How To Write An Inciting Incident That Works In Any Novel

Let’s quickly remind ourselves what the Inciting Incident is:

– Purpose: Interrupt the world and start the story by introducing the main conflict. It does this by either directly or indirectly inviting the central character to join the Quest.

– What Needs to Happen: A significant (although not necessarily overtly dramatic) event or piece of information disrupts the protagonist’s world. It will always push the protagonist out of their comfort zone and set the plot in motion.

Some people see the decision to act at the end of Act One as the Inciting Incident, but it’s not, because after the Inciting Incident, there is usually some period of dilemma or debate about going on the Quest. This structure is important:

– Establish Status Quo

– Inciting Incident Disrupts It

– Debate/Dilemma

– Decision To Join The Quest

Regardless, it is important that around 10–15% into the book something narratively important must happen. There is no rule as to what it can be. When I say it is narratively important, it can also be quite subtle. It can be mysterious. It can be something that only the protagonist notices. It does not necessarily mean car chases, declarations of love or assassination attempts. All it needs to do is to invite the central character to join the Quest. The invitation itself may not even be clear yet, but the reader must know that something has changed, and things are possibly (of course, in reality, certainly) going to change.

The Inciting Incident also gets momentum and propulsion into the plot to get the reader to begin to commit to the novel they are reading. So in the first few chapters, you have to sell them the characters, make them feel something towards them, and then disrupt that Status Quo. This is the central purpose of the Inciting Incident.

Key Elements Of The Inciting Incident

– Disruption: Present an event, information or revelation that invites the protagonist to take action/to go on the Quest, whether that is to fight a distant evil empire in a fantasy epic or solving a mysterious murder in a crime mystery or meeting a new love interest in a low–angst romance novel.

– Emotional Importance: The Inciting Incident must have a strong emotional impact on the protagonist and reader, even if it is not clear how significant it is yet. (For example, in a romance novel, you probably won’t have the character saying, ‘I am going to get married to this person,’ but you would have them thinking, ‘I am attracted to/intrigued by/even annoyed by this person.’)

– Decision Point, Part One: The protagonist won’t make a final decision to join the Quest at this point, but it is clear that change has arrived and a decision is necessary. After this, the protagonist will debate going on the Quest, but of course, in every single novel, they will go.

Checklist For Building Towards And Creating A Great Inciting Incident

1. Establish the Status Quo and introduce the protagonist

2. Build characters and the world

3. Foreshadow the Conflict

4. The Inciting Incident happens and issues the invitation to join the Quest

5. Show the protagonist’s initial reactions and dilemmas, including any decision they make to act or not to act (which they can reverse)

Go ahead and print this out/save it and use it as a checklist for your Inciting Incident.

How To Develop The Inciting Incident

The Inciting Incident propels your protagonist into the main action of the story, which is the premise of the novel: the protagonist has to do something, which begins to transform them. Therefore the Inciting Incident must always directly relate to the book’s basic premise and foreshadow the journey or conflict ahead. It must challenge the protagonist’s fears and self–conception and/or appeal to their wants and needs. Therefore there are some things you must do to develop a good inciting incident. If you already have an idea for an inciting incident, now is the time to see if it achieves the following, and what you can do to make it do so, if not.

1. Ensure the Inciting Incident aligns with your book’s core premise. It should directly introduce or heavily hint at the central conflict. It should be the invitation to undertake the Quest. This does not necessarily need to be completely obvious and there is definitely scope to develop and shift the Quest with twists and reveals later, but the process starts here.

Gone Girl is a good example of a novel that shifts the nature of the Quest in this way. However, to be very clear: the book is written with clear knowledge that this will happen. You must never change a quest without a very strong reason to do so, or because your original quest has run out of steam. If that happens, and it does happen, you must go back and look at what you have set up the Inciting Incident as being about. Only change the identity of a quest because you can deliver a jaw–dropping twist later in the book that makes the reader go, ‘Oh, wow! This is what this book is really about. How clever!’

As stated elsewhere, when we talk about quests and conflicts, this isn’t necessarily suggestive of literal conflict or violence, as in a fantasy epic or a crime novel. For instance, in the romance novel mentioned above, you can see the quest isn’t necessarily that literal conflict, it is the journey of a love story, which produces its own conflicts, based around a couple’s struggle to build or save a relationship. Finding and keeping hold of love is then the quest/conflict as much as fighting an army of ogres and wizards would be in the fantasy novel.

2. Create Immediate Stakes: The incident should immediately bring risk to the protagonist and their world, presenting a challenge or problem that requires action. This hooks the reader and sets the narrative in motion.

3. Foreshadow Conflict: It should reveal or hint at the risk of the larger conflict to come, providing a glimpse of the challenges the protagonist will face. This creates anticipation and prepares the reader for the unfolding story.

4. Compel Action: the incident actually leaves the protagonist no choice but to react, setting them on a path that will change their life. This reaction is often driven by internal or external motivations. It will be followed by a process of debate about whether to go on the Quest, but the central character will have to go. If they do not, you do not have a novel.

5. Reveal/Deepen Character: the Inciting Incident must either challenge and frighten the protagonist, or intrigue and attract them, or both. More importantly, it must further reveal to the reader who the character is, what is their flaws and fears, and wants and needs. For example, a peasant boy finds out that he is actually king of a magical kingdom. He must go on a difficult, dangerous quest to claim his birthright and change his life. He is both frightened by the prospect of the danger, but also excited by possibly becoming a king. His emotional responses to the Inciting Incident shows us more of who he is, before the Quest itself transforms him again.

Why The Inciting Incident of The Hobbit Sucks

We just mentioned The Hobbit, which in many ways has an extremely traditional and well laid–out quest structure in which Bilbo Baggins goes off on his adventure, encounters various obstacles, finds rings, fights battles and returns home transformed. But the book has a terrible initial structure. Why?

In a novel of almost 20 chapters, almost the entirety of Act One is crammed into the first chapter, in which: Bilbo is living peacefully in The Shire; Gandalf arrives with the dwarves; he tells Bilbo about their quest to fight the dragon Smaug and asks him to be their ‘burglar’; Bilbo says no; Gandalf goes, ‘Oh, go on,’ and Bilbo thinks about it a bit more. At the start of Chapter Two, so only roughly ten percent into the novel, they all leave and begin the Quest. You might think: ‘But that’s a lot of work done in one chapter. What’s the problem?’

But that is the problem. Tolkien, frankly, structured this badly. He has essentially forced the Opening Image/Hook and the Inciting Incident together and the book suffers as a result. He is too quick to get us off on the quest. There is no time for us to get our head around what is happening. It is only because Bilbo is such a good character and we get into great conflicts, with excellent world–building along the way (not possible in all novels), that it just about works. But the structure is actually full of holes. Why should Bilbo do any of this? The problem is not really his. It’s the dwarves’. It’s never really discussed why Gandalf chooses him, and Gandalf has no time to explain apart from some thin stuff about intuition and ancestry. Before he has a chance to consider the pros and cons, and frankly, decide he is not going to go, because he has no real reason to do so, Bilbo is off and straight into the series of conflicts that make the book so pacey and involving. In fact, we love The Hobbit despite its set–up not because of it.

And here’s the other thing, of practical use to you. If this manuscript turned up in an editor’s email inbox today, the first thing they would do is ask Tolkien to restructure the first act. I can almost guarantee it. That is, of course, if they decided his book was worth publishing at all…

This is partly a joke. But only partly…

This is an excerpt from How To Write A Novel Chapter By Chapter available here: https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Novel-Chapter-Outlining-ebook/dp/B0DJ8TMVWL?ref_=ast_author_mpb

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