Inciting Incident Quotes

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest. ~ Donald Miller

Can we walk for a bit?" he says.

"Yes, that would be lovely." But as I start getting up I lose my footing and slip and fall - right over the shingle. If I'd been doing a stunt in an action-adventure movie it would have probably looked spectacular but in the context of a romantic makeup it looks totally ridiculous.

"Are you OK?" Noah calls over to me.

I scramble up, my face red with embarrassment.

"That was an awesome body roll. I wanna try." Noah takes a step back before hurling himself over the shingle. He crashes into me and we land on the beach in a tangled heap. And as we laugh our heads off, the very last traces of tension between us disappear.

"I've missed you so much, Inciting Incident," he whispers.
- Zoe Sugg (Girl Online (Girl Online, #1)) ~ Zoe Sugg

Infatuation is the inciting incident. Maybe it goes somewhere, maybe it doesn't, but you can't have a story without it. Love is the story itself, the thing we carry with us after the mountains are gone. ~ A. Manette Ansay

Robert McKee says humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won't enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen. ~ Donald Miller

For those protagonists we tend to admire the most, the Inciting Incident arouses not only a conscious desire, but an unconscious one as well. These complex characters suffer intense inner battles because these two desire are in direct conflict with each other. No matter what the character consciously thinks he wants, the audience senses or realizes that deep inside he unconsciously wants the very opposite. ~ Robert McKee

I'm not much of a plotter. I start off with an inciting incident, and in classic crime fiction what happens is that all the action flows from that incident. It's very comfy when it all ties up and feels like a complete universe, but my stuff doesn't always work that way. ~ Denise Mina

Do you know what an inciting incident is?' Noah says as he turns off the engine.
I shake my head.
'It's the point at the start of a movie where something happens to the hero that changes their live forever. You've seen Harry Potter, right?'
I nod.
'Well, the inciting incident in that movie is when Hagrid tells Harry Potter he'll be a great wizard someday and gives him the invite to Hogwarts.'
'Oh right.'
Noah looks down in his lap, like he's embarassed. 'I think that's what you might be to me.'
'What? A wizard?'
'No! My inciting incident.'
I glance at him. In half-light of the car park, his cheekbones look even more chiselled than ever. 'What do you mean?' I ask, hardly daring to believe what I think he means.
'I mean, Ithink this might be the start of something.'
We sat in silence.
'I think you might be my inciting incident too,' I say with a small smile. ~ Zoe Sugg

How easy it is for life to become tiny. How cleanly the world falls away. The subway platform in Toronto. That was the first. Will was a toddler then. Even today, "safe" in her bedroom, Diane still couldn't summon the incident in her mind without panic spreading in her like laughter in a crowd. She knew she'd brushed against true madness that day because it was huge and blunt and screaming. ~ Michael Christie

After the tragedy of Las Vegas sad incident... Definition of terrorism has got two meanings now, If done by a Muslim, IT IS AN ACT OF TERRORISM, but if committed by a non Muslim, it is an "ACT OF PURE EVIL!" Hypocrisy redefined... ~ Usman Aman

He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed, somewhat our relations; but not in the sense I painfully anticipated. An invisible, but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, but very chill: a sort of screen of ice had hitherto, all through our two lives, glazed the medium through which we exchanged intercourse. Those few warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed on that frail frost-work of reserve; about this time, it gave note of dissolution. I think from that day, so long as we continued friends, he never in discourse stood on topics of ceremony with me. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Carezza, like Tantra, considers the sex act to be a true feast of love, and ejaculation is seen as a clumsy, crude incident-something quite banal which kills sexual desire. The man who, a few minutes before was seized by a frantic sexual desire, changes as soon as he has ejaculated and turns away from his wife, damaging her in her self-respect and her love as well. ~ Andre Van Lysebeth

Interestingly, this was the only incident of blatant prejudice that I can

remember. But I am aware that such opinions exist in human beings, and

it's not a question of being Egyptian or being an Arab or being a Muslim.

One could be a Christian against a Jew or a Jew against a Christian, or a

white against a black, or a man against a woman. My philosophy is not

to let such attitudes stop me from what I want to do. I don't take it very

seriously, although as you can see, I remember the incident very well.

The point was I had to get on with my work and had to behave properly,

and in the process perhaps even change the opinion of these people. But

on the other hand, if I did nothing but complain and feel sorry for myself,

then I wouldn't get anywhere. ~ Ahmed H. Zewail

The spectacular incident of the stones serves as a kind of red herring in this respect. Many researchers have adopted the erroneous belief that where there has been one incident, there must be others. To offer another analogy, this is like dispatching a crew of meteor watchers to Crater National Park because a huge asteroid struck there two million years ago. ~ Stephen King

American Casualties on the USS Maine

Two hundred & Sixty Six American sailors were killed when the American battleship, USS Maine, exploded and sank in Havana harbor after a massive explosion of undetermined origin. The first Board of Inquiry regarding the incident stated that a mine placed on or near the hull had sunk the ship. Later studies determined that it was more likely heat from smoldering coal in the ship's bunker that set off the explosion in an adjoining ammunition locker.

In February 1898, the recovered bodies of the American sailors who died on the battleship were interred in the Colon Cemetery, in Havana. Nearly two years later they were exhumed and now 163 of the crew that were killed in 1898 are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, near the USS Maine Memorial.

The beautiful monument shown is located in Central Park West in New York City. ~ Hank Bracker

Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha, the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light [-] It is, therefore, useless to send out missions to prevail upon the peoples of Asia, Africa or Oceania to enter the Church. ~ Simone Weil

I was an avid reader of Surf Life magazine, and I was surprised to discover a write-up of our Tasmanian visit. It made me proud to read how impressed those guys were with Steve's surfing abilities. One incident that didn't make the article was when Steve came partway to shore while I watched him from the beach. All of a sudden he stripped off his wet suit. It was winter and quite cold.
"What are you doing?" I called out.
He stood in the icy water. "This is how dedicated I am to having a boy baby," he said, with a mischievous grin.
I said, "I think you're just supposed to keep them cool, not actually freeze them off."
He laughed. But I knew this was Steve's way of encouraging me to stick to the boy-baby diet. Did I mention that I could not eat chocolate? The sacrifices we make for love. ~ Terri Irwin

He was known to hit low, drive upward from the hips, and flip other boys over his shoulder and onto their backs, knocking the wind out of them on the glass-littered asphalt, sometimes causing a fumble and always inciting cheers from onlookers up and down the street––especially when he punctuated the hit with the words "Patent that!"...This permissible violence was unique in that it elicited respect from the victim rather than calls for retribution. ~ Jeff Hobbs

When a human doctor, after much bleeding and cupping, finds that a patient has died out of sheer desperation, he can always say, "Dear me, will of the gods, that will be thirty dollars please," and walk away a free man. This is because human beings are not, technically, worth anything. A good racehorse, on the other hand, may be worth twenty thousand dollars. A doctor who lets one hurry off too soon to that great paddock in the sky may well expect to hear, out of some dark alley, a voice saying something on the lines of "Mr. Chrysoprase is very upset," and find the brief remainder of his life full of incident. ~ Terry Pratchett

It is customary for columnists to complain about the excesses of Premiership footballers, whenever - as happens regularly - there is an incident involving some combination of sex, drugs, drink, violence and the constabulary. But modern footballers have a lot of both money and disposable time, a combination that has proved a recipe for personal disaster throughout history. And these incidents take place generally round night clubs rather than football clubs. The average Premiership player who turned up for work drunk would have a career-expectancy measurable in minutes. ~ Matthew Engel

As hatred is defined as intense dislike, what is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked? ~ Rowan Atkinson

I enjoyed doing the gag covers better than the story ones because they were usually simpler. A cover based on an incident in the plot took a great deal of staging to tell a little story that was still part of the book. And it had to make sense on its own. ~ Carl Barks

Three hundred years ago people believed in the devil. They believed if an incident could not be explained, then the cause was something wicked, and that cause was often a woman who was said to be a witch. Women who did as they pleased, women with propriety, women who had enemies, women who took lovers, women who knew about the mysteries of childbirth, all were suspect (…) ~ Alice Hoffman

I do not believe such a quality as chance exists. Every incident that happens must be a link in a chain. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign. ~ Victor Hugo

There had been no crises of incident, or marked movements of experience such as in Felipe's imaginations of love were essential to the fulness of its growth. This is a common mistake on the part of those who have never felt love's true bonds. Once in those chains, one perceives that they are not of the sort full forged in a day. They are made as the great iron cables are made, on which bridges are swung across the widest water-channels,
not of single huge rods, or bars, which would be stronger, perhaps, to look at; but myriads of the finest wires, each one by itself so fine, so frail, it would barely hold a child's kite in the wind: by hundreds, hundreds of thousands of such, twisted, re-twisted together, are made the mighty cables, which do not any more swerve from their place in the air, under the weight and jar of the ceaseless traffic and tread of two cities, than the solid earth swerves under the same ceaseless weight and jar. Such cables do not break. ~ Helen Hunt Jackson

It perplexes me. How can one sad incident compensate ten happy incidents? Why? Happiness is losing. ~ Bhavik Sarkhedi

In life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't make decisions you would never do anything because you waste all your time choosing between things you could do ... ~ Mark Gaddon The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time

For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned with the precise word and the selection of relevant incident, there are a hundred American writers, many well-regarded, who appear to believe that one word is just as good as another and that everything which occurs to them is worth putting down. ~ Gore Vidal

Don't worry, we're not letting her out of our sight ... and after the Nick incident, we're not letting her out from behind this bar. (Aimee)
Yeah, Prisoners R Us. (Tory) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

After the incident in the ER, Ino longer wanted to advertise my experience to anyone. You try, you seem totally nuts, you go underground. There's a kind of show a kid can do, for a parent – a show of pain, to try to announce something, and in my crying, in the desperate, blabbering, awful mouth-clawing, I had hoped to get something across. Had it come across, any of it? Nope. ~ Aimee Bender

The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced. It's one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala [an alleged incident that Mrs. Obama had just recounted to the interviewer]. It's another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed, or worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress. ~ Barack Obama

It's become clear (to me, at least) that the entire credit card system in the United States is currently set up so that any one party to a transaction can reliably transfer the blame for an incident, dispute, or fraud to another party. The ~ Brian Krebs

Who can really say what they would do in that kind of situation without ever being in it? ~ Jason Medina

If she is clearly right, find fault with her that has nothing to do with the incident, and use that. ~ Sherry Argov

Of all the vices incident to man, lying is the most mean, most contemptible; it evinces a very weak, depraved heart, which shrinks at the exposure of motives and of actions. ~ Josiah Bartlett

What the hell is this? The attack of the Planet of the Apes? ~ Jason Medina

In his sophomore year Wilbanks tried out for the high school basketball team and made it. On the first day of practice his coach had him play one-on-one while the team observed. When he missed an easy shot, he became angry and stomped and whined. The coach walked over to him and said, "You pull a stunt like that again and you'll never play for my team." For the next three years he never lost control again. Years later, as he reflected back on this incident, he realized that the coach had taught him a life-changing principle that day: anger can be controlled. ~ Lynn G. Robbins

The development of a child is guaranteed in his curiosity to discover the cause behind each and every incident. ~ Narendra Modi

I ain't no historian but I happen to savvy this incident. ~ Charles Marion Russell

In the final analysis, the incident is seen as originating from an emotional expression of the frustration and anger of the proud people of China who had been subject to ever increasing oppression from without and decadent corruption from within. ~ Chen-Ning Yang

The best approach is to write a narrative, "slice of life" essay where you focus on a smaller incident, event or moment, and then expand the essay to share what you learned from it. ~ Janine Robinson

Remember that incident in Egypt with the #No. 2 pencil?" "Don't be ridiculous," I snapped. "That was a Pentel, not a #No. 2. ~ Jana Deleon

It's tough to lose one parent, but to lose two - in a murder/suicide no less! But it's OK, soon after the incident I found out I was abandoned as a baby, so they weren't my real parents anyway. ~ Jarod Kintz

I think I became a writer because I didn't know of anything else to do. Maybe some incident from my childhood influenced me. ~ Patrick Modiano

Any woman who stays with her abuser beyond the first incident is complicitous with him. ~ Camille Paglia

The real reason why so many artists now take to politics, 'commitment' and so on is that they are rushing into a discipline, any discipline at all, which will save them from the poison of the word 'artist' used by the enemy.
I remember very clearly the moments in which that novel was born. The pulse beat, violently; afterwards, when I knew I would write, I worked out what I would write. The 'subject' was almost immaterial. Yet now what interests me is precisely this - why did I not write an account of what had happened, instead of shaping a 'story' which had nothing to do with the material that fuelled it. Of course, the straight, simple, formless account would not have been a 'novel', and would not have got published, but I was genuinely not interested in 'being a writer' or even in making money. I am not talking now of that game writers play with themselves when writing, the psychological game - that written incident came from that real incident, that character was transposed from that one in life, this relationship was the psychological twin of that. I am simply asking myself: Why a story at all - not that it was a bad story, or untrue, or that it debased anything. Why not, simply, the truth? ~ Doris Lessing

Hey!" I turned, crossing my arms and glaring. "I was talking to him!"
Tybalt eyed me with amusement, which just made me glare harder. "No, you were inciting him to stab you with a toothpick. Again, the difference is small, but I think it matters. ~ Seanan McGuire

Percy gave her a sideways smile. "Yeah, we can't have another incident like in Kansas. I might kill my bro Jason." "Or I might kill my bro Percy," Jason said amiably. ~ Rick Riordan

The artist isn't particularly keen on getting a thing done, as you call it. He gets his pleasure out of doing it, playing with it, fooling with it, if you like. The mere completion of it is an incident. ~ William McFee

It was announced that any parent arriving more than ten minutes late would pay $3 per child for each incident. The fee would be added to the parents' monthly bill, which was roughly $380. After the fine was enacted, the number of late pickups promptly went ... up. ~ Steven D. Levitt

with aides while he wrote his memoirs, Mein Kampf, meaning 'My Struggle,' in which he gave the world's leader fair warning about what was to come. Of course, they didn't listen to him. They never do. "When Hitler got out of Landsberg, there was a gift waiting for him. One of his followers had managed to find their flag, blood and all. They presented it to Hitler as a memento of the Beer Hall Putsch, the incident that brought him to national prominence. To ~ Steve Martini

To be sure, the judges were right when they finally told the accused that all he had said was 'empty talk'--except that they thought the emptiness was feigned, and that the accused wished to cover up other thoughts which, though hideous, were not empty. This supposition seems refuted by the striking consistency with which Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, repeated word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés [ ] each time he referred to an incident or event of importance to him. Whether writing his memoirs in Argentina or in Jerusalem, whether speaking to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. ~ Hannah Arendt