Inciting Incident Quotes

Robert McKee says humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

Infatuation is the inciting incident. Maybe it goes somewhere, maybe it doesn't, but you can't have a story without it. Love is the story itself, the thing we carry with us after the mountains are gone.

Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index.

Shifting culture requires a confluence of inciting incidents. Something directional that leads to a tribal fracturing and reknitting. Often shows up in language first. In music. Fashion. It can feel a little like hope.” He points at the images. “This doesn’t feel like hope.

Years ago, a wise friend told me that no one ever changes until the pain level gets high enough. That seems entirely true. The inciting incident for life change is almost always heartbreak—something becomes broken beyond repair, too heavy to carry; in the words of the recovery movement, unmanageable.

For those protagonists we tend to admire the most, the Inciting Incident arouses not only a conscious desire, but an unconscious one as well. These complex characters suffer intense inner battles because these two desire are in direct conflict with each other. No matter what the character consciously thinks he wants, the audience senses or realizes that deep inside he unconsciously wants the very opposite.

Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.

Had Cupid’s bastard cherubs snuck into my bedroom and whispered in my ear, “My child, never commit.” I’d begun to suspect that my search an inciting incident was the inciting incident. But before I could get to the bottom of it, I met Boots, who made it all stop, who could not unbreak me by who could protect me from the narrative of the broken.

Do you know what an inciting incident is?' Noah says as he turns off the engine. I shake my head. 'It's the point at the start of a movie where something happens to the hero that changes their live forever. You've seen Harry Potter, right?' I nod. 'Well, the inciting incident in that movie is when Hagrid tells Harry Potter he'll be a great wizard someday and gives him the invite to Hogwarts.' 'Oh right.' Noah looks down in his lap, like he's embarassed. 'I think that's what you might be to me.' 'What? A wizard?' 'No! My inciting incident.' I glance at him. In half-light of the car park, his cheekbones look even more chiselled than ever. 'What do you mean?' I ask, hardly daring to believe what I think he means. 'I mean, Ithink this might be the start of something.' We sat in silence. 'I think you might be my inciting incident too,' I say with a small smile.

When I first started therapy, I didn’t see any of this. I was convinced that the issue I needed to work on was “improving communication and conflict in my relationships.” I found myself inexplicably at odds with people in all aspects of my life—friends, colleagues, and especially people I dated—but somehow I never traced these different frustrations and struggles back to this inciting incident in my childhood. I survived that, I told myself. I kept the peace.

I think we're all just doing our best to survive the inevitable pain and suffering that walks alongside us through life. Long ago, it was wild animals and deadly poxes and harsh terrain. I learned about it playing The Oregon Trail on an old IBM in my computer class in the fourth grade. The nature of the trail has changed, but we keep trekking along. We trek through the death of a sibling, a child, a parent, a partner, a spouse; the failed marriage, the crippling debt, the necessary abortion, the paralyzing infertility, the permanent disability, the job you can't seem to land; the assault, the robbery, the break-in, the accident, the flood, the fire; the sickness, the anxiety, the depression, the loneliness, the betrayal, the disappointment, and the heartbreak. There are these moments in life where you change instantly. In one moment, you're the way you were, and in the next, you're someone else. Like becoming a parent: you're adding, of course, instead of subtracting, as it is when someone dies, and the tone of the occasion is obviously different, but the principal is the same. Birth is an inciting incident, a point of no return, that changes one's circumstances forever. The second that beautiful baby onto whom you have projected all your hopes and dreams comes out of your body, you will never again do anything for yourself. It changes you suddenly and entirely. Birth and death are the same in that way.

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We’ve become a lunatic asylum.

Can we walk for a bit?” he says. “Yes, that would be lovely.” But as I start getting up I lose my footing and slip and fall—right over the shingle. If I’d been doing a stunt in an action-adventure movie it would have probably looked spectacular but in the context of a romantic makeup it looks totally ridiculous. “Are you OK?” Noah calls over to me. I scramble up, my face red with embarrassment. “That was an awesome body roll. I wanna try.” Noah takes a step back before hurling himself over the shingle. He crashes into me and we land on the beach in a tangled heap. And as we laugh our heads off, the very last traces of tension between us disappear. “I’ve missed you so much, Inciting Incident,” he whispers. — Zoe Sugg (Girl Online (Girl Online, #1))

This act of whistleblowing was not like other acts of whistleblowing. Historically, whistleblowers reveal abuse of power that is surprising and shocking to the public. The Trump-Ukraine story was shocking but in no way surprising: it was in character, and in keeping with a pattern of actions. The incident that the whistleblower chose to report was not the worst thing that Trump had done. Installing his daughter and her husband in the White House was worse. Inciting violence was worse. Unleashing war on immigrants was worse. Enabling murderous dictators the world over was worse. The two realities of Trump’s America—democratic and autocratic—collided daily in the impeachment hearings. In one reality, Congress was following due process to investigate and potentially remove from office a president who had abused power. In the other reality, the proceedings were a challenge to Trump’s legitimate autocratic power. The realities clashed but still did not overlap: to any participant or viewer on one side of the divide, anything the other side said only reaffirmed their reality. The realities were also asymmetrical: an autocratic attempt is a crisis, but the logic and language of impeachment proceedings is the logic and language of normal politics, of vote counting and procedure. If it had succeeded in removing Trump from office, it would have constituted a triumph of institutions over the autocratic attempt. It did not. The impeachment proceedings became merely a part of the historical record, a record of only a small part of the abuse that is Trumpism.

He broke plot structure into three acts, coinciding with the audience need for intermission. The first act includes the story setup, popularly referred to as the “inciting incident.” The stakes continue to rise in the second act and include a false victory, that point where you think the story is over but it turns out it's not. The false victory is referred to as a major reversal because the trajectory of the story reverses. The climax comes in the third act, followed by the denouement, a French word meaning “to untie,” which perfectly describes the cleaning up of any loose ends that happens at the end of a narrative.

Years ago, a wise friend told me that no one ever changes until the pain level gets high enough. That seems entirely true. The inciting incident for life change is almost always heartbreak—something becomes broken beyond repair, too heavy to carry; in the words of the recovery movement, unmanageable. In

Poe’s insight was that the audience didn’t care about the murder. That was just the setup, the inciting incident. What they really cared about was the mystery.

Your story drives you. What you've experienced in life has nurtured specific desires, longings, perceptions and beliefs. You are not random. You are a character who has developed through plot twists and inciting incidents. These life turns shaped you.

Someone doesn’t need an inciting incident to have depression.

Again, Ms. Minto applied her SCQA framework to creating structured, concise, and compelling introductions to written communications – especially memos and reports. In story parlance, the situation describes the recent context of “Once upon a time… and every day…” The complication includes the inciting incident and its consequences or “… until one day… and because of that…” The question captures the most intense query raised in a reader’s mind in response to the complication – often “why?” or “how?” Note the question is often implied and therefore not typically written into the introduction. Finally, the answer offers a solution to the problem set up by the situation and complication inclusive of the climax and the aftermath, or “… until finally... and after that…

Bradshaw, Bradshaw,” sighed Miss Havisham, shaking her head sadly. “If he flogs one more inciting incident from Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser, it will have so many holes we could use it as a colander.

La vérité, c’est que je n’ai jamais vraiment cru au destin. Je me suis toujours demandé si ce n’était pas une incitation à se résigner lorsque la vie vous met à l’épreuve et à se complaire lorsqu’on se trouve du côté des puissants. S’il existe bel et bien un grand projet divin, je le soupçonne d’avoir été conçu à une échelle bien trop vaste pour tenir compte de nos tribulations de pauvres mortels ; je pense que les accidents et les hasards qui émaillent le cours de notre existence ont plus d’incidence que nous ne voulons bien l’admettre, et que le mieux que nous puissions faire, c’est de nous efforcer de suivre le chemin qui nous paraît le plus juste, de bâtir une vie qui ait du sens dans un monde insensé, et de jouer à chaque instant, en faisant preuve d’élégance et de courage, avec les cartes que nous avons en main.

Every story begins with the question “Why is this day unlike any other?” What is the Inciting Incident around page 10 that sets the story into motion?

every story starts with an Inciting Incident, that moment when the protagonist, aka you, is thrown out of her comfort zone and exposed to an incident that carries on through the rest of the events.

These pundits are community leaders of the sort—they validate feelings and provide guidance. Internet Inquisitors position themselves as authority figures and truth tellers; they confirm the mob's hatred, paranoia, and insecurities and directed towards the nearest combustible witch on their radar. They serve as morale boosters, assuring the mob that they are correct, that their path is righteous, and that it's the world that's wrong (or in this case, the person they're offering up as a sacrifice).

What is the worst possible thing that could happen to my protagonist? How could that turn out to be the best possible thing that could happen to him?

This act of whistleblowing was not like other acts of whistleblowing. Historically, whistleblowers reveal abuse of power that is surprising and shocking to the public. The Trump-Ukraine story was shocking but in no way surprising: it was in character, and in keeping with a pattern of actions. The incident that the whistleblower chose to report was not the worst thing that Trump had done. Installing his daughter and her husband in the White House was worse. Inciting violence was worse. Unleashing war on immigrants was worse. Enabling murderous dictators the world over was worse.

The best way to think of plot points is as a combination of an inciting incident and a climax. The inciting incident begins a story, raises dramatic questions, and sends a character on a journey. The climax answers dramatic questions and features a tense, potent moment of conflict, which is resolved in a satisfying manner.

The most beautiful inciting incident in the history of inciting incidents

La vérité, c'est que je n'ai jamais vraiment cru au destin. Je me suis toujours demandé si ce n'était pas une incitation à se résigner lorsque la vie vous met à l'épreuve et à se complaire lorsqu'on se trouve du côté des puissants. S'il existe bel et bien un grand projet divin, je le soupçonne d'avoir été conçu à une échelle bien trop vaste pour tenir compte de nos tribulations de pauvres mortels ; je pense que les accidents et les hasards qui émaillent le cours de notre existence ont plus d'incidence que nous ne voulons bien l'admettre, et que le mieux que nous puissions faire, c'est de nous efforcer de suivre le chemin qui nous paraît le plus juste, de bâtir une vie qui ait du sens dans un monde insensé, et de jouer à chaque instant, en faisant preuve d'élégance et de courage, avec les cartes que nous avons en main.