More on the Inciting Incident
It often surprises me that I receive as many hits as I do for an article on my website, The Inciting Incident . Oddly enough, Google only returns 105,000 hits as I write this. It makes me wonder if there might be a lot more that’s worth saying about the subject. The interest in the subject seems to exceed the amount of information available. Definition of Inciting Incident - an event that motivates the protagonist to take action to change his current situation Just to be clear, the inciting incident never takes place on page one of a novel. This is because page one and several of the pages that follow are taken up with defining the current situation of the protagonist for our readers. The inciting incident occurs approximately one tenth of the way into the novel, but it may move slightly one direction or the other. In Where the Red Fern Grows , the inciting incident occurs on page 18 of 249. I sat down on an old sycamore log, and started thumbing through the leaves. On the back pa...