Let’s Make It Interesting
Two weeks ago, I wrote a little bit about what I like to see in a book’s first chapter. I also touched on the Inciting Incident, and I want to expand on that topic in this blog post. Personally, I’d never heard the term before I started trying to write professionally, but it’s a cornerstone of any work of fiction – whether you know it or not.
So, what is an Inciting Incident? Well, if you think of the events in a novel unfolding like a series of dominos falling, the Inciting Incident is the initial push that makes the first one fall, setting off the chain reaction. It’s Katniss volunteering as tribute in The Hunger Games. It’s Dr. Frankenstein creating the Monster. It’s Romeo and Juliet falling in insta-love. Without this event, the rest of the story can’t happen. Unless you’re reading some kind of experimental fiction that has no plot, there’s for sure one near the beginning of any story.
When should the Inciting Incident occur? Well, in my novel, it happens near the end of Chapter One, but that’s not always the case. You may not see the Inciting Incident occur until Chapter Two or Three of a book, especially if there are multiple POV characters or a fair amount of setup is needed. It’s seldom the very first thing to happen in a story (you have to set those dominos up before you can watch them fall.) That said, if you’re at the end of the third chapter of your book and no Inciting Incident has happened yet, you’re testing your readers’ patience. They’re waiting for the story to start and probably won’t wait much longer before putting it down. It’s a little like being at your favorite restaurant, but you’ve been waiting an hour and don’t even have drinks yet.
So, what if you’re having difficulty figuring out what your story’s Inciting Incident is? Here’s where outlining comes in handy, at least for me. Look at your book’s early events. What’s the one thing that, if taken away, would prevent the story from starting at all? If Luke’s aunt and uncle hadn’t been killed by those Stormtroopers in Star Wars, he probably would have stayed home on the farm and not pursued becoming a Jedi. If Bella Swan never ran into Edward Cullen, she’d have just lived her life as a bland high-schooler, instead of a bland high-schooler with vampire friends. If those pesky Cheap Suits hadn’t shown up in The Case Of The Cheap Suit Plot, my main character Chloe Stewart could have just finished her routine job and gone home to take a nap. The cardinal rule of telling any story is “Don’t be boring.” And that’s exactly what Inciting Incidents do – they stop the story from being boring.
