Crafting a Story : Inciting Incident

The inciting incident’s random word is:

Passion, in general, refers to a large amount of emotion about something. Normally positive, as in being devoted to something. Passionate means that you are easily swayed by your emotions and easily swept up into making something bigger than it is, thinking with your emotions instead of your head. Passion also designates desire.

Let’s say for a second that Irwin’s girlfriend is now interested in Henry. And then, when Henry finally caves in and accepts her, Irwin is roused by the event, and angry. Thus, Henry giving in to passion allows Irwin to come back and haunt him.

Now the question is, how did Irwin’s girlfriend fall for Henry? The two men are on opposite ends of a giant spectrum. Let’s say that the person Henry saved in the shop that Irwin was robbing was in fact, Irwin’s girlfriend. Let’s say that she and Irwin were working together with her acting as a hostage to ensure a clean getaway. Maybe she didn’t like the plan much. Or maybe she was swayed by Henry’s sudden courage. Since she was with Irwin, I’m going to assume that she comes from the same kind of life he does; poor, crime-ridden neighbourhood. Struggling to get by, perhaps. Then, Henry symbolically saves her from that life. So, she gets infatuated with him.

So now, Henry accepts the girlfriend’s advances and offers to take her with him to a quiet house in a forest (the one his uncle left to him). By the time they get there, the spirit of Irwin is furious and begins to test out his power and so on.

The inciting incident has not only given us another character – whom we shall call Jasmine Heart for now – but also a note of deception for a large part of the story. Jasmine has been hiding the fact that she had been working with Irwin because she fears of what Henry would think of her if he knew. Obviously, if the spirit can communicate with them in some way, it will become apparent (eventually) that Jasmine and Irwin are connected in some way. Eventually the truth will leak out and Henry will see betrayal everywhere.

The catalyst will tell us more about the way in which Irwin’s ghost was awakened and the sort of powers he possesses. We’ll look at that next week.

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