The Inciting Incidents of Our Life

In almost every movie, there’s an event that happens called the “inciting incident.” This is the moment that sets the film’s central story into motion. It is a challenge that must be solved for the hero to be satisfied. When people get hurt, they have experienced an inciting incident. Their stories come into brighter focus as the challenge to recover becomes the goal.

Well-known film examples include Saving Private Ryan when the military decides that Private Ryan must be saved after his three brothers die in combat. In Die Hard, the villain takes over the building, so Bruce Willis’s character must overcome long odds to defeat Hans Gruber. More recently, in the animated film The Wild Robot, the inciting incident was when the robot finds her task: teaching the young goose how to eat, swim, and fly.

In each of these films, the lead characters must learn, grow, and change as they work to accomplish their goals. However, complications often frustrate that goal. Similarly, injured folks grow and change as they overcome setbacks on the quest to fully recover.