In the last post I suggested that a good way to help your young writer get more familiar with the structure of stories was to watch more movies with them. When you do that, though, it will also help to be able to pick out two structural things in each movie. Repeating this exercise over time will eventually make clear that there really is a common format to all the different kinds of stories that they like. And more than that, they’ll realize that this format can be replicated in their own work.

The two structural things are the inciting incident and the character arc. Now, in the next few posts I will go in to more detail about what these are, but for now we can use some quick and simple definitions.

The inciting incident is the event that happens early in the story that sets the protagonist on a path that is different from the world they are used to.

For example, in Monsters Inc., Mike and Sully’s realization that a human child has entered their world (and that they will have to do something about it) is the inciting incident. They have definitely never faced that problem before.

In Jaws, it happens when Chief Brody discovers the body on the beach. (I know that the swimmer actually gets NOM NOMMED in the opening scene, but that event doesn’t become an inciting incident until Chief Brody knows about it. Before then, his world hasn’t changed.) Being from New York, he has probably dealt with death before, but never because of a shark. He has never faced that problem before.

In Mulan, the army demands that every household send a man to join the war, and she realizes her father is too old to survive the ordeal. She has lived in a small village her whole life. She has never faced a problem like this before.

In Die Hard, terrorists storm the building. Yep, that’s a new problem right there.

As for the character arc, this is just how we track how the protagonist has changed from the beginning of the story to the end. Did they go from shy to outgoing? Afraid of something to facing that fear? Disconnected from family to building a new family (or re-connecting)? And so on.

For Mike and Sully, they begin the movie only wanting to frighten children until they scream (and being scared of children themselves) to caring for Boo and wanting to make kids laugh.

In Jaws, Chief Brody starts out afraid of the water, but ends up not only going in the water but fighting a shark on its own territory.

And so on.

So try getting your young writer to do some of this with their own favorite movies and books. What’s the problem that’s never been faced before, and how does the main character change from beginning to end.

As I said before, I’ll go into a little more detail on both of these things in the next few posts. But this should get you started.

Happy writing, young writer.