I’m starting a series on story structure where I’ll be dissecting different film scenes to demonstrate the building blocks of story structure. We’ll begin by studying one of my all-time favorite movies While You Were Sleeping to learn how to establish the First Act which includes the Normal World, Inciting Incident (also called the Catalyst or Call to Adventure) and the First Plot Point.
Normal World
The Normal World is the author’s opportunity to introduce the main character (MC) as he is at the beginning of the story and what his normal life is like before the Inciting Incident comes crashing in, forcing the character to take that first step toward change.
The Normal World is the “before” snapshot, whereas the resolution or epilogue of your story will be the “after” snapshot. These snapshots should be drastically different. If they’re too similar, the main character didn’t go through much change on his journey towards his goal, which wouldn’t be good because stories are about change. To make these snapshots different, you must show not only what your MC is currently lacking in his Normal World, but also how the lie he believes has made it that way.
In the book Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author’s Guide to Uniting Story Structure, Plot, and Character Development by K.M. Weiland, she states that the lie your character believes is a void that she will be trying to fill in all the wrong ways. Your story should be about your MC learning to fill their void in the right way.
“Your character is incomplete on the inside. He is harboring some deeply held misconception about either himself, the world, or probably both” (Weiland, p. 26).
In the movie While You Were Sleeping, the protagonist, Lucy, portrayed by Sandra Bullock, goes through her Normal World routine. In this beginning snapshot which lasts about 10 minutes, we learn what Lucy is lacking (family and love) and why she’s lacking it (she doesn’t take risks). She works as a token collector for the metro in Chicago, which she doesn’t seem to love but also doesn’t hate. Through a conversation with her boss, we learn she’s worked several holidays because she’s the only employee without a family. We also learn that she’s not very outgoing as she only regularly converses with two people in her apartment building and her boss. The hot dog stand she regularly visits doesn’t even remember her usual order because of her introverted tendencies.
She admits to having a huge crush on a businessman (Peter) who takes the train to work every day, but she is too afraid to actually speak to him.
The Inciting Incident
In Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, the Catalyst is described as
“a single scene beat in which something happens to the hero to send their life down a completely different direction” (Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, p. 38).
This could be in the form of:
Seeing a girl about to jump off a ship (Titanic)
Getting captured by some bad people in a foreign country (Iron Man)
Realizing your sister has ice powers (Frozen)
Finding a pair of jeans that magically fit you and all your friends (The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants)
Lucy’s Inciting Incident appears when Peter comes to take the train on Christmas morning. Lucy is the only worker on the platform and she witnesses Peter get mugged by two men who then push him off the train platform. Lucy runs to help him and just barely pulls him off the tracks before a train comes.
The thing about the Inciting Incident though, is that this doesn’t fully kickstart the MCs journey. The MC still has the opportunity to refuse this Call to Adventure and he often does. Whatever happens in the Inciting Incident is so far outside of the MCs Normal World and his comfort zone that he might reject it or go off and try to forget about it. Which is why the First Plot Point is where things really get cooking. Look out for next week’s article on the First Plot Point!
