Let’s say that every day you go to the school cafeteria to eat your lunch, the best table in the room is always occupied by the same obnoxious group. They’re loud, they’re rude, and they’re exactly the kind of edgy and dysfunctional crowd that parents of any era hope their offspring will never hook up with or want to take to the prom. Although the members of this particular group are collectively as dumb as a box of rocks, no one ever steps up to challenge their crass behavior. Nor would anyone ever think to sit down at their table; even if it were totally empty at the time, the fear of discovery by the unsavory clique that has staked it out as their own has been enough to dissuade outside occupancy. Disturbing as this is to you, however, you’ve determined it’s not really your problem.
One day a fellow student with MS who is in a wheelchair is going past the table and accidentally bumps into it. The bad crowd decides to make an example of this person by grabbing his wheelchair and spinning him around, laughing at his panicked pleas to stop. For as many months as you’ve kept to yourself and tried to ignore the group’s conduct, they have finally crossed the line. A conflict that you previously felt had nothing to do with you personally is now a fight that calls you to action.
In screenwriting, this event is called an “inciting incident” and it’s what helps set the plot in motion. Without such an event transpiring, the characters could very likely go forever without changing their routine. Suddenly – and not unlike the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back – the status quo is disrupted in such a profound way that they are now forced to make a decision and take a stand. Such action will not only impact their own lives from that moment forward but the lives of everyone around them as well.
Critics have argued that Braveheart and The Patriot – both starring Mel Gibson – are basically the same plot set in different centuries and countries. In Braveheart, William Wallace is a pacifist Scot who doesn’t join the rebellion against the English until his beloved wife, Murron, is murdered. In The Patriot, Benjamin Martin is a pacifist farmer who doesn’t join the colonial militia against the English until his beloved son, Thomas, is murdered. With both of these films, the inciting incident is so heinous that the protagonist can no longer keep tending his flock of cows and hoping that everything will quietly go away.
Contrast this to a lighter type of character reinvention such as that found in Legally Blonde. In this flippy comedy, the inciting incident is Elle getting dumped by her boyfriend; without his disruption in her sheltered status quo, she would never have gone to Harvard and proven she had a brain under that perfectly styled blonde hair.
Answer BOTH of the questions below in complete sentences.
1. What are the three most recent movies you’ve seen? What was the inciting incident in each one? How early did the incident occur in each story?
2. What is the inciting incident in the film you want to write? How will this incident challenge your character’s value system, daily routine, skill level and relationships with others?
Screenwriting for Teens, (Hamlett) pp. 61-62