Often, in submissions that are otherwise promising, there’s a very specific and almost insurmountable flaw: they take forever to get moving.
I once told a writer that I thought they were a brilliant prose stylist with a great eye for character, but that I had read all 500 pages of their manuscript and not a single thing happened. Don’t let that be you!
The first thing to make sure your manuscript has, in order to get things rolling plotwise, is an inciting incident. This is a term I’m borrowing from screenwriting, but it applies to prose fiction as well. The inciting incident is the event that sets the plot in motion. It’s not necessarily the very first thing that happens, or the first major event in the story, but it is what first drives the protagonist to act.
The inciting incident must occur in the first 100 pages of your manuscript. If you take longer than that, you are taking too long. Even 100 pages is pushing it.
What are some examples of inciting incidents?
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling, the inciting incident is Hagrid’s arrival on the island to which the Dursleys have fled, where he informs Harry that he is a wizard.
In A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, the inciting incident is Catelyn Stark’s receipt of a letter from her sister Lysa, who accuses the Lannister family of involvement in the death of her husband Jon Arryn.
In Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the inciting incident is Maxim de Winter’s proposal of marriage to the narrator, who becomes the new lady of the house at Manderley.
In Misery by Stephen King, the inciting incident is the car accident that puts a helpless Paul Sheldon in the care of Annie Wilkes.
The inciting incident is not something the protagonist does — it is something that is done to the protagonist and in the process reconfigures his or her life. The world you build in your novel must act upon your protagonist early on if you are to have a compelling narrative that gets off to a strong start.
