Читать книгу The User's Journey - Donna Lichaw - Страница 14

The inciting incident is the moment where something changes or goes dramatically wrong in the world of the story. A problem surfaces and gets in the way of the character meeting his big goal. The moment when the hero is thrust into leaving his safe world in order to fix the problem is called the call to action.

Neuroscientists have shown that when you listen to or watch a story, it’s as if you are experiencing the story in real time. As action rises, your pulse might quicken or your palms get sweaty. Something startles you, and you jump. Stories are not just about looking or listening, they are about being. The inciting incident is the first hook or trigger point in a story that amplifies if and how you identify with the main character, what problems he has, and what he has to go through to fix that problem and meet his goal. It’s what gets you hooked. When the main character is called to action, it’s as if you, the viewer, are called to action. Your brain starts working in overdrive to figure out what will happen next and how the hero will right the wrong.

In Back to the Future, the excitement of a time machine doesn’t last long; militants shoot Doc in a parking lot in an attempt to retrieve plutonium that he stole from them (see Figure 2.5). Not good. In an attempt to escape, Marty ends up driving the time machine to 1955 and then finds out that he can’t get home. That’s a problem—a meaty enough problem to name the movie after. Marty’s call to action is simple: to get back to the future.

FIGURE 2.5 Inciting incident: this is the point in Back to the Future where the story kickstarts into action.