The inciting incident happens when the hero acquires an intention. Until then it’s all set-up. Luke Skywalker acquires the intention to fight for the rebel alliance, to become a Jedi knight like his father, to discover his destiny. Mark Watney, alive and alone on Mars, acquires the intention to survive. Liam Neeson in Taken is called to find and rescue his daughter. Rocky to fight the champ. Addie Loggins in Paper Moon to link with her father. At these moments, the story starts. Set-up is over. Drama has begun. One of the great inciting incidents in recent years is that in…

I had been struggling as a screenwriter for about a year when I first heard the concept of the Inciting Incident. Here’s the context from Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t: I took Robert McKee’s class. It was called Screenplay Structure then. The class was three days—half of Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday. It cost $199, I think. [Check out the 2016 version at www.mckeestory.com.] The class was full of other aspiring screenwriters as well as actors and actresses, studio execs and development guys and gals. We were all desperate to find out what made a screenplay work.…

    Here’s an exercise to drive you crazy: Ask yourself, “What is the theme of my life?” I suggest this for two reasons. First, because it’s so hard for us as writers to grasp the idea of “theme.” What the hell is it anyway? How is it different from “subject?” From “concept?” An exercise like this (aside from being fairly mind-bending) is a great way to get a sense of exactly what “theme” means. My second reason is because I was watching the documentary about Tony Robbins last night, “I Am Not Your Guru.” I only got to watch…

  Call this post “Dudeology #3,” as we continue our exploration of The Big Lebowski, with an eye specifically to the writing of first drafts. We were talking in a couple of previous posts about the preparatory questions a writer asks himself or herself before the first word of a first draft goes onto paper. For me, the first two are: “What genre am I writing in?” “What’s the story’s spine, i.e. its ‘narrative highway’ from Act One through Act Two to Act Three?” The third question for me is, “What’s the theme? What is my story about?” Which brings…

  Here we are, getting set to plunge in on our first draft. But what do we do before that? We said a couple of weeks ago that our first question to ourselves, pre-pre-first draft, should be: “What’s the genre?” Okay, great. Let’s say that we’ve done that. We know our genre. Our story, we’ve determined, is a sci-fi action-adventure. Or maybe it’s a love story. Or a Western combined with a supernatural thriller. Good enough. We’ve got that covered. What’s next? For our answer, let’s refer back to Paul (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull”) Schrader’s excellent guidelines for pitching:  …

  We were talking last week about The Big Lebowski being a film in the Private Eye genre. But what really makes Lebowski so inventive and so interesting is it’s a mixed genre. It’s a Slacker/Stoner tale (like Dazed and Confused, Go, Clerks, or any Cheech and Chong movie) conceived, structured, and executed as a Detective Story. What does this mean for you and me as writers? It means that mixing genres is one of the most canny and fun tricks we can pull to come up with something new and fresh and exciting. Mix the Private Detective genre with…

  [Reminder: only two more days to order your free e-version of my new book on writing, Nobody Wants To Read Your Sh*t. Offer expires at midnight, June 30. Click here to download. Totally free. No opt-in required. Takes 38 seconds or less.]   I was talking three weeks ago about the preparatory files I use before plunging in on a first draft. The first file is one I call Foolscap. Here’s the first question I ask myself in that file: “What’s the genre?” I’m asking, “What kind of book am I writing? Is it a Western? A Love Story? What…

[Forgive me for leaving this post up two weeks in a row, but response has been so overwhelming to this free offer (see below) that we’ve decided to keep it going till midnight a week and a day from now—June 30. That’s the expiration date. Don’t be late!]   As a thank-you to readers of this blog, we’re giving away the e-version of my newest book, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t, just out today. No opt-in required. You don’t have to enter your e-mail address or compromise your privacy in any way. The book is free until midnight Eastern time…

  Have you ever seen a “breakdown board” for a movie? You and I as novelists can learn a lot from it about the writing of first drafts. Motion pictures, as most of us know, are not shot in sequence. The first day’s filming may be the movie’s final scene, or a scene from the middle of the picture. What dictates the order of shooting is efficiency. Budget concerns. If we’re shooting Zombie Apocalypse VI and we know we’ve got three scenes that take place in the abandoned warehouse down by the railroad tracks, let’s shoot them all back-to-back Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday,…

We’ve been talking for the past couple of weeks about first drafts. Bottom line message: Get through them fast and with aggression, even if the final product is imperfect and riddled with TKs (placeholder scenes, descriptions, and dialogue). In other words, “Cover the Canvas.” That’s fine. It works. But what do we do before we cover the canvas? Plunge in blindly? Start writing from Page One? I’m gonna take the next few weeks to address these questions. What I have to say is purely my own idiosyncratic thinking and experience. Okay? Here goes … Before I start a first draft…