May 22, 2014 Leave a Comment

Inciting Incidents, Major Dramatic Questions, & Obligatory Scenes

The Inciting Incident, observes Robert McKee in Story, raises the Major Dramatic Question and projects an image of the Obligatory Scene.

In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the Inciting Incident raises the Question: “Will Walter find missing Negative #25?” In Saving Mr. Banks, the Major Dramatic Question is, “Will P.L. Travers sign over to Walt Disney the rights to the Mary Poppins books?” Explains McKee: “Hunger for the answer to the Major Dramatic Question grips the audience’s interest, holding it to the last act’s climax.”

But the Inciting Incident also creates the expectation in the audience’s mind of the Obligatory Scene: namely, the scene in which the protagonist confronts the final and most imposing obstacle keeping him from his goal. “The Obligatory Scene,” McKee writes, “(a.k.a. Crisis) is an event the audience knows it must see before the story can end. This scene will bring the protagonist into a confrontation with the most powerful forces of antagonism in his quest, forces stirred to life by the Inciting Incident that will gather focus and strength through the course of the story. The scene is called “obligatory” because having teased the audience into anticipating this moment, the writer is obligated to keep his promise and show it to them.”

In Walter Mitty, the Obligatory Scene is Walter’s trek up the mountain in the Himalayas where he finally finds Sean O’Connell. In Saving Mr. Banks, the Obligatory Scene is Mrs. Travers’ final confrontation with Walt Disney in her London home after she leaves Los Angeles in a huff, a confrontation in which Disney helps her exorcise the psychological demons that have been burdening her since childhood and which lie behind her 20-year reluctance to relinquish the rights to Mary Poppins.

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May 21, 2014 Leave a Comment

The Inciting Incident in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (written by Steve Conrad based upon the James Thurber short story) is a delightful, clever, funny movie with an Inciting Incident that is much more elaborately constructed than the one we find in Saving Mr. Banks. Here is a breakdown of the scenes which comprise it:

1. Walter having breakfast at his computer and trying to send an eHarmony “wink” to Cheryl Melhoff

2. Walter waiting for his train and talking on his cell to Todd from eHarmony, which inspires one of Walter’s zone-out heroic moments

3. Walter arriving at work and learning that Life Magazine has been acquired; meeting his sister, from whom we learn it is Walter’s birthday and that their mother is moving and is having trouble moving her piano

4. Meeting Ted Hendricks, he obnoxious managing director of the transition–and Walter having another zone-out heroic moment in which they engage in an epic superhero battle

5. Seeing Cheryl in the hall (she also works at Life), but not being able to talk to her…and having another zone-out heroic moment in which he is a romantic adventurer “testing the limits of the human experience.”

These initial setup scenes involve:

(a) the romantic subplot between Walter and Cheryl; and

(b) the acquisition of Life Magazine which will give urgency to what follows:

6. Walter enters his office and finds a gift from a colleague, the über-photographer and real life romantic-adventurer, Sean O’Connell. It’s a wallet with Life Magazine’s motto on it. Then Walter learns that Sean O’Connell’s latest batch of photos, his “neg roll,” is missing Negative #25. This piece of bad luck is the “happening” that upsets the balance of Walter’s life. On the surface it’s a “negative” value charge, but in fact it will represent the opportunity for Walter to step out of his comfort zone and start to live the life he’s only been dreaming about.

7. Staff meeting with the obnoxious Ted Hendricks and the rest of his transition team. Hendricks announces that Life Magazine is folding and that Sean O’Connell has sent a telegram urging that they use Negative #25–a photo O’Connell calls “the quintessence of life”– for the cover photo of Life’s final issue. Hendricks asks Walter for the negative (exerting pressure on Walter). Walter lies, saying it’s “being processed.” We learn it’s 2 and ½ weeks before the final issue goes to press. Walter’s obfuscation here is a decision that serves as the catalyst for all the actions that follow. If he does not decide to buy some time in order to look for Negative #25, there is no story. Soon enough, a larger decision will be demanded of him: namely, whether to fly to Greenland to find Sean O’Connell and ask him what happened to Negative #25. But this much bigger transition is the First Turning Point of the story and the end of Act I (I’ll talk about Turning Points tomorrow).

8. Walter introduces himself to Cheryl and asks if she has an address for Sean O’Connell. She agrees to help him. One decision to try to find Negative #25 now leads to another, which also deepens the romantic subplot with Cheryl.We’re about 17 and ½ minutes now into the movie.

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May 20, 2014 Leave a Comment

The Inciting Incident in Saving Mr. Banks

Do extremely difficult work.

That seems obvious, right? If you do something that’s valued but scarce because it’s difficult, you’re more likely to be in demand and to be compensated fairly for what you do.

The implication is stunning, though: When designing a project or developing a skill, seek out the most difficult parts to master and contribute. If it’s easy, it’s not for you.

–Seth Godin on “The Proven Way to Add Value” 

So let’s get down to the extremely difficult work of mastering story structure, beginning with the Inciting Incident.

The Inciting Incident is that event or choice without which we would not have a story. It is that which kick-starts the adventure.

In Story, Robert McKee defines the Inciting Incident as that which “radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life.” He continues:

“As a story begins, the protagonist is living a life that’s more or less in balance. He has successes and failures, ups and downs. Who doesn’t? But life is in relative control. Then, perhaps suddenly but in any case decisively, an event occurs that radically upsets its balance, swinging the value-charge of the protagonist’s reality either to the negative or to the positive.”

(Here are some further articulations of the definition of the Inciting Incident.)

Let’s make this more concrete by identifying the Inciting Incident in Saving Mr. Banks, written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith (the entire script is available here).

P.L. Travers (played by Emma Thompson) is the protagonist of Saving Mr. Banks. We meet her, after a brief opening image of herself as a child in Australia, in her London home in the year 1961. Her agent arrives, thinking to see her off on a trip to California to meet with Walt Disney about selling the rights to her Mary Poppins books. Travers, however, has cancelled the car her agent has scheduled to take her to the airport. She is refusing to go, afraid what Disney will do to her beloved characters if she relinquishes the rights. But her agent explains that she has to go and at least consider Disney’s offer. For there is no more money coming in from her books. She will be broke if she doesn’t do something.

There is no waste of time setting up the conflict in this scene. But we haven’t yet gotten to the Inciting Incident itself. So in what sense is Travers’ life even in relative balance?

While it may not be in balance financially, it is in balance psychologically. As she, that is, would have it so. And in terms of the deal with Disney she has insisted upon, and gotten, “final say” in regard to the script. She is exercising the kind of iron control over the situation she is used to exercising in her affairs.

Yet her financial situation is upsetting the balance of her world. If she is going to avoid going broke, she will have to make a decision about whether to sign over the rights to Disney. She will have to relinquish a large degree of control. The Inciting Incident is her decision, at the end of this first scene, to go to Los Angeles for two weeks to meet and collaborate with Disney and his team. At the very end of the scene, when her agent tries to console her by saying, “It’s an exploratory trip. What do you say?” Travers replies: “I want to keep my house.” That line of dialogue expresses her decision to go and starts her off on her adventure.

Is her decision a swing to a negative or positive value? For Travers, it’s both. There is the positive prospect of making money, but also the negative prospect of Disney ruining her creation. But her line, “I want to keep my house,” tells us that the need to make money is driving her decision to go to LA, so overall the swing is to a positive value.

Observes McKee: “In most cases, the Inciting Incident is a single event that either happens directly to the protagonist or is caused by the protagonist.”

In the Inciting Incident of Saving Mr. Banks both things occur: dire financial straits “happen” to P.L. Travers but her decision to go to LA and meet with Disney is the cause of all that later occurs. If she had chosen to remain in London and keep the rights to Mary Poppins, there would have been no story.

 

The image above is reproduced courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

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May 16, 2014 Leave a Comment

The Books on Writing I’ve Learned From Most

Aristotle, Poetics

The first principles of storytelling briefly and sometimes cryptically stated.

 

Linda Seger, Making a Good Script Great

I discovered this book some years ago now in a public library in Houston, Texas. Broke open for me the whole idea of story structure: inciting incidents, turning points, etc. Not just for screenwriters.

 

Robert McKee, Story

It’s big. It’s theoretical. It repays attention a hundred-fold. Read Seger first then let McKee take you even deeper into what makes a story work. If I could keep only one writing book on my shelf, it would be this one. Not just for screenwriters.

 

Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer

A book about what the title says. Invaluable advice on how to focus the mind for writing fiction.

 

Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners

Wit and wisdom from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

 

Viki King, How to Write a Movie in 21 Days

Think the title sounds cheesy? I followed the program and produced a script, my very first, which got me a reputable agent in LA. A great resource for the overly-analytical.

 

John Vorhaus, The Comic Toolbox

Broke open for me the principles of comedy. If we can’t have Aristotle’s lost book on comedy, at least we have Vorhaus.

 

Stephen King, On Writing

I’ve never read a Stephen King novel but I’m greatly in his debt for this book.

 

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

In this book Mamet reveals the Long Lost Secret of the Incas. Learn it. Memorize it.

 

I have on my shelf Percy Lubbock’s The Craft of Fiction, a book Graham Greene mentions in his autobiography. I’ve never looked at it but I aim to now.

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