Note: I will be taking a break for two weeks during the holidays from blogging and will resume on the sixth of January with a new topic.
The inciting incident is defined as the event that disrupts a protagonist’s normal life and kickstarts the main plot of a story by introducing the central conflict and stakes. It’s a disruption that forces the protagonist to act, setting them on their journey and creating the tension that drives the narrative forward.
As we go through these I will more than likely use the same books as I did with previous books and I will also be staying in the fantasy genre because that is the genre I write in and that is what I read and study the most about.
When we think about The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe there are two even though one is overlooked. Let’s go with the one that is overlooked first. It is when the Pevensies are disrupted because of the bombing raids and they have to move to the uncle’s residence in the country. This inciting incident is completely overshadowed by the main one which is fine, but if it wasn’t for the raids the children would have never gone to the country and the magical adventure would have never happened. We learn that sometimes bad things that happen can actually result in something good. I am certainly not advocating for bad things to happen so good can result but this a tale that goes as far back as the story of Joseph and his brothers that sold him into slavery. Something bad happened and eventually good resulted.
The next inciting incident occurs on a rainy day when the kids are playing hide-and-seek in the large house and Lucy hides in the magical wardrobe. When she stepped foot into Narnia, I did too. Everyone who is a lover of that story all stepped foot into Narnia for the first time and if you’re like me was swept away into a world that parallels ours. I suppose that is when I fell in love with portal fantasy. I was eleven. I am not fifty-four and Narnia has a permanent place in my mind and memory. That is the power of an inciting incident combined with great world-building and storytelling. It impacts our love for mythology and remains with us long after we put the book back on the shelf.
The inciting incident in The Hobbit is much different. It occurs when Bilbo’s life is interrupted by a wizard who wants to share an adventure. I love how Bilbo responds when he says, “…make you late for dinner.” Imagine the great inciting incident that kicks the whole epic is reduced to this one remark – make you late for dinner. That shows such a mastery of storytelling that it is hardly believable that he wrote that. A simple denial of the adventure would have been sufficient but the fact that he weaves in the thought of being late for dinner is remarkable.
In a later blog thread I am going to write about showing versus telling, but for the sake of this entry I want to touch on it. It is popular today to write on the advice of show vs. tell. However there is no way you can show what Tolkien just did with his words. That must be told. It is called storytelling for a reason and not storyshowing. ‘A showing’ is used when you want to go to the movies – hey want to go see a show? Not so much with a novel. People read because they want words. They want the story to come off the page with words. Great storytellers will use a combination of telling and showing through narrative prose, action and dialogue. Those three are really the only three ways to get share the story. If you are going write the story in third-person becoming a student of prose is a must. I do not write in first-person and I do not read many books in first-person so I cannot speak to that form of storytelling with any sort of intelligence or clarity. I can however share what I know about third-person narration. Let’s look at one more inciting incident before getting to mine.
Like in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter also has a few inciting incidents that build to something transformative. Let’s go through them and see if you agree.
I think the first one is when Harry talked with the snake and the glass vanished. That is clearly when you know something supernatural or magical is taking place. This event was nicely set up in the previous chapter when the wizards discussed Harry’s life which was not so much an inciting incident but part of the narrative that is leading us somewhere more magical than the boring Dursely’s.
The second would be the letters that he started receiving, the third is when Hagrid showed up and fourth which is where everything changed. This happened when Harry entered Diagon Alley. That is where the real magic took a turn. That is portal fantasy at its finest. There was a nice steady build over four chapters to get us to this point. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe it took six pages, in The Hobbit it took four pages and in Harry Potter it took four whole chapters.
The inciting incident in Trankarri – The Boy with a Magical Pen also took four chapters to properly build to with each one adding further suspense.
We will be continuing with this theme after the holidays through the month of January.
