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When To Start Your Story:
When Should the Inciting Incident Happen in a Screenplay?
Usually, movies start with a little getting to know you
with the main character. We learn what her issue is, her personality flaw, the
thing on the inside of her that is the main obstacle to a more perfect life.
It’s the thing that establishes the need for change. We also learn about the
central character’s milieu: her working life, her home life, her social life.
Generally, there’s a problem with it, but we don’t, nor does the character, see
the compelling need for change until the inciting incident.
The inciting incident is when the story starts. The rest
is prelude to the story. So when should the story start?
Again, as in most screenwriting, there is no hard and fast
rule. But there is a soft and slow rule. Don’t do it that way. Get to the story
as soon as reasonably possible. On the other hand, we want to care about the
protagonist, and, to do that, we need to know her before the shit hits the fan.
So that leaves us with nothing firm to shoot at. Most
movies place their inciting incident at around fifteen minutes, give or take a
few. The tendency in screenwriting courses it to get to it by page 10-12. I
disagree with that, though I tell my students anywhere from 13-18 is okay. Why
so much time? Because we want to be fully invested in the character before we
run her up a tree and start throwing stones at her.
Would we care about Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in Twelve
Years a Slave if we
hadn’t seen his life before his abduction? Would we care about Dr. Ryan Stone
(Sandra Bullock) in Gravity if
we hadn’t seen her joking around with the George Clooney character before the
disaster? Would we care about what happened to Cate Blanchett’s character in Blue
Jasmine if we didn’t
know her before bad things happened to her? Okay, bad example, because I still
didn’t care about her. But you get the idea. Some time must be taken to learn
about our characters. To either get to like them or be fascinated by them as we
were with Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey) in Dallas
Buyers Club takes
time.
Again. How much time? That’s up to you, but in my mind,
the better we know the characters – liking them or not – the more interested we
will be in their journey.
There are exceptions, of course. There always are. The
easiest one to cite is the James Bond franchise, where the first five to ten minutes
really has nothing to do with the story, tells us nothing new about the
character, reveals no major personality issues (unless you consider killing for
a living a personality issue). The opening scenes of a James Bond movie are
strictly to pull the audience into that crazy world where the only thing that
counts is action. Laws, human life, sometimes even gravity, are ignored in a
villain’s pursuit of Bond or in his pursuit of a villain. I’m sure you could
cite other examples, but let’s just agree that there is no law in this, just
conventions.
Paul
Chitlik’s feature directing debut “The Wedding Dress” from his own script, is
in post-production. For more information on script writing, read his
book, Rewrite: A Step-by-Step to Strengthen Structure,
Character, and Conflict in Your Screenplay, second edition published by
Michael Wiese Productions.
