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Day 2 – What I learned …
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5 Replies
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What I learned… it’s of utmost importance that we create a compelling inciting incident that will propel the character’s journey throughout the second and third acts to the final conclusion. I do feel I have a strong and compelling inciting incident in my current project. Inciting incidences are everything, you don’t have a journey, an arc, without it.
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What I learned rewriting my scene is that what is that what is coming next needs to be foreshadowed in some way.
Basic scene components — Scene arc, situation, conflict, moving the story forward, entertainment value, and setups/payoffs.
Scene arc: The vote is smugly taken and they want to know why the 12th man voted against it. His only comment is that he thinks they should spend more time since the suspected murderer is only 18 years old. He doesn’t say he thinks he’s innocent, just that they should talk about it more. They do and end up in controversy.
Situation: They are the jury for a murder trial of an 18 year old, abused all his life, accused of killing his father.
Conflict: Only one man has voted No.
Moving the story forward: We see that most of the jurors are either prejudiced, eager to get out of there, distracted or bullies who just want this over with except for the 12th man. We see by the end of the scene, that he is not going to let them decide quickly and that there is dissension in the 11 who voted yes.
Entertainment Value: The men’s personalities, foibles, and conversation is entertaining.
Setups/Payoffs: Setup: Tell us why you think he’s innocent? Payoff: They disagree on facts almost immediately.
Invitation to the journey: We see immediately that there is not agreement and wonder how many more jurors will be shown to have not really considered the evidence. We want to know how it will turn out.
2nd time through:
- Challenging Situation· 11 men say guilty right off the bat. Only one says no.
- Interesting Action: The bigot gets up for a handkerchief — standing automatically gives him the floor. The doodler adds some humor.
- Intriguing Dialogue: Each person’s viewpoint is distinct, their bigotry comes out, their lack of care about ascertaining the facts is obvious.
- Something inside this character needs to go on the journey. — The 12th man knows more about the law than he is letting on and rather than taking a belligerent stance, he soft soaps them into starting the discussion.
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The stakes of the challenge are life and death. I have good action: the conflict is physical. I lacked setups. I worked in more foreshadowing that will be paid off later. I have a strong character arc: an innocent child at the start and an orphan at the close. Her new identity requires a journey, and that will move the story forward because there is no going back. I tightened some of the dialogue and made it more character unique. It can still use another edit to make it “intriguing.”
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What I learned rewriting my scene:
Looking at my inciting incident – I realized that my main character is being acted upon – and doesn’t take any stand or decide to take this journey.
He and six others receive a warning not to “go there” – yet they willingly walk in anyway.
I added more conflict between each character and the environment. I made my main character initiate the action and state clearly why he’s “going in.” Then the others follow him either happily or reluctantly.
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What I learned that my inciting incident needed to be stronger. It’s not where the story is going, it’s more that we’re too clearly going in that direction before it. So it’s not a turning point, it’s a simple follow up convention. So I’ve rearranged the previous scenes so that the scene where the film starts to flow towards the end, at first seems to want to flow in a different direction. My characters are walking into the room with a certain idea and the flow of the story will change during the scene, which will start my protagonist on the path he has to take until the end of the story.
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