Inciting Incidents and Your Protagonist

-
My daughter, Heidi, 3 weeks old.
Today is my eldest daughter's birthday. Her arrival changed my life in a lot of ways, some anticipated, others surprising.  I'm the person I am today because of the journey I started as her mother.

Every story's protagonist must experience an inciting incident in their story.  Something that  changes their life and creates conflict, big or small. Because of this change, they ask questions, pursue different relationships, and try different things.

I doubt anyone who's had children would dispute the numerous shifts in their life story once their first child arrived, whether it occurred at birth, during the pregnancy or during attempts to become pregnant. Or maybe, they adopted a child. The inciting incident might be the journey to adoption, while the child's arrival is the conclusion of the story arc.

It doesn't matter what inciting incident you give your character, they must have one. Without it, the story doesn't hold the reader's interest. People want to read how events change someone's life.

Here are a few examples:

  • Harry Potter speaks to a snake in the zoo then the glass disappears, releasing the snake.
  • Dorothy's house lands in another world filled with colorful and unusual people.
  • The government asks Indiana Jones about the Staff of Ra and asks him to retrieve it.


Each of these incidents set up the rest of the story.  They, also, occur at the beginning of the story. But note, they don't have to be in the first sentence or paragraph. They just need to occur in that early scene.

What kinds of inciting events can you use when writing fiction?

  • Death
  • Marriage
  • Divorce
  • Illness
  • Military Coups
  • Betrayal
  • Jealousy
  • Success
  • Failure
  • Criminal Acts
  • Moving


This is a short list, but I'm sure you can think of more.  What else would you add?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Skin Tone: Describing Your Characters

-
Image
When you write about character's of different races, how do you describe their skin tone? If you've never thought about this, then consider this question: How do the authors you read described persons of color? A few months ago, I attended a webinar about writing diverse characters. The guest was Eliana West of Writers for Diversity . The information she shared felt fresh and valuable, especially related to describing a character's skin tone. I get really tired of seeing African-descended characters described in terms of the goods that drove, and still drive the slave trade--coffee, chocolate, brown sugar. There's some weird psychosocial baggage attached to that.    -- N. K. Jemisin As this quote from author, N. K . Jemisin , indicates, historically, writers have described people of color using food-related descriptors. Many people of color find this offensive. This surprised me, at first, but she has a point, especially when you view it through the quote above. My fir...
Read more

Character Development: Using the Johari Window

-
Image
In my last post, Character Development: the Johari Window , I introduced the Johari Window as a tool for developing your characters. It's important that your character not know everything about their situation. These unknowns can lead to an intriguing story and create possibilities for conflict within the story. How do you use the Johari Window? In this post, I thought I'd provide a simple example of the Johari Window with a character most people know:  Harry Potter. Below, I have filled out the Johari Window as it might appear within the first few pages of book 1, Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone . The Johari Window based on Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone Three of the quadrants in this window reveal what Harry doesn't know about who he truly is and what happened to his parents. I could add a lot to the quadrants representing what he doesn't know, but I hope this gives you an idea on how a Johari Window might be used. What do you d...
Read more

He Said, She Said, Who Said? Punctuating Dialogue

-
Image
Courtesy of Morguefile.com I've been focusing my posts on workshops and panels I taught or participated on at the Imaginarium Convention. Although this serves as a poor substitute for the real thing, I can share some highlights. This week, we're going to explore dialogue punctuation. The first thing writers need to learn is how to properly punctuate dialogue. I've discovered, over the years, that many don't know how. Notice in the first example below, the dialogue starts at the beginning of the sentence, and the speaking tag (he said, she said, Paul said, etc.) follows it.  A few points to notice: The first letter of the quotation is capitalized. What the person says is a sentence, so it must be capitalized. A comma comes directly after the quote and INSIDE the quotation marks. You can, also, have a question mark or exclamation point here. There is a space AFTER the closing quotation mark followed by the speaking tag and a period at the end of the sentence. In the next ...
Read more