Quick Writing Lesson: Creating the Opening Scene with Inciting Incident: featuring Honey Girl! (Patreon)

It's that exciting time! This week, you're going to finish and submit your opening scene with an inciting incident. 

It's very important that you check the rubric for this session because in addition to including the inciting incident (the incident that disturbs the life of the protagonist and sets your plot in motion), you'll want to touch on the main conflict of the story and the flaws your protagonist may have.

Now,  not every opening scene touches on all these elements. However, the point of this exercise is for you to get a good handle on the main aspects of your story. So even if you end up changing it so you introduce some of these things later, it's going to be helpful for you to write a version of your opening that establishes all of them.

And again, some opening scenes do include all these things! You can read the opening scene for the New Adult romance Honey Girl here.

We immediately get that this is a contemporary romance and the setting of a hotel in Las Vegas comes across strongly. And then this single passage gives us a strong idea of the main character's flaws and the inciting incident.

Stay with me, she said, and Grace did. Follow me, she said, like Grace was used to doing. Follow your alarm. Follow your schedule. Follow your rubric. Follow your graduation plan. Follow a salt and sage girl through a city of lights and find yourself at the steps of a church.

Maybe it wasn’t a church. It didn’t seem like one. A place with fake flowers and red carpet and a man in a white suit. A fake priest. Two girls giggled through champagne bubbles and said yes. Grace covers her eyes and sees it play out.

“Jesus,” she mutters, sitting up suddenly and clutching the sheets to keep herself steady. 

She gets up, knees wobbling. “Get it together, Grace Porter.” Her throat is dry and her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. “You are hungover. Whatever you think happened, didn’t happen.” She looks down at her t-shirt and lets out a shaky screech into her palms. “It couldn’t have happened, because you are smart, and organized, and careful. None of those things would lead to a wedding. A wedding!”

The first paragraph tells us that who Grace is. She's someone who very studiously and rigidly follows any plans set out for her, maybe to an unhealthy degree. And now she thinks she's seriously messed up! She had a drunken shotgun wedding to a woman she barely knows! That's a very strong inciting incident that will turn Grace's life upside-down and an immediate conflict for her. Especially since her wife is gone and Grace is left with only a note! Will she find her? Immediately, there's tension and a desire to see what happens next.

If that isn't enough of an example, please refer to the opening scene of my own story I posted as a supplemental announcement. I pointed out how the scene highlighted my characters features and flaws, introduced conflict, contained an inciting incident, and gave a sense of setting.

You should also remember to keep an eye on point of view! Sometimes novels have multiple points of view (for romance, it typically switches between the point of view of the two love interests) , but it's important to ensure you make it clear whose perspective you're coming from.

(Note to Patrons: And then I go into homework stuff! I just want to complain about how I ended up spending way too much time on this lesson because it was very hard to find an opening scene excerpt online that included all the elements the assignment required and ALSO wasn't super long. I finally found the Honey Girl excerpt, which isn't even the full opening scene and also technically there's a prologue (as I found out in the when I got in the library and read it afterwards) but whatever. I also considered The Falling in Love Montage (too long and I worried I was leaning too hard on YA in these lessons) , Pulp  (same problem) and Dear Miss Cushman (wasn't sure the inciting incident was clear or connected to the romance enough, also the book isn't even out yet). Finally Honey Girl saved me. 

Yes, I worried and thought way too much about this and yes, I stubbornly wanted it to be queer, I just find Pride and Prejudice being the token straight in my lessons too important as a private inside joke. But I basically used up a whole day on this, maybe more, just because I got obsessive. My students will never appreciate how I suffered. Play the world's smallest violin for me. At least I found some books I'll consider reading.)