{"id":1632,"date":"2018-05-01T21:44:43","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T01:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2018-12-31T18:21:20","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T23:21:20","slug":"writing-advice-3-reasons-why-you-should-never-skip-the-inciting-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/writing-advice-3-reasons-why-you-should-never-skip-the-inciting-incident\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Reasons Why You Should Never Skip The Inciting Incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This article first appeared in Night Owl Reviews<\/a>]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
“Nope, this is not rising to the quality I have come to expect from this author. Why did they skip the inciting incident? Why?”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maybe I\u2019ve been cursed by the book gods and need to sacrifice another virgin at the secret blood altar they keep in my local library\u2019s basement (all the best libraries have one), but I\u2019ve had crap luck with books lately. I\u2019ve DNF\u2019d the last four out of five books I\u2019ve read, primarily for story mechanics issues. They\u2019ve either dragged or didn\u2019t establish a solid foundation before jumping into the action, or just weren\u2019t very compelling stories. I\u2019m a slow-as-shit reader, so slogging through a book I\u2019m not that into can take weeks to reach the payoff of a \u201cmeh\u201d experience. If a book doesn\u2019t hook me within the first ~30%, I peace out and move on.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019ve noticed an unfortunate trend lately for books to skip the inciting incident of their stories. The inciting incident, you may recall from my previous article on the basic ingredients of every story<\/a>, is the event toward the beginning of the story that upends the status quo and forces the protagonist to act. If you\u2019re a writer and you\u2019re reading this article, you\u2019ve probably had it drilled into your head that readers are fickle creatures with undiagnosed ADD who will drop your book like a flaming turd and spill some virgin blood if they\u2019re not totally engrossed by the VERY FIRST SENTENCE. As a result, it may be tempting to skip over this event and go straight to the \u201cgood stuff,\u201d where the protagonist is reeling and everything is up in the air and exciting.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t do it! Danger, Will Robinson, danger! Skipping the inciting incident will just make things worse, and here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n

1. You\u2019ll fail to build the foundation of your story\u2014world, characters, and stakes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every single story since the beginning of time starts with a series of four questions, in this order: \u201cWho are these people?\u201d \u201cWhere are these people?\u201d \u201cWhy should I care about these people?\u201d \u201cWhat is happening to these people?\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/strong>The inciting incident happens between the third and fourth question.<\/strong> You have a bunch of (hopefully interesting) people hanging around, minding their own business, and on the precipice of change.<\/p>\n

The world is balanced but unstable, like the intro to a great song\u2014\u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d for instance\u2014composed of notes of anticipation and melancholy, setting the stage and pulling us in so we\u2019re primed and desperate to know what\u2019ll happen next (\u201cIs this the real life? Is this just fantasy?\u201d\u2026). <\/em>The inciting incident is when the beat drops (\u201cMama, just killed a man\u201d\u2026)<\/em>. Imagine if the song started with \u201cMama, just killed a man\u201d<\/em>\u2026 You: \u201cWhat? When? Why? I thought this was about a fat bottom girl\u2026\u201d Your readers will spend a good portion of the first act too confused about what happened in the past to pay attention to what\u2019s happening in the present.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\u201cNo, this is not the fat bottom girl song. Look at us \u2013 is this the pose someone strikes when they\u2019re about to launch into a fun song about loving your body no matter what junk you\u2019ve got in your trunk?\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2. You\u2019ll need exposition dumps to explain what the hell is going on.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you think it\u2019s okay to skip to the good stuff because you can just go back and explain the backstory later, you are WRONG. So, so wrong.<\/strong> This isn\u2019t to say you need to explain EVERYTHING in the beginning via big exposition dumps, but you must do the minimum to answer the first three questions. If you don\u2019t, then your attempt to skip to the good stuff will actually backfire, and you\u2019ll end up constantly having to stop the action you took such pains to skip to in order to explain the who, what, where, and why we should care in awkward info dumps. This is where you\u2019ll lose your readers. Look no further than 2016\u2019s Suicide Squad <\/em>movie for an example of a botched beginning. That movie has many, MANY flaws, but one of the biggest was its constant pausing of the plot to explain the circumstances and characters because it didn\u2019t bother doing it up front (at least not in the theatrical cut). The result was that we were STILL getting this introductory info nearly halfway through the movie, which is ridiculously bad storytelling. Don\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

3. <\/strong>You\u2019ll fail to make the reader care.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the end, all of this comes down to making the reader care about the story. If they don\u2019t care, they\u2019re not going to keep reading\u2026unless they\u2019re one of those completist types who must finish everything they start because their mom threatened to drown their goldfish if they didn\u2019t eat all their vegetables or whatever. I\u2019m not one of those people\u2014the completist or the mean mom\u2014but I know they exist, and I feel sad for them. Every second of your reader\u2019s life that ticks by is a second they\u2019ll never get back, so don\u2019t waste it \u201cskipping to the good stuff\u201d only to be forced to backtrack, delaying the answer to the critical \u201cWhy should I care?\u201d question. The Grim Reaper waits for no one, no matter how many virgins you sacrifice (I know this from experience). So make your reader care by the inciting incident, or your book will be the latest on their DNF pile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This article first appeared in Night Owl Reviews] Maybe I\u2019ve been cursed by the book gods and need to sacrifice another virgin at the secret blood altar they keep in my local library\u2019s basement (all the best libraries have one), but I\u2019ve had crap luck with books lately. I\u2019ve DNF\u2019d the last four out of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “3 Reasons Why You Should Never Skip The Inciting Incident”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-advice-and-lessons-painfully-learned"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-qk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1873,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}