Against the Odds

Reference: Dilemma and Risk; Inciting Incident

Sometimes I learn more from school than my instructors intend.

One of my classes likes to talk about stories, but not with the McKee structure. Rather, it looks at stories through the major dramatic unities, as codified by the classic Greeks. First question: why are we so focused on the ancient Greek theater? Not everything that was written there was a masterpiece - for heaven's sake, the deus ex machina was pretty much invented in that time. I'd rather say that the ratio of good stories/bad stories from Greek times to modern times has stayed more or less the same.

Sorry, what was I talking about?

Today, we were reviewing for a midterm. There were copious notes on the screen while the professor spoke tangentially off the material. But up on the screen, in a list of elements from an archetypal story, was a line: "Undergo a series of hardships, odds against"

And my mind exploded.

"Odds against." Of course! The odds are always against the protagonist. There's always a very close possibility of failure. There's always some factor of antagonism that's turning the odds against the protagonist and making his objectives difficult to complete.

And this is how the Inciting Incident upsets the balance in the protagonist's life. Before, the protagonist lives in a world where all of his desires are within reasonable, agreeable reach. Then the Inciting Incident comes along and inspires a new desire in him. He sets about taking a step towards this new desire, but it turns out that it's not within easy reach anymore. A Gap opens, and a force of antagonism appears to block his progress. And in progression, the protagonist discovers an entire world of antagonism between him and his goal. Perhaps he had never encountered these forces before, or maybe the Inciting Incident had more radical consequences that turned the world against his desire. Either way, the protagonist goes from "odds in his favor" to "odds against."

This Inciting Incident could take a great variety of forms. A man is drawn in with a great reward, only to find that he's not ideal for the job. A young woman meets someone she really likes in passing, but finds that it's almost impossible to reach that person again. An orphan boy is finally adopted into a family and wants to make the best of it, but finds himself at odds with his own misfit nature.

These are basic, but it's not hard to apply this to the world of a video game. Quite often, this takes the form of, "X is stolen from Y, and Y wants to get X back." Master Emerald and Knuckles, Froggy and Big the Cat, the list goes on. The trick is finding a compelling and appropriate quality of Inciting Incident.

We know that, before our story starts, Sonic is content. Everything he really wants is comfortably within his reach. Then our Inciting Incident comes along, whatever it is, and inspires a new desire in him. When he tries to pursue that desire, he discovers that there are hidden forces of antagonism that will rise up to stop him.

Granted, that's going to be hard to do. This is Sonic, after all - what can't he do? But now that we know what the Inciting Incident has to do - and how it ties into the rest of the storytelling - it should be slightly easier to come up with some ideas.