Sunday, January 30, 2011

Something to Get Inciting About: The Inciting Event

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The inciting event. You can’t talk about how to write good openings without someone mentioning it. But what exactly is it and how do you make it work for your novel?

What it is: The inciting event is that moment early on in your story when things irrevocably change for your protagonist. The event that sets them on the path that will become the novel, the major conflict, the whole reason someone picked up the book in the first place.

Where it is: Within the first 30 to 50 pages of your manuscript. Now, this doesn’t that mean it has to come between pages 30 and 50. Just somewhere between page one and 30, or page one and 50 (for longer novels). Some books require a little more set up. If you have a larger word count, the first 50 pages might work better for you. A smaller word count, 30 pages is more than enough time to get to the inciting event.

How do you make it work? Use it as a bridge between an intriguing opening scene and the core conflict of your novel.

My fantasy novel, The Shifter, has an inciting event that works well as an example. The basic story is:
A girl with the unique ability to heal by shifting pain from person to person, discovers it’s the only weapon she has to save her missing sister.
The book is about Nya (my protagonist) trying to save her sister. That’s my external core conflict. But it also has an internal core conflict about Nya struggling with using her powers as a weapon. These two conflicts pretty much sum up the book. However, having the sister go missing in the first chapter gets to the story too soon, and there’s not enough time to let the stakes and tension build. I needed to set the scene a bit before I threw the reader into the core story.

There’s nothing wrong with setting the scene in the opening, as long as what’s happening in the opening is interesting, hooks the reader, and sets up the core conflict. That’s exactly what an inciting event is for.

The opening scene in The Shifter starts with Nya stealing eggs for breakfast. She gets caught, tries to escape, and in the process of that escape, uses her pain shifting ability. Naturally, someone sees her use it. This all takes places in the first ten pages of Chapter One. Someone seeing her shift is my inciting event.

Why this works: It gives the reader a likable protagonist and something interesting going on right away. An unusual theft where someone might get caught. It also shows the pain shifting ability in action so readers understand the mechanics of it, and connects to what will become the core conflict because of who sees her use that ability. Had Nya not shifted pain in this scene, the rest of the story would not have unfolded as it did. Two very critical things happened here that set the rest of the book’s plot in motion:
  1. She was seen shifting pain by people in a position to tell the bad guys about it.
  2. The people involved in the actual pain shifting later become involved in both the external core conflict and the internal core conflict.
That seems too easy.

You’re right, because jumping right from this to the missing sister would probably leave the reader wondering why the heck we needed that opening scene to begin with. There’s still a lot that has to happen between this seemingly unimportant moment and the core conflict. That’s the bridge part, and I think this is where a lot of the confusion over inciting events comes in. The inciting event doesn’t launch your core conflict, it launches the steps that gets you to your core conflict.

Once Nya made those critical connections, I needed to show how those connections and events got her to the core conflict. I also needed to let readers meet the sister so they’d care when she disappeared. See Nya’s world and discover the inherent dangers there. Care about her, see the trouble starting to snowball, and start to worry about all that trouble catching up to her.

The second half of Chapter One is just that. Nya goes to her sister, you see their respective lives, and the first result of being seen has a consequence by the end of the first chapter (page 20). Something Nya did in the opening scene has now come back to bite her and cause another problem. But we’re still not to the core conflict yet.

Chapter Two adds a second consequence that is triggered by the first (still with me?). This is woven into the story as Nya does her day-to-day stuff, and Nya doesn’t even realize what’s going on. By the end of the chapter (page 38), yet another consequence results from her using her shifting ability–three so far for those keeping track. And though the reader doesn’t know it, that consequence connects directly to the internal core conflict of the novel. I’m lining up the plot points so the core conflict will have the most impact once I get there.

But I still don’t go there yet. I’m building the story and suspense. Layering in the bits and pieces so the reader is (hopefully) intrigued by what’s going on and wondering how all of this ties together. They know from reading the cover copy that the sister disappears, so they’ll be curious about what aspects of the story so far will connect back to that.

Chapter Three throws in the first hint of the core conflict, but just a hint. The plot pieces for both the internal and external core conflicts aren’t lined up yet. It’s important to get those set up and ready so they both clash at about the same time for the most dramatic punch I can get. By the end of Chapter Three, (page 57) I’ve tied the plot back into the opening scene yet again, by bringing back one of those critical first scene characters. Nya’s actions in Chapter One have another direct consequence on what’s happening to her (consequence number four).

In Chapter Four, everything finally comes full circle. By the end of the chapter (page 92) the core conflict takes over the plot, the internal core conflict has begun, and the story can really get down to business. The novel has 370 pages, so this is roughly 25% of the book. If you use the Three Act Structure like I do, it’s Act One. It sets up the core conflict, but the plot is already in full swing, and has been since line one.

That’s a lot to happen between that inciting event on page ten, and the core conflict event on page 92. But all the groundwork, the reasons why those later events mattered, the world building, the character introductions, all that stuff that goes into a story had to happen first. A reader had to care about this missing sister, care about Nya, and see how much trouble she was going to get into because of this problem.

But notice how much plot went into those first four chapters. And how all those plot moments led to the core conflict, and were triggered by that simple little shifting inciting event. The steps between the two events.

Your inciting event doesn’t have to be a huge deal if that doesn’t fit your story. It can be subtle, or it can be in-your-face-obvious. But it has to lead somewhere and cause something that’s much bigger, even it if takes you a few chapters to get there. Bridges take lots of steps to cross, but if there’s a great view along the way, folks will enjoy the journey.

Originally posted during the Blue Fire blog tour at Sierra Godfrey's blog

16 comments:

  1. This is a very important post. The inciting event is arguably the essential event of a story, at least in the story as we understand it here. A case study like this is a good means of presenting it for reflection.

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  2. I'm impatient, as a writer. I like putting my inciting event before the story even starts, so the story opens with the characters scrambling to deal with this new thing, rather than opening with a more typical day in the life. I like the beginnings this lets me write.

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  3. Excellent post. I've seen so many people who use the II and FPP as the same thing that it gets confusing but this really breaks it down perfectly. Thank you.

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  4. YES! I'm bookmarking this post. I've been trying to figure that out with a novel I have. I was fretting that my story perhaps didn't start in the right place, BUT like your story, I had to lay out some things first (sci-fi things, in my case). In my story, the reader won't know if something's going wrong the second time if he/she can't tell how everything is supposed to work! As long as I'm not boring the reader, anyway. Hmm. LOL

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  5. This is probably one of the most vital tools I've seen for a writer. I often struggle with how to write a strong opening, so it's great to have this advice to help give me some structure.

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  6. Great to see the repost, Janice! This remains one of the top all time most visited posts on my blog.

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  7. Porky: Thanks! It was a lot of fun to study it like this.

    Barbara: Nothing wrong with that :) Sounds like it's working for you.

    Sherri: Most welcome: The more I study how things actually work the more I see the subtle layers and find ways to explain those layers. Been very educational!

    Carol: "As long as you're not boring the reader" works for just about everything in writing, LOL. You can do anything as long as you don't do that.

    Paul: Glad it's helpful :)

    Sierra: Awesome! It's one of my favorites from the tour, actually.

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  8. I am truly not too familiar with this theme but I do like to see websites for design themes and absorbing topics. You really thrived upon a theme that I commonly don’t deal much about and established it very entertaining. This is a fine website that I will take note of. I already earmarked it for future reference. Thanks

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  9. Hi there, You craft some quality blogs, I really like nearly all of your current articles. I always check back here often to find out in case you have modified. Carry on blogging!

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  10. Simply a spectacular article and I can assume you are a master on this subject!!

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  11. Hey Janice!
    In my paranormal romance, my MC is kidnapped and used for nefarious reasons. She escapes and the story goes from there. My question is should the inciting event be the escape or the kidnapping? If it's the kidnapping, what do you think of starting the next chapter as a "3 years later" chapter with the escape?

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    1. Not knowing anything beyond what's here, it sounds to me like the kidnapping is more backstory since the story "starts" three years later. The inciting event could be the moment where she sees the opportunity to escape though. Or the chance offered her after she escapes to do whatever the core conflict of the novel is (if it's not connected to the kidnapping).

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    2. Would like to understand more of your outline

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    3. There are a ton of articles on the site about my process, and the processes of other authors. Here's a link for the main "Structure and Outline" page:

      http://blog.janicehardy.com/2008/02/structure-and-outlining.html

      If there's something in particular you'd like to know, I'll be happy to answer. There's a lot to cover without specifically knowing what you're looking for. You can also look at these posts. They all cover the Three Act Structure, which is what I use.

      http://blog.janicehardy.com/search/label/three%20act%20structure

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  12. Thank you do you have more information on third plot point and climax? That be helpful

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    1. Here's the entire three act structure, with links to those. And I just realized I never finished the climax post, so I need to do that one. My bad! Thanks for making me notice that :)

      http://blog.janicehardy.com/2013/10/how-to-plot-with-three-act-structure.html

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