Inciting incident
The inciting incident is the event that disrupts a character's ordinary situation and sets the story's central problem in motion, the point at which going back to normal stops being an option.
A story only begins once there is a problem. A town going about its daily business is not a story; a town cleaning up after a landslide is the start of one, because something is now wrong that somebody will have to deal with. The landslide is the inciting incident.
Robert McKee's Story made the term a staple of screenwriting teaching, describing it as the event that throws the balance of the protagonist's life out of order. Novelists use it the same way.
How it works
The test is not size but consequence. An inciting incident does not need an explosion. It needs to make the character's ordinary arrangements unworkable, so that a want becomes urgent and the throughline starts. The letter arrives, the diagnosis lands, the partner does not come home. What matters is that afterwards, doing nothing has a cost.
One standard breakdown of a logline makes it one of just four parts, alongside the need, the desire and the antagonist, which is a fair indication of how much of a story it decides.
Inciting incident examples
- Hamlet: the ghost of Hamlet's father tells him he was murdered by his own brother. Why it works: Hamlet cannot un-know it. Grief turns into a duty.
- Pride and Prejudice: a rich single man, Mr Bingley, rents Netherfield Park. Why it works: it is small and social, but it sets every family in the neighbourhood in motion, the Bennets first.
- A crime novel: a retired detective finds her old case number written on a stranger's hand. Why it works: it is personal, it is a question, and ignoring it would cost her something.
Common mistakes
- It arrives too late. An inciting incident on page sixty, with everything before it serving as introduction. Early drafts almost always delay the big turns, and almost always survive having them moved up.
- No choice attached. The incident happens to the character and they simply react. The disturbance is external; the response has to be a decision, or the book opens with a passive protagonist.
- Too many candidates. Three events each seem to start the story, so none of them does. Pick the one that the ending answers, and let the others lead up to it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the definition of an inciting incident?
An inciting incident is the event that knocks a character's life out of balance and starts the main story. After it, the character cannot simply carry on as before, so they have to act.
Where should the inciting incident happen?
Early. Screenwriting advice commonly puts it within the first ten to fifteen pages of a feature script, and in a novel it usually lands in the first chapter or first few chapters. A draft that holds it back until page sixty is spending too long on introduction.
Is the inciting incident the same as the hook?
Not always. The hook is whatever makes the reader keep reading on the first page, and it can be a voice, a question or an image. The inciting incident is the event that starts the main problem. Sometimes they are the same moment, often the hook comes first.