for something “over the rainbow,” but she only knows her home. Her desire is put to the test when she’s dropped into a strange land. Sophie has no such ambitions. She has little self-confidence and doesn’t believe she has any beauty. The Witch of the Waste reinforces that notion.

Craft Your Inciting Incident

So far, I’ve been focusing on the internal points of the inciting incident for the character’s inner struggle. But it’s also worth considering the external conflict.

If you’re still in brainstorming and planning mode, you may still need to figure out the external conflict—the overarching plot. If, perhaps, you have a few inklings of what you’d like to happen (any epic snippets of scenes you can’t get out of your head?), now would be a good time to consider how that external conflict might link to, parallel, or otherwise carry out metaphorically the internal conflict.

Ask what piece of the main, external conflict could collide with your protagonist’s world. What will eventually make the protagonist get involved?

Plot-wise, the event should be pretty unavoidable. It has to force the protagonist to confront it—force the protagonist to make a decision. Answer the call to adventure or stay home where, even though it’s not entirely fulfilling, it’s relatively safe and familiar?

Often, the character will try to take the easy path and flee. Or hide. Or try whatever possible to avoid doing the hard, uncomfortable thing. Sometimes, this portion is actually fulfilled by other characters attempting to stop or dissuade the protagonist.

But after, something will make the main, external conflict of the story personal to the protagonist. Then the protagonist can’t ignore it anymore.

More details are coming on this other side of the incident in coming posts, but for now, let these points help you think about what your novel’s inciting incident could be. Or, if you already have a manuscript, use these tips to refine your inciting incident in your revision in order to give your story tighter plotting and more impact.

Categories: story structure