A great inciting incident hooks your readers and pulls them into the story. And it sets up everything to come, laying the foundation for a brilliant surprising, yet inevitable climax that your readers will love.

The beginning matters. And you know it—I’m sure you’ve studied all kinds of advice telling you to kick off your story with a great inciting incident.

There’s a lot of pressure to get them right.

But knowing the beginning matters and knowing how to get it right are two vastly different things. Which means that beginnings are really, really difficult.

So how do you start a story?

All the advice to start with an inciting incident doesn’t help if you don’t know what makes inciting incidents truly work.

So in this article, that’s what we’re tackling. I’m going beyond the definition of the inciting incident to share what I as an editor am looking for when I edit inciting incidents.

In other words, if you’ve written an inciting incident and aren’t sure how to tell if it works, this article is your guide to edit it.

What to Do With Story Structure

When I was first introduced to story structure, it blew my mind. I ate it up. It transformed the way I think about stories. It gave me tools I could actually use to edit them and craft meaningful, useful feedback.

But I quickly discovered that story structure alone came with limitations. I now knew, for instance, that stories needed inciting incidents. So I could come to a manuscript and ask: does it have an inciting incident?

No? Add one.

Yes? Great.

Which, sure, is half the battle. But what comes next?

How could I evaluate that inciting incident? What made it work? What adjustments could make it stronger? What hidden weaknesses could make it fail—or cause subtle, cascading problems later in the story?

That’s the art of editing—not just knowing what needs to be on the page, but what to do with it once it’s there.

And that’s what I’m sharing with you here: what to do with your inciting incidents.

How to Edit the Inciting Incident

The inciting incident is the first part of my favorite story structure, the six elements of story. And because the six elements are fractal, your story will have many inciting incidents: one to kick off the story as a whole, one at the start of every act, and one at the start of every scene.

So when you know what to look for and how to edit inciting incidents, you’re going to get a ton of use out of that skill.

This article is meaty, so here’s our map. I’m going to share:

• The way I define the inciting incident
• Where in the story the inciting incident appears
• What I’m watching for as an editor when I evaluate an inciting incident
• And the common traps I see writers fall into when they’re writing their inciting incidents.

Let’s start with the definition.

Inciting Incident Definition

Here’s how I define the inciting incident:

Something disrupts the character’s “normal” and kicks off the action of the story.

What does that mean?

Well, at the beginning of a story, before anything has happened, the world is normal. Your character is going about their life doing the typical things they typically do. Everything is functioning as it normally goes.

Until the inciting incident.

The inciting incident is a disruption. It’s something that happens to your character—something external, something they weren’t expecting—that interrupts the flow of their ordinary life.

Now, things aren’t normal anymore. Something’s changed. And whether they like it or not, your protagonist is going to have to respond.

Where in the story is the inciting incident?

The inciting incident rarely happens on page one of a novel, because in order to recognize something as a disruption, first we need to understand what “normal” is. But it always happens fairly early on—within the first few chapters of a novel, within the first few paragraphs or pages of a scene.

If you’ve made it more than 20% into a story without an inciting incident, it’s probably happening too late.

What am I editing in the inciting incident?

There are seven qualities I’m looking for in an effective inciting incident.

1. The inciting incident is positive or negative—never neutral.

The inciting incident is always a disruption. But disruptions aren’t always bad.

So many negative things can kick off a story:

A hiker finding a dead body in the woods. A mom whose daughter gets hospitalized in a car accident. A worker getting fired from the soul-sucking job that paid their bills.

But inciting incidents can be positive, too.

A man crosses paths in a train station with a woman he lost contact with years ago. A kid gets into an elite school (perhaps even a magical school). A woman gets a promotion.

In The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Monique, a journalist in the early stages of her career, is offered the chance to interview famous actress Evelyn Hugo and write an exclusive feature. It’s a windfall of an invitation, a career-defining opportunity. And while it’s an intimidating challenge and she has to work up the nerve to accept it, it’s definitely a positive inciting incident.

So when I’m looking for a story’s inciting incident, I keep in mind that it might be positive or negative.

The only thing it can’t be is neutral!

2. The inciting incident comes from outside the character.

Protagonists don’t spontaneously decide to create a disruption in their lives. Stories are about change, and humans resist change. We don’t go looking for disruption. Disruption happens to us whether we want it to or not, and then we’re forced to respond.

This is true whether the disruption is positive or negative. Whether it’s a tragedy or a dream come true. Whether it’s finding a dead body in the woods or finding an invitation to an elite opportunity.

And yes, you might argue that the kid who got into the elite school applied for it, or the woman who got the promotion worked her butt off to get it.

But even in those cases, the outcome still came from outside the character. They could influence it—but they couldn’t guarantee it. They didn’t control it.

The opportunity itself came from outside of them.

When I’m examining an inciting incident, I’m checking to see:

Did this happen to the protagonist—or from them?

If the disruption came from inside the character—if they just spontaneously changed their mind or took a sudden action—then I know I’ve got a place to troubleshoot.

3. The inciting incident disrupts the character’s normal.

Just as the inciting incident isn’t neutral, it’s also not normal. It’s something beyond the day-to-day, something that sticks out.

And once the protagonist experiences it, they can’t un-experience it. The world won’t go back to what it was before the inciting incident happened. The protagonist can’t return to status quo.

The key here is, for the reader to recognize the resonant impact of the inciting incident, we need to know what the world looked like before it happened. We need to see status quo, to experience it, to soak in it. After all, your protagonist has been soaking in status quo their entire life. We need to get a taste of it, too.

Because once we know what “normal” looks like, we’ll appreciate the true magnitude of the inciting incident’s disruption.

So when I’m evaluating an inciting incident, I’m looking for two things:

What is the status quo? What does life look like for this character before everything changes?

What is the disruption? How does the inciting incident upend that world?

4. The inciting incident sparks the character’s goal.

The protagonist always emerges from the inciting incident with a goal.

They just experienced a disruption that rocked their normal life. Things aren’t the same as they were before. There’s disorder, chaos, newness, in a space where there used to be order, familiarity, peace.

And that disruption catalyzes a goal.

The protagonist wants something now. They might not say out loud, to the reader, “I want this” (although sometimes, they do do that).

But if you walked up to the protagonist right after the inciting incident, grabbed them by the arm, pulled them aside, and asked, “What do you want?”

. . . they could tell you in a heartbeat. There’s something they want now, something they’re going after. Something they’re going to chase for the rest of the scene, or the act, or the novel.

So when I’m examining an inciting incident, I ask: what’s the character’s goal? What is the protagonist going to pursue now, as a direct result of this disruption?

5. The inciting incident is aligned with the genre of the story.

The inciting incident of a story is genre-driven. Or, to put it another way, the genre of a story defines what type of event will happen in the inciting incident.

Stories are about change, remember? And genre tells us what kind of change we’re dealing with.

Every genre has genre-specific stakes. For example:

• In a love story, the stakes are love or hate.
• In an action story, the stakes are life or death.
• In a performance story, the stakes are success or failure.
• In a crime story, the stakes are justice or injustice.

So the inciting incident needs to reflect those stakes—it needs to introduce the value shift that defines the genre.

If the story begins with someone discovering a dead body, we’re not expecting a love story.

We’re expecting a crime story. Because that inciting incident signals a shift into the realm of justice and injustice.

The inciting incident tells us what kind of story we’re in.

One caveat here—this principle applies at every level of story.

From the inciting incident of the entire novel . . .

to the inciting incident of an act . . .

to the inciting incident of a single scene.

But at the scene level, it gets a little more nuanced.

After all, if every scene begins with the discovery of a dead body, your readers are going to get both confused and bored. It just wouldn’t make sense.

Luckily, there are two things on your side here:

First, values happen on a spectrum.

In a crime story, the spectrum runs from perfect justice to absolute tyranny.

Most scenes fall somewhere between the extremes. The inciting incident of a scene might be the discovery of a clue, which brings us closer to justice. Or it might be someone throwing up an obstacle to the investigation, which takes us closer to injustice.

And second, your novel probably has multiple genres: an external genre, an internal genre, and a sublot, maybe even more than one. The inciting incident of a scene could be linked to any of those genres.

If all this sounds a little dense, I get it. Genre is a big topic, and a lot to take in. If these terms are new to you, I recommend checking out this article on value shifts: How to Craft Compelling Change in Every Story.

For now, the bottom line is this:

When I’m examining an inciting incident, I’m checking to see: does this event align with the genre of the story? Does it establish the value at stake?

6. The inciting incident is aligned with the turning point and climax.

I like to think of the inciting incident, turning point, and climax as forming a neat little triangle. They’re connected. They match. They lock together in a tidy shape.

The inciting incident establishes the value at stake and kicks off the goal for the protagonist.

Then the story builds to the turning point, where the protagonist realizes they can’t accomplish the goal in the way they’d intended.

Because of that, they’re faced with a crisis: a “do this or do that” binary choice about how they’re going to tackle this problem and what kind of person they’re going to be as they do.

They act on that choice in the climax, which pays off the value shift and genre expectations that were set in the inciting incident.

. . . I’ll admit, that’s like seven points, which is a lot for a triangle.

The point, though, is that the inciting incident doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s structurally and emotionally connected to all the other major moments in the story.

The inciting discovery of the dead body will build to the climactic exposure of the criminal.

The inciting lovers meet will lead to the climactic proof of love.

The promise made at the inciting incident must be fulfilled by the climax. They’re speaking to each other across the entire story.

So when I’m examining the inciting incident, I’m checking to see:

Is this aligned with the rest of the story?

Does it connect to all the elements of story and fundamentals of the genre—the turning point, crisis, climax, resolution, goal, and value at stake?

7. The inciting incident reinforces the beginning value.

Stories are about change. It’s my constant refrain.

Things start one way, and they end another way.

And that change is the value shift. There’s a beginning value, and an ending value, and the story of how we got from one to the other.

The inciting incident is your chance to establish the beginning value—to plant a flag in the ground that says: “Here’s where we’re starting.”

Elizabeth Bennet is single and in a precarious financial situation at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice. Then she meets wealthy Mr. Darcy, he insults her, and suddenly, she’s single, in a precarious financial situation, and on mutually bad terms with one of the most eligible bachelors in the area.

We’re making the starting values really clear—her singleness, her financial need, and her dislike of the eligible men around.

Now, an important note on scope.

I want to be clear here—when I say beginning value, I’m referring to the beginning value of the section of story you’re measuring.

In that example, of Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, I’m referring to the novel as a whole. At the end of the story, she’s going to be engaged, wealthy, and in love with Mr. Darcy.

When we zoom in to the act or the scene, we’ll find a smaller arc with its own beginning and ending values.

Take, for instance, the scene in which Elizabeth and Darcy meet. The inciting incident of that scene is the arrival of the Merryton Ball, where the Bennet girls will finally have the chance to meet the eligible Mr. Bingley and the friends he’s brought to town.

The beginning values here are optimism, that they might find appealing suitors; and admiration, because the girls are admired as beauties in the community.

That shifts when Darcy insults Elizabeth. Hopes are dashed and admiration turns to revulsion.

And so this scene has its own arc of change, with its own value shift—and the inciting incident establishes the beginning value.

No matter the level of story I’m focusing on, when I examine an inciting incident, I’m asking:

Does this inciting incident reinforce the beginning value?

Does it show us exactly where the story starts, so we can feel the change by the time we reach the end?

Recap: The 7 Qualities of a Great Inciting Incident

So there you have it—the seven qualities I’m looking for in a great inciting incident. Here they are again.

The inciting incident . . .

1. Is positive or negative—never neutral.
2. Comes from outside the character.
3. Disrupts the character’s normal.
4. Sparks the character’s goal.
5. Is aligned with the genre of the story.
6. Is aligned with the turning point and climax.
7. Reinforces the beginning value.

And remember, if you want to see all these qualities written down and easy to reference as you edit, grab the free inciting incident cheat sheet. Enter your email in the form below and I’ll send it right to you:

4 Common Traps to Avoid

Now, I’ve encountered a lot of inciting incidents in a lot of manuscripts. And while I’m always watching for all seven traits I described, there are a few common traps I often see.

They’re subtle—lurking underneath inciting incidents that look like they should work. If you’ve created an inciting incident you love, but your story still isn’t working, check for these traps.

Here are the four most common traps I see.

1. We don’t know enough about status quo normal to understand how the inciting incident disrupts it.

That probably means the inciting incident occurs on page one of the book, or in the first few words of the scene—right at the very, very beginning, before we’re oriented to the story.

That leaves readers asking:

What changed?

And bereft of any more context, we’ll assume that whatever we saw in the inciting incident is the status quo, rather than a disruption interrupting it.

2. The inciting incident comes from inside the protagonist.

This means it’s something the protagonist decides, something the protagonist does. It feels spontaneous, like a sudden burst of inspiration to do something big.

And since the inciting incident is by definition a disruption, and humans avoid change, this doesn’t make sense to us. Why would the protagonist choose to throw a wrench in their own life?

It leaves us asking:

Why now?

This question always makes me think of one of my favorite musicals, Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. The show is based on a tiny slice of War and Peace by Tolstoy. And at the very start, Pierre sings this:

It’s dawned on me suddenly

And for no obvious reason

That I can’t go on

Living as I am

That stanza makes me laugh every single time, because what I hear is, Tolstoy didn’t write an inciting incident for Pierre, but this story is happening anyway. Why is now the day that Pierre decided he can’t go on living as he is? Nobody has a clue.

Which, I suppose, means Tolstoy got away with it. But I don’t recommend it for you.

Give your protagonist a disruption that throws their life out of order. Don’t expect them to throw it out of order spontaneously on their own.

3. The inciting incident doesn’t kick off a goal.

This is like the opposite of the previous trap. If the previous trap was your protagonist taking action and pursuing a goal without a cause to incite them, this trap is that your protagonist does have a cause to incite them, and yet it doesn’t push them into motion.

They experience the inciting incident, but it doesn’t spark a goal for them to pursue.

Which leaves us asking:

Why does this matter?

If the disruption to your protagonist’s life leaves them unchanged and unscathed, if it doesn’t cause them to pursue a goal, why do we care?

If it doesn’t matter to them, why should it matter to us?

4. The inciting incident isn’t aligned with the genre, turning point and climax, or value shift.

This trap is tricky because it’s really hard to see this at the start of a story. You might have to write your way to the end in order to spot it.

If you pull out the inciting incident and look at it in isolation, it might seem rock-solid, nailing every single quality I’ve described in this article.

But put it in the context of a larger story where the genre, turning point and climax, and value shift don’t all match, and it all falls apart.

The story will feel like a confusing jumble of competing ideas.

Watch for the following symptoms:

• You’ll get the gut feeling—or maybe early feedback—that the story as a whole doesn’t hold together.
• And the inciting incident and climax both seem awesome in theory, but in practice, they’re falling flat. The climax especially should be a gut punch, but it’s more of a gentle tap.

These are all signals that the inciting incident, genre, turning point, climax, and value shift aren’t neatly aligned.

And that means it’s time to zoom out to do some bigger-picture structural work and figure out what the story is really about.

Recap: The 4 Common Traps that Weaken the Inciting Incident

So there you have it—the four most common traps I see. Here they are again:

1. We don’t know enough about status quo normal to understand how the inciting incident disrupts it. And that makes us ask: What changed?
2. The inciting incident comes from inside the protagonist. And that makes us ask: Why now?
3. The inciting incident doesn’t kick off a goal. And that makes us ask: Why does this matter?
4. The inciting incident isn’t aligned with the genre, turning point and climax, or value shift. And you can tell because the story doesn’t hold together and the climax is falling flat.

This article is meaty, so I’ll wrap it up here. But it’s meaty because it matters—great stories are built on rock-solid story structure, and the inciting incident sets up everything that’s to come.

Keep in mind that these are all editing tools. I do not recommend dragging your brain through all these layers of analysis when you’re first imagining your story or writing the first draft.

Let your creative mind run wild. Then, come back when you have a draft, and put it through its paces of analysis.

And if even that thought sounds overwhelming, or makes your brain scream just a little, don’t worry. That’s why I’m here. I spend my days analyzing story like this so you can stay in your creative flow.

If you’d like to work with me and get my feedback on your inciting incident (and the rest of your story), tell me about your story. Fill out the form on this page, and I’ll be in touch.

And don’t forget, you can grab a free inciting incident cheat sheet to print out and reference anytime you’re editing. Enter your email below to grab it:

And that’s it for inciting incidents. This article is kicking off my goal, which is to do a whole series like this for every element of story. So keep an eye out for the next installment, progressive complications, coming soon.

In the meantime, I hope this gives you some actionable strategies to shape your inciting incidents into unputdownable story beginnings.

Happy editing!