Whether
I’m blogging, writing, or teaching, I keep looking for ways to make the
point that filmmakers take extra care with certain key scenes of a
story. Great filmmakers pay particular attention to all the ways they have at
their disposal to underscore the significance of these moments – whether
it’s delivering the pure visceral experience of the genre, revealing
character, conveying theme, externalizing the hero/ine’s ghost – any and
sometimes many of the above and more.
And to do that, they usually create those scenes as SETPIECES.
To
review - there are multiple definitions of a setpiece. It can be a huge
action scene like, well, anything in The Dark Knight, that takes weeks
to shoot and costs millions, requiring multiple sets, special effects
and car crashes… or a meticulously planned suspense scene with multiple
cuts that takes place all in - a shower, for instance, in Psycho.
Setpieces are the tent poles holding the structure of the movie up… or
jewels in the necklace of the plotline. The scenes featured in the
trailers to entice people to see the movie. The scenes everyone talks
about after the credits roll. They’re almost always used as act or
sequence climaxes – and as certain key scenes, like the Inciting
Incident.
And I think it’s one of the very best lessons we as authors can take from filmmakers.
So
I want to break down a key scene among key scenes – the INCITING
INCIDENT, or INCITING EVENT, and show how a few of my favorite movies
handle that scene.
The
Inciting Incident is basically the action that starts the story. The
corpse hits the floor and begins a murder investigation, the hero gets
his first glimpse of the love interest in a love story, a boy receives
an invitation to a school for wizards in a fantasy.
I
would like to emphasize, for new writers, that SOMETHING HAS TO HAPPEN,
IMMEDIATELY, that gives us an idea of WHAT YOUR STORY IS ABOUT.
You
can do this to some extent by setting mood, tone, genre, hope and fear,
and an immediate external problem – but I strongly suggest that you get
to your INCITING INCIDENT as soon as possible. Especially if you are a
new writer, you cannot afford to hold this back. It can make or break
your submission, so find a way to get it into the first few pages or at
the very least, strongly hint at it.
This
beat also often called the CALL TO ADVENTURE (from Joseph Campbell’s
Hero With A Thousand Faces, summarized by Christopher Vogler in The
Writer’s Journey), and that's the phrase I actually prefer, it's just
more - more.
But
I’ve been watching a lot of classic movies lately (God bless TCM!) and
the more I look at this story beat, the more I’ve realized that while
the Inciting Incident and Call To Adventure are often the same scene –
they are just as often two completely different scenes. And it’s useful
to be aware of when and how they’re different, so you can bring out the
particular qualities of each scene, and know when to combine them and
when to separate them.
In
Jaws, the inciting incident is immediate, occurring on the first pages
of the book and the first seconds of the movie: the shark swims into the
Amityville harbor and attacks and kills a swimmer. The protagonist,
Sheriff Brody, is not present for the inciting incident, he’s not even
aware of it. The next morning he gets a phone call reporting a missing
person, possible drowning, and he goes off to investigate, not having
any idea what he’s about to get into. It’s a very small moment, played
over the ordinary sounds of a family kitchen in the morning.
But we’ve already seen the big setpiece inciting incident and we know what he’s in for.
However,
I don’t think that Inciting Incident is the actual Call To Adventure. I
think that comes at the climax of Act One, when the bereaved mother of a
little boy who was killed in the second shark attack walks out on the
pier and slaps Sheriff Brody, accusing him of killing her son (because
he didn’t close the beaches after the first attack) in front of all the
townspeople. And this is one of the best examples I know of an emotional
setpiece: the camera just holds on the mother’s ravaged face as she
goes on for what feels like forever, telling Brody that her son would be
alive if he’d done the right thing to begin with. And as she stands
there against the sun and sky, the black veil she is wearing whips
around her face in the wind… she looks like the Angel of Death, or an
ancient Fate, or a Fury. It’s a moment with mythic resonance, in which
Brody is called to right this wrong himself, to redeem himself for this
unwitting and tragic mistake. Now that is a real Call – not just to
adventure, but to redemption.
It’s
one of the most haunting scenes of the movie – and I find it really
interesting that Spielberg uses it as his Act I Climax instead of
another shark attack.
The
Inciting Incident of a love story is very often meeting the love
interest. In Notting Hill, Hugh Grant hovers in the aisles of his little
bookshop, realizing that the customer who just walked in is the movie
star Anna Scott (Julia Roberts). In a prolonged moment he watches her as
she browses, but he’s not just gawking at a celebrity. It’s a classic
depiction of how time seems to stop when the Beloved walks into our
lives, and we get to experience that moment with him.
In
Raiders Of The Lost Ark, the Inciting Incident and Call To Adventure
are the same scene, and a whole lot of other things are going on in the
scene as well – it’s one of my favorite Calls To Adventure for all the
layers of it.
Professor
Indiana Jones is called out of his archeology class by his mentor
Marcus, who also serves as a HERALD here, too, summoning Indy to a
meeting with a pair of government agents who will deliver the actual
Call To Adventure. It’s worth noting as a technique that having this
double layer to the Call – first a Herald appearing to say to the
hero/ine, “There’s someone here with a job for you”, and then escorting
the hero/ine to a different location where another set of messengers
delivers the call, builds up the importance of the moment and the
mission.
And
the location of this next scene, where the government agents (US Army
Intelligence) explain the mission, is very significant here. This scene
could have been set just in an office. Instead, the filmmakers make it a
setpiece all on its own by putting it in a huge, elegant,
high-ceilinged auditorium with stained glass windows, creating a
cathedral-like ambiance. The setting gives us a feeling of the import of
this mission. And since the Call is one of the most exciting and
crucial moments of any story, why not give it a setting to create an
extra layer of excitement and significance?
We
learn from the government guys that a Nazi telegraph has been
intercepted and Hitler’s men are looking for Indy’s old mentor, Abner
Ravenwood. Indy and Marcus interpret the telegraph: The Nazis have
discovered an archeological site where supposedly the Lost Ark of the
Covenant has been buried for millennia, and they think Ravenwood can
help them pinpoint the exact location of the Ark.
Hitler
has been sending teams of Nazis out all over the globe collecting
occult artifacts (this is historically true). Ominously, the legend of
this particular artifact, the Ark, is that it will make any army who
bears it invincible.
These
are the really huge STAKES of this story, and our FEAR: If Hitler gets
the Ark, it will make the German army invincible. World domination = not
good.
So
we also get a glimpse of what Indy is up against: his real OPPONENT is
the ultimate bad guy: Hitler and the whole German army.
And our HOPE is that Indy finds the Ark before Hitler does.
This
is also a good example of an EXPLAINING THE MYTHOLOGY scene – you often
see these when the mission is convoluted, or fantastical – such as in
horror movies, sci-fi, fantasy – and the scene often includes the hero
explaining the rules to an outsider. Here, it’s Indy and Marcus
explaining the history of the Ark to the government guys. And they also
explain that the Nazis want to find Ravenwood because he has a medallion
that can be used to pinpoint the exact location of the Ark (Indy draws
all this on a blackboard, a SET UP for when we see him do for real it at
the Midpoint). So we also get the whole PLAN of the movie in this
scene.
There
is also a big SET UP and FORESHADOWING with the illustrations of the
Ark bringing down the wrath of God on a blasphemous army – it’s a sketch
of exactly what happens in the final scene.
However,
although Indy knows the mythology of the Ark, he quickly adds, “If you
believe all that stuff.” – indicating that he himself does not believe
it. This is an action-adventure film, there isn’t a huge CHARACTER ARC
here, but this is what it is: Indy starts out scoffing at the
supernatural and mystical and ends up barely saving his life and
Marion’s precisely by believing in the power of the Ark and showing
reverence. (The secondary character arc has to do with reconciling
romantically with Marion, although in the trilogy that doesn’t last
long. There is also even a reference to this GHOST when Indy says, with
some shame – that he and Ravenwood had “a sort of falling-out.”)
Also,
adding to the THEME of world religions, there are several
Judeo-Christian references in the University scene – the auditorium that
looks like a church, with the stained glass windows, the leather-bound
text that looks like a Bible, the references to the story of Moses and
the Israelites and the Lost Ark of the Covenant and the wrath of God.
Marcus’s voice echoes in the auditorium like the voice of a priest.
The
tag line of the scene is Marcus saying: “An army carrying the Ark
before it was said to be invincible”, leaving us a moment to think about
that most important point as the scene changes.
All of that, about a dozen key story elements – in one scene! It’s really a miracle of compression.
I
look at those three examples I just detailed above, all chosen because
they were the first Call To Adventure scenes that came immediately to my
mind, and I realize that even though they’re very different stories and
styles, what those scenes all have in common for me is a sense of
mystical, or even mythical, importance. That’s certainly my preference
as a writer and reader, but I also think that there should be something
mystical and mythical about any Call To Adventure scene. It’s the scene
that summons the hero/ine to the journey, and invites us, the reader or
audience, to come along. Shouldn’t that be magical?
I’ve also just realized that in my thrillers Book of Shadows, and Huntress Moon,
the protagonist’s Call To Adventure in the crime story is simultaneous
with meeting the love interest. I didn’t do that in previous books, and
the Inciting Incidents and Calls To Adventure in my other books are
separate scenes. I wonder if I’m getting more efficient at storytelling -
or if possibly my stories are getting more twisted! But I look at what
I’m doing now and I know it’s right that those two story elements occur
together; it says something thematically that I definitely wanted to
say, although I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time I wrote
those scenes.
All
of which I think illustrates the point that I’m always trying to make
in my blogs and teaching – that taking the time to analyze a particular
story element by looking at examples that really do it for you – can
take your writing to a whole other level.
So here's the suggestion of the day. Either before you go on to your Nano Act II, - or later, when you're done with the fast first draft and are looking to rewrite, try taking a moment to really consider whether your Call to Adventure is living up to the name.
- Alex
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2 comments:
I utterly disagree about The Fugitive. The Inciting Incident is when the bus is hit by a train and Harrison Ford escapes. This is what changes his world. When the movie starts, he is already in jail and being prosecuted for his wife's murder. Therefore, the stasis is: he's going to be executed for a murder he says he didn't commit. This state changes when he escapes. The second act begins when he jumps off the dam, then returns to Chicago to clear his name.
Well, I don't know what in this post you're looking at that is talking about The Fugitive, but I don't entirely disagree with you. But The Fugitive DOES show Kimble's Ordinary World (the party that sets up the villain and his plan) and his romantic relationship with his wife, and shows the murder of the wife, all of which comes first chronologically and are the real start of the story. Sure, the train crash plays as the huge set piece but not any more huge than the murder - theoretically - although Andrew Davis is not good with women in any way and we don't have any particular reason to care about the wife, so it may not seem all that emotionally powerful.
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