Secrets of Writing: The Trigger Event
This is one of the most critical things a story needs. It’s an event that sets the story in motion. Until this event happens, your characters are just muddling through life as they normally do. The Trigger Event kicks the plot into first gear. Now you’re moving in a direction.
Think of a story as a section of your character’s life, which has been edited down to the most interesting and salient parts. We live from day to day, trying to achieve certain objectives. Things happen to us that sometimes changes our plans. And sometimes these events set us on a different path than the one we were on.
That’s what the trigger does. It sets your character on a path with destiny. The destiny you’ve chosen for him at the end of the story. Until the trigger he was headed in the “normal” direction his life was taking, whatever that may be. He had a goal in sight or he was doing a daily routine and everything was hunky dory. More or less.
But then the trigger event came along and totally screwed up everything. It has radically upset the life of the hero whether he realizes it or not. The trigger can either have a positive or negative effect on the hero’s life at first, but it must be dynamic. It must radically alter the status quo in a way that will take a lot of doing to change.
A story needs to have movement. It needs to propel the Audience forward at a pace where they won’t be distracted or have their mind wander. A story also needs direction, and the trigger gives the story the initial direction it needs.
In a story you have two opposing forces, the Hero and the Villain. Both will be at odds over some issue central to the story. That issue will usually be the Grail. The trigger event signals when these two forces first begin to be in opposition to each other. It may not be apparent immediately to some of the characters that this is happening, but the trigger serves as the catalyst to make the story come about.
Let’s look at a few famous movies to see some examples of a trigger event.
E.T.: The UFO that brought E.T. to earth has left without him. He’s stranded on an alien world. The UFO was seen by some government men, including a man with keys on his belt (the story’s Villain). The man with the keys senses E.T.’s presence and gives chase. E.T. runs until he reaches the safety of the garden shed where he’ll eventually meet Henry, the central Hero of the story.
STAR WARS: A spaceship carrying Princess Leia and her two droids is captured by the Empire. Darth Vader, the main Villain, shows up to oversee the operation. The two droids escape to the planet below, where they inevitably meet Luke Skywalker, the main Hero.
BATMAN FOREVER: Bruce Wayne (the main Villain) rejects inventor Edward Nygma’s (the main Villain) plans for a Virtual TV helmet. Therefore, Edward becomes incensed and plots revenge which leads him to become The Riddler.
ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE: James Bond (the main Hero) has been searching without success for his enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld (the main Villain). He sees a girl trying to drown herself in the ocean. He saves her. And thus meets Tracy, who will cause him to meet her father, the man who has clues to the location of Blofeld.
DIE HARD: John McClane, a New York Cop (the main Hero) shows up at his wife’s office party and goes into her office to make a phone call. Shortly thereafter, a band of criminals (lead by the Villain) show up and take people hostage at the party.
ALIEN: The spaceship Nostromo gets orders to land on an alien planet, where the crew (the Heroes) will come into contact with an alien species (the Villain) which will try to kill them all.
Did you notice something about all these trigger events? Either the Villain, the Hero, or both were introduced in them. This is important, because every story will be about these two forces coming into opposition. You want to make it clear who these characters are and what place do they take in the scheme of things.
So the Trigger Event not only starts the ball rolling in a certain direction, but it serves to give the audience a sense of who’s who and what’s about to go down. In the case of E.T., we know right away that the alien is in trouble and that he’s hunted. That his only hope is to be taken in by someone who will protect him. This is a great trigger incident because it immediately gives you a clear sense of where the story is going and raises a strong question.
Star Wars also does a good job of establishing the nature of the Villain and his relationship to the Heroes of the story, even though we don’t see Luke Skywalker till a little while later.
Placement of the Trigger Event
The Trigger Event should be placed close to the beginning of the story. You might even want to make it the first scene. The only real reason to hold off using it right away is when you need to set up some backstory so that everything makes sense. For example, in THE GODFATHER, the trigger doesn’t happen until after the large wedding sequence. In fact, it doesn’t happen until after the infamous horse head scene. The wedding scene establishes all the main characters of the story and sets up a back story, showing the Godfather’s relationship with his community, his power over others, and the nature of what he is. The wedding sequence also establishes his son, Michael, who is the Hero of the story. We even wait until after the Hollywood sequence before we get to the Trigger. The Hollywood sequence demonstrates Godfather Vito Corleone’s influence and power via the infamous “horse head” scene. Before then, we only heard second hand stories about the Godfather’s power. Now we’ve seen it in action. We see the fear he creates in others. We are led to believe that someone would have to be crazy to ever think of messing with this dude. This is all a set up for the Turning Point of the first act.
The Trigger Event is the scene where Vito rejects Virgil Pollazo’s offer to join him in the drug trade. By refusing Pollazo, the Godfather has created a powerful enemy who will attempt to have him assassinated at the Turning Point of the first act.
So, sometimes it’s necessary to wait before you use the trigger. Sometimes you need to get to know the victims first. But in any event, it must be somewhere in the first quarter of your story.
The Trigger Event can sometimes be in the backstory, rather than a scene in the first act. In WATCHMEN it was in the murder of the Comedian, which we only see the aftermath of in the beginning. This is because Watchmen is a mystery and it would give away the story’s big twist if we knew who killed the Comedian. This technique of placing the Trigger in the backstory is common in the mystery and crime genres.
The Story’s Question
When the Trigger Event takes place, it should immediately create the following question in the Audience’s mind.
“Oh my god! How does this end?”
Your Trigger Event needs to be interesting enough to make the Audience wonder how the hero is going to win. Or at least make people wonder where this is going, in a positive way. After all, the last thing you want is people to feel is indifference. Boredom is the enemy of all stories.
The Trigger should provoke an image in the mind of the Audience of what the final confrontation will be, even though you may have other plans. It gives them something to stick around for.
What the Trigger does is make clear to the audience that after this event, nothing is going to be the same. The Hero will not be able to just mosey along as he always has. The T.E. has screwed him major. It has put him in a situation that he is going to have to figure a way out of, even if he doesn’t know it yet.
Let’s examine a few examples for clarification.
DIE HARD: The trigger forces John McClane to fight the criminals who’ve invaded the building. He could have just surrendered right away like the other people did, but because he was a cop and a man of honor, he had to do the right thing. Either way, he was not going to walk away from this story without some major changes to his life. If he didn’t fight the criminals, his self respect and his relationship with his estranged wife and kids might have suffered.
E.T. The trigger sends E.T. to the garden shed where he meets Eliot. While Eliot is the main Hero, E.T. is the main protagonist. Both of their lives are affected by the trigger. Because Eliot takes in this creature he’s now going to risk the wrath of the mysterious man with the keys and the big bad Feds. E.T. can’t get home unless he gets help from an earthling, and by lucky coincidence, he meets someone in suburbia who isn’t frightened enough by his looks to shoot him.
THE WIZARD OF OZ: The trigger event in this story is when Mrs. Gulch shows up at Dorothy’s house and takes Toto away to be killed. This forces Dorothy into despair, motivating her to run away when Toto escapes. By running away she ends up in the house when the Tornado comes and whisks her and Toto off to the land of Oz. But the scene where she runs away is not the Trigger. It is the Turning point at the end of Act One.
KRAMER VS KRAMER: Mr. Kramer’s wife (played by Meryl Streep) leaves him without much of an explanation (maybe she ran off with Clint Eastwood?), forcing this workaholic man to take care of his kid. A job he is most unprepared for.
JAWS: The shark kills a young girl who was swimming naked in the ocean late at night (some people are crazy, what can I say?). This forces the Sheriff (the Hero), to deal with the problem.
As we see in these examples, the trigger forces the hero to make a choice of some kind, which will effect the outcome of the story. The choice is not always immediate. The choice will often have to be made after the turning point of the first act.
The choice which will eventually be forced upon the hero by the Trigger is what raises the story question in the audience’s mind. They immediately begin to see what the possible outcomes are, and this is the start of a phenomena known as the “Audience Bond”.
The Audience Bond
Once you have the audience wondering what’s going to happen next, you have created an empathy for the Hero. This bond between the audience and your characters is critical to the success of your work.
Just as we discussed in the choice section, people respond to gambles. High stakes with large pay offs and consequences attached. Not knowing which is the right choice is what makes it exciting. When you force the Hero to make hard choices, you give the audience the means to feel right along with the Hero as he has to make his decision. You’ve created a bond between the Audience and the Hero. It’s critical that you don’t blow it once you’ve done this.
You can blow it by having the character make stupid choices for no good reason. If the character acts in an unsympathetic manner, we lose empathy for them.
Another mistake is to use cheap surprise, which is having illogical or unbelievable things happen at random for shock value. In one bad suspense movie whose title escapes me at the moment, the Heroine hears a noise in her kitchen late at night. She’s afraid a killer is stalking her. For some reason she goes in the kitchen with the lights off and opens a cupboard. SURPRISE! Her cat leaps out at her! It’s never explained why the cat would be in the cupboard with the doors closed. Events like that aren’t credible and they will annoy your audience.
The Audience Bond is an important thing to sustain. It’s essential to making your story work, because maintaining a grasp on the audience’s attention is the difference between being remembered and being discarded.
REMEMBER: The Trigger Event gets your story moving. Make sure it evokes the story question.
Is the trigger event different than what I’ve heard described as the “Hero’s Choice”?
e.g. Star Wars - Luke is offered the chance to go with Obi Wan and rescue the princess - Luke can either go or refuse. The whole story then depends on his choice.
Posted by on 01/21 at 09:45 AMYes, but I prefer my term. It isn’t always based on the hero’s choice. Sometimes the hero doesn’t get a choice.
Posted by James Hudnall on 01/23 at 10:49 PM
Next entry: Secrets of Writing: The Turning Point
Previous entry: People are Insane
