The most exciting scene to write in a script? The inciting incident!
Day 1: Writing a Teaser
Day 2: Introducing Your Hero
Day 3: Setting up Your Hero’s Life
Day 8: Keeping Your Scenes Entertaining
Okay, let’s summarize where we are. So far, this is our page count…
Pages 1-5 — Teaser.
Pages 6-8 — Introduce your main character.
Page 9-14 — Set up your hero’s work life, family life, and social life.
A couple of notes here. You want to combine setup wherever possible. Therefore, when I say pages 6-8 are where you want to introduce your hero, that doesn’t mean you only have to introduce your hero in that scene. You can also introduce a second big character. Likewise, you don’t have to wait until page 9 to start setting up your hero’s work life. You can set up their work life when you introduce them.
Also, if you don’t use a teaser, this allows you 5 extra pages to play with in the opening act. Therefore, you can use those pages to more extensively set up your hero’s life. That’s the only downside of teasers, is they limit the amount of time you have to set things up. So be judicious about what kind of story you’re writing and decide if it’s the kind of movie that’s right for a teaser. If you have a ton to set up and, therefore, need pages, a teaser might not be for you.
This brings us to today’s topic, the inciting incident, which will usually occur between pages 12-15. This is assuming you’re using the traditional Hero’s Journey model. There’s no reason you can’t place your inciting incident on page 5, or even page 1. It all depends on what kind of movie you’re writing. However, for now, we’ll look at the inciting incident as it pertains to traditional structure.
So what is an inciting incident? The way I see it, the inciting incident is the beginning of the plot. Up until this point, your character has been existing in their world, oblivious to the machinations of what’s happening around them. But the inciting incident comes to their doorstep and says, “Here I am. You have to deal with me.”
This creates a situation where you hero must ACT. Which is a good thing when it comes to storytelling because the more active your hero is, the more exciting the story tends to be.
The wonderful thing about the inciting incident is that it sets up your GSU. It gives your hero his goal (solve the problem) which allows you to add some stakes (if he doesn’t, something bad happens to him) as well as some urgency (he must complete the task by [x many minutes/hours/days]).
I saw Shrek trending on Netflix yesterday. That movie has one of the clearest examples of an inciting incident. Shrek is minding his own business, living his best life in his swamp house. He’s got peace. He’s got quiet. Then – BAM! – he walks outside one evening to see his entire swamp invaded by fairy tale creatures. A gigantic problem has literally been dropped at his feet.
Mind you, this is another way to look at the inciting incident. It’s a PROBLEM. But not your everyday problem. It’s, up until this point in your hero’s life, the biggest problem they’ve ever had to deal with. If that isn’t the case, you’re probably focusing on the wrong moment in your hero’s life.
I rewatched Shang-Chi recently. That movie’s inciting incident occurs on the famous bus-attack scene. Shaun and Katy are minding their own business, heading to work, when some dudes try to steal the pendant around Shaun’s neck. Shaun beats everyone up and concludes that if bad guys are trying to steal his pendant, they’ll be trying to steal his sister’s pendant as well. So off he goes to warn her.
In the Netflix movie, “The Guilty,” starring Jake Gylenhaall as an emergency operator, the inciting incident is when he gets a strange call from a woman acting cagey. He eventually realizes she’s been kidnapped by her dangerous ex-husband and is pretending to call her daughter. A gigantic problem has been established. Jake now needs to figure out where this car is and get some cops to save her.
In It Follows, the inciting incident occurs after our lead, Jay (female), wakes up tied to a chair in a parking lot after having had sex with her date. Her date informs her of the rules. That she has to pass the curse on to the next person or else the previous curse-holders will come after her.
In Bird Box, we have Malorie (Sandra Bullock) going to the hospital with her friend, Jessica, for a pregnancy checkup. Afterwards, Jessica drives Malorie home. As she drives, Jessica starts freaking out then tries to kill them both in a crash. Talk about an intense inciting incident!
In Argo, the inciting incident occurs when there’s an uprising in Iran. A group of American governmental workers are stranded there and must hide out . This problem is dropped at the feet of our protagonists, back in America, who now must figure out a way to rescue them.
What’s interesting about this inciting incident is that it doesn’t so much happen to a single protagonist as it does an entire group of protagonists, as it’s going to take a team of Americans to get them out. I bring this up for anyone wondering if inciting incidents only work when there’s a single protagonist. No. An inciting incident is a giant problem introduced into the story. That problem could require one person to solve it or an entire group of people (see also: Avengers).
As I alluded to above, not every screenplay has to abide by the “inciting incident on page 12-15” rule. Believe it or not, The Hangover’s inciting incident occurs at the exact same moment we transition into the second act – the guys all wake up after a crazy night out with no recollection of what happened and a groom who’s disappeared.
The whole reason an inciting incident comes when it does is because the audience’s expectations are for something interesting to happen in those first 15 minutes. If you go 30 minutes without anything interesting happening, most modern audiences will tune you out. So it’s a big risk whenever you extend the inciting incident beyond page 15. The reason that The Hangover gets away with it (their inciting incident occurs on page 24) is because listening to our three leads squabble in the lead-up to the incident is so darn funny.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have Cloverfield Lane. That movie starts out with its protagonist, Michelle, leaving her fiance, getting in her car, and driving back to her home state. While driving, her car is struck, she flips off the road, and wakes up in a cold dark room, chained to the wall. We have reached the problem, aka “the inciting incident,” just four pages into the story!
I have no issues with early inciting incidents. They work well in tense thrillers or horror script when you want to pull the reader in immediately. Just make sure you have enough “Richter scale” plot moments to balance out the rest of the screenplay. One of the reasons you typically wait until page 15 to introduce the inciting incident is because the reader knows you’re building up to a big moment and are willing to wait for it. If you go to that moment immediately, it’s the equivalent of bribing your kids with candy five minutes into a road trip. You’ve sort of used up your ‘ace in the hole.’
To me, the inciting incident is one of the most exciting scenes to write because it’s the whole reason you wrote the script in the first place. It introduces the plot, the concept, everything. And now we get to see how our hero deals with the problem. We’ll get into that (dealing with the problem) more in a bit. But this would be a good time to remind new writers that, as fun as the inciting incident is to write, it is not the end of your screenplay. It’s the beginning.
The inciting incident scene should not be the pinnacle of your screenplay because that means the pinnacle of your screenplay is happening on page 15. A good example of this is Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. I’m sure you remember the inciting incident in that film, where Tom Cruise and his family run down the street while a highway overpass crumbles behind them. After some cool shots of Tri-Pod aliens killing people, do you remember any imagery or scenes from the movie after that? I’m guessing you don’t. That’s because they made the inciting incident the pinnacle of the movie.
To summarize, the inciting incident occurs after you’ve set up your hero’s normal life, typically between pages 12-15, although that may change depending on the kind of movie you’re writing. The inciting incident creates a big problem in your hero’s life that he must deal with. It should be one of the biggest and most memorable scenes in the movie. But make sure not to make it the best scene. For every big scene that follows, use your inciting incident as the bar you’re trying to beat. That way your script gets better as it goes on as opposed to worse.
Next First Act Post: Thursday, March 10
Pages to write until next post: 2
Pages you should have completed after today’s assignment: 15
