“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” -Unknown

In writing, there is an element referred to as an “inciting incident,” which is an event that causes a character to change direction. I first learned about inciting incidents when I read the book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller, which is all about creating a good story and living a life worth telling. In the book, Miller and a couple of filmmakers are working on creating a movie from one of his earlier memoirs. In the process, he learns about the importance of writing an inciting incident into the plot of a story. One of the filmmakers tells him, “A general rule in creating stories is that characters don’t want to change. They must be forced to change.”

That’s where the inciting incident comes in, the event that forces a character out of his/her comfort zone and into a place of discomfort and fear, forcing them to make a decision—to “jump into the story” of their lives, as Miller puts it.

There are all sorts of inciting incidents that come to mind: a sudden illness, like a heart attack or a terminal diagnosis; meeting someone new; finding out that your spouse is cheating on you; a serious injury; getting fired from your job; losing a loved one; or your house burning down. Even Luis, my fellow blogger at BTF, encountered an inciting incident of his own back when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. These events change the course of entire lives, forcing people to make decisions they may never have made otherwise. They can’t go back to living and behaving the way they did before because they are forever altered in some fundamental way.

In his book, Miller says, “The rule exists in story because it’s a true thing about people.” We like our creature comforts and our routines. Even if we are secretly unhappy and wish for something better, we often order real cialis online choose comfort and safety over change and the unknown. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, and all that. And we stay in that place until an inciting incident comes along to wrest us from our comfort zone.

The thing about inciting incidents is that they don’t always happen. Some people go a lifetime without experiencing anything that alters their way of being or thinking. Miller is a perfect example. In the process of attempting to create an inciting incident to make his movie more interesting, he realizes that he’s never encountered an inciting incident in his own life. He always knew he wanted to change, and he spent a lot of time feeling depressed and unhappy. But nothing ever forced him to change, so he simply stayed the same.
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In a way, this realization was Miller’s inciting incident. It caused him to start looking for ways to create his own change. He decides to commit to hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, something he never would have even considered doing in the past. In preparation, he starts riding a bike and getting healthy, a development that eventually leads him to sign up for—and complete—a 3,000-mile bike ride across America. Miller created his own inciting incidents, and in doing so, he learned how to live a better story.

Miller's book teaches us a little about him and a lot about ourselves. In telling his story, he shows us that we can choose to leave our comfort zones, to disrupt our routines, and see where it takes us. Without inciting incidents, we don’t change. And if they don’t come along on their own, it’s up to us to create them for ourselves.

"And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time." - Donald Miller

 

 

 

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