Inciting Incident

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > SHAPE > DIAGRAM > INCITING >

'For me the opening moments of a play are most important, in terms of form. I might begin a play a hundred times until I get it absolutely right. Because if I don't get you in those first few minutes, I've lost you. I want to get you caught up as fast as possible. You hear something, you see something, there's enough to drag your butt into that play. . . . Once I'm dead certain of the opening moments, the rest is a lot simpler.'

-- Charles Fuller

In the good old days, Ibsen could fool around until the end of Act I of A DOLL HOUSE [Yes, that's the real title] before giving us the Inciting Incident. But today's audiences won't sit still that long without knowing why they're there. Neither would Old Bill Shakespeare's for that matter. Or the Ancient Greeks.

The Inciting Incident is so important in contemporary plays that most playwrights wave a flag just before it's introduced. They do this with a (Pause.) stage direction or a General s.d. involving a physical action implying a pause in the dialogue. In the extreme, they'll bracket the Inciting Incident with silence so it stands out in all those ears.

Technically what you're doing with this business is introducing the first of two plots nearly every play has at the core of its structure . . .