Essentials of Storytelling: Foundations (ABC's of Storytelling Book 4)

Preface

The importance of this collection is that it places three essential storytelling principles under one cover: the dramatic principle (code) found in every human psychology, weakness and need as seen and understood by its character developmental schema; lastly, the catalyst, which is better or more widely known as the inciting incident. Both your hero as well as what their drive is come into clear focus when they are placed within the notion of their entire developmental process, from psychological weaknesses revealed, and moral needs established, which takes place in act one where you establish your hero’s world and then plant the conflict in order to move the hero to re-establish balance in the shattered world of his inciting incident.

Introduction

This collection of essays is about the artistic paradigm of drama founded on the way human grow and develop their life. Authors like John Truby, Blake Snyder, Michael Tierno, Dan O’Bannon, Todd Klick, Dan Calvisi, Chris Huntley & Melanie Anne Phillips have situated this paradigm as founded on principles laid down by Aristotle and integrated into screenplay structure as story beats, story structure and story mapping. Each author presents the story canon founded in human nature from their different theories and story structures. Each of the authors mentioned has had numerous success in the movie industry and have either discovered these story structure paradigms thru their work as story analysts, script readers and analysts, screenwriters or teachers of the art of storytelling and structure. In this collection of essays, I only concentrate on the essential contributions of Blake Snyder, John Truby and Michael Tierno, while trying to keep open to the larger picture of storytelling as applied to all the authors. Sometimes this is not possible because of the different way these authors present their story structure or storytelling paradigm. Each author, thru their work, has contributed to the corpus known as dramatic theory.

From Volume Three:

Disturbances and Dangers

INCITING INCIDENT (page 8-10): The first disturbance to the order that sets the story in motion. An event that brings about danger, CONFLICT and chaos. Introduces the MAIN DRAMATIC CONFLICT and maybe the ANTAGONIST. (Calvisi, 2012,1078)

According to Dan Calvisi, who was a script reader for several major studios and has developed his own beat sheet for major blockbuster movies, the inciting incident should be expected between pages 8-10 in your screenplay. For Calvisi (2012) the inciting event is a critical point in the screenplay’s structure which gives major evidence of a healthy act one structure. The inciting incident is a “disturbance to the order” of the story’s motion. Calvisi uses three words to describe the kind of action that take splice at the inciting incident: “danger, CONFLICT, and chaos.” In his book “Story Maps: How to Write a Great Screenplay,” Calvisi emphasizes CONFLICT, since the inciting event disturb the hero’s world and it disrupts the event that have led unto the inciting event. Two major actions happen in the setup. First, the pattern of life and activities is introduced around the hero, then that order and pattern is disturbed by an event.
Calvisi (2012) distinguishes between two inciting incidents: the internal and the external. The internal and external inciting incidents are different from the internal and external goal of the hero. For example, Calvisi notes that in Rocky I (Avildsen, 1976) the internal and external inciting incidents are Rock’s hanging out at the Pet Shop where he is flirting and joking with Adrian, who has yet to take an interest in Rocky. Rocky thinks about Adrian a lot and thru his talks with Pauly Rocky stops by the pet shop to speak with Adrian. It’s a love story, but Rocky can’t get Adrian to love him. Calvisi calls this the internal inciting incident:

Rocky visits the pet store to see shy Adrian. She doesn't respond to his jokes. (Calv