The Inciting Incident

What is the inciting incident that sparks a memoir? This question might apply to fiction writers too. It is any turning point in a life. For memoirists, teacher Kaylie Jones says, it’s the moment ‘the rock came through the window’; the day one’s life went ‘careening out of control’.

The inciting incident is a great place to start. Once we’ve identified our salient moment, the stage is set for unfolding of the narrative.

I might joke that I have an inciting incident every day (J). But for the purposes of the memoir, it’s the event that pertains to the one particular story you are writing.

Pat Conroy, author of The Death of Santini, begins with the day his violent, fighter pilot father moved the whole family interstate on the eve of Pat’s graduation at his much beloved school. Memoirist Cheryl Strayed pulled up stumps on her waitressing job after the death of her mother and the disintegration of her marriage, deciding suddenly to trek The Pacific Crest Trail alone.The memoir Wild – according to the memoir’s blurb – is a ‘A Journey from Lost to Found.’

My ‘brick came through the window’ in a less visible moment when my dying father turned away from me in the hospital form ex-servicemen. Remembering back, I realised that my previous writings about the plight of returned soldiers and their families, was really about my relationship with him.

The inciting incident might be a little harder to spot in a work of fiction. Yet there must be an observation or event buried away there that lies at the heart of the author’s idea, Together fiction and non-fiction writers will, each in their own way, nudge life’s narrative forward – as do our poets. More on that another time.