In today’s video, we’re tackling a question many writers face: how soon should the inciting incident occur? In this example, we’re focusing on thrillers, but the considerations can apply to nearly any genre as long as you have an idea of the expected pacing.
Using a hypothetical scenario, I discuss how a well-timed incident can dramatically change your protagonist’s life. Should it be on page 36 of a 400-page book? Well, that truly depends on the kind of thriller you’re penning. We’ll explore the importance of building up action scenes, crafting those emotional ties that make readers care, and determining what details are essential and which ones are mere fluff.
Hello, Jane Cleland here. “My inciting incident starts at the 9 percent mark in a thriller. Is that too late?” First, let’s do the math. Let’s say your thriller has, um, 450 pages, somewhere in there, 400 pages. Let’s call it 400. Ten percent would be page 40, so 9 percent would be what, page 36, something like that. And that’s late for a thriller, but I could see it working. It depends on what kind of action scenes are leading up to it. But I think it’s also worth considering and discussing.
What do we mean by an inciting incident? You don’t want to include lead-up information. The doorbell rings. A woman is in the shower. She goes, “Why does the doorbell always ring when I’m in the shower?” Turns off the water, wraps her head in a towel, turban-like, puts on her bathrobe, stomps with wet feet to the door, takes a peek, and sees someone has flowers for her. Ooh, nice! She opens the door. Bang! Someone’s shooting her. That’s the inciting incident. But do we really know she’d need to know she was in the shower? Let’s have the detective 20 pages later, or 5 pages later, or 1 page later, say, “From the towel wrapped around her head and her wet feet. I bet she was in the shower when the doorbell rang.” Boom, done.
The inciting incident is that someone was hiding a gun in a box of flowers and shot her dead. It is that event from which your protagonist’s life is forever changed, and there’s no going back. Now, in that case, we’re presuming the woman is not the protagonist. She’s the victim, and the protagonist is going to be her husband, who is dissatisfied with the job the police are doing and sets out to find the killer himself. In that case, maybe we want to show the woman and her husband interacting for a few pages—two scenes, one scene—love, devotion, empathy, kindness, something special, something romantic, something sentimental. Now we understand the consequence of her being killed, and we know what it’s going to do to him emotionally.
Complicated. Figuring out where stories start, and how much information to include before that precipitating event… that’s very hard, but it’s one of the secrets to success. And just remember, that where your books start almost never is where the story starts. Lots of things have happened that lead to this inciting incident. I’d love to hear your thoughts. 36 pages in a 400-page book, is that too far in? I don’t think so, but it depends on the kind of thriller. Depends on the kind of story, the style. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Put them in the comment section.
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