Okay, let’s break this one down a little more.

In last week’s post, I said that the inciting incident involves putting the main character in a situation that they have never experienced before. That’s true. But there is another piece to it, too. 

Actually, depending on who you ask, there are a number of things that make up an inciting incident, but for our purposes, we’ll stick with these two. If you want a more advanced picture of it, you can try books like John York’s Into the Woods, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, or Syd Field’s Screenplay.

Anyway.

If you look back at the inciting incidents that I mentioned in last week’s post, you’ll see the other element in there. All the protagonists were faced with problems that they hadn’t faced before. But the other piece is that they all chose to do something about it. And this is a really important piece to a good inciting incident and, ultimately, a good story. The main character, in some sense, has to choose to take on the problem.

In Monsters Inc., they could have just given Boo to the monster authorities. Done. It would be out of their hands. Or claws. Or whatever. In Jaws, Chief Brody could have gone back to New York (in fact, at one point his wife suggests that they do just that). Even in the mini-story that we started at the very beginning of this blog series (about the kid going to the store), she could have just walked back home after she dropped the money down the sewer. But in every case, they chose differently.

And that “take it on” mentality is important for the rest of the story. Because as things get more difficult, it’s important for the audience to remember that the main character went into this willingly.  It’s probably important for the main character to know that, too. Otherwise, why else would they keep going?

So. Whatever event you choose to kick off the real action of the story—whatever new and weird problem you want your main character to face—make sure that it is something that they decide to take on (rather than being forced to do it by some other force). Because doing that will set in motion the other thing you can look for in a story: the character arc.

More about that next week.

Happy writing, young writer