Two Inciting Incidents: Mean Girls as a Storytelling Masterpiece
Like most people I know, I was excited to see the Mean Girls remake in theaters earlier this year in January. And also like most others I know, I was disappointed by the adaptation, feeling that it removed the charm of both the original movie and the Broadway play. Recently, I hosted a watch party for the original Mean Girls movie from 2004, the one that I grew up watching. This movie was like a breath of fresh air after the musical remake, and I was once again reminded of why the story works so well—why it has become a lasting cultural icon for my generation.
The storytelling is immaculate. If we’re talking about structure, this movie could be the blueprint. When splitting it up into three acts, it looks like this:
Act 1: Cady is an innocent.
Cady has never done anything bad in her life. She’s a sweet girl who wants the full teenage experience. The attention of the Plastics draws her in with the possibility of popularity. So when she’s invited to sit at their table, she does. It might be tempting to call this moment the inciting incident, but it’s not. The real inciting incident is when Regina kisses Aaron in front of Cady, spurning a desire for revenge.
Cady is on the path to getting her goal of the full teenage experience (friends, a crush/boyfriend, going to school, being liked by others and even the possibility of being popular) when Regina ruins it all by kissing Aaron.
Cady’s flaw is that she is susceptible to temptation. She is a follower. She can say no to sitting at the table with the Plastics, but she’s tempted to see how close she can get to the fire without getting burned. She can say no when Janis proposes spying on the Plastics, but she’s tempted by their world and popularity. This is the flaw that Cady must overcome to fix the problem she finds herself in during Act 3.
Act 2, Part 1: Cady dives into the world of corruption, but keeps her head straight.
Cady’s goal has changed. She no longer wants the simple teenage experience that she originally set out for. She wants revenge, and she wants Aaron.
As Cady, Janis, and Damian try to ruin Regina’s life, Cady takes on a double life as an undercover Plastic. But throughout the first half of Act 2, she is still the same Cady she always was, just now with a more nefarious goal. She reports everything back to Janis and Damian, and she tries to subtly get Aaron’s attention in class.
The first part of Act 2 shows the same old Cady in a new situation that is sparked by the inciting incident. She has not changed much, but she is diving deeper and deeper into this new world of the Plastics. She is succumbing to the temptation. One way this temptation is shown is through her tactic of asking Aaron for help with her classwork. To keep up the ruse, she starts actually failing tests and eventually failing the class—she can’t resist the temptation of getting closer and closer to Aaron, even if she destroys herself in the process.
Act 2, Part 2: Cady gets sucked into the world of the Plastics.
The second part of Act 2 is when there’s a shift in the story. Cady’s flaw has completely taken hold. She wants more and more, and she can’t say no to the temptation that comes with the world of the Plastics.
Cady becomes obsessed with makeup, clothes, hair, getting Aaron, and most importantly, Regina. She is no longer the innocent girl from the beginning of the story, and she is no longer the double-life girl who has her eye on the finish line of ruining Regina. Instead, she is now fully sucked into the world of the Plastics. One way this is shown is that she plans her own “Plastic Sabotage” without Janis and Damian—she’s lost her grip on her friendship with them, and is entirely focused on the Plastics now.
Cady’s goal is still revenge against Regina and to get Aaron. At some points, it’s hard to tell if Cady actually wants Aaron, or if he’s just part of the revenge too.
Up until this point, Cady has had an upward path during Act 2 because she has been succeeding at ruining Regina’s life. But, at the same time, she is losing herself. This section a new Act 2 Cady in an Act 2 world; Act 1 Cady, the innocent, is gone.
At the midpoint, Cady finally has Aaron in her grasp at her party (the highest high) only to immediately lose him. All within a few scenes, she loses:
Aaron as a love interest
Janis and Damian as friends
Her undercover anonymity when Regina finds out what she’s been doing
The support of Ms. Norbury, who knows what she wrote in the book
Her social status when Janis tells the whole school about the schemes against Regina
Her individuality at school because people care more about her pushing Regina in front of the bus than they care about her as a person
Her parents’ support as her mom becomes angry with her, and her dad grounds her
This is clearly Cady’s All is Lost moment. Act 2 Cady is forced to reckon with the situation that she’s got herself in.
Act 3: Cady is able to pull herself up.
The police questioning students if Ms. Norbury ever sold them drugs is what finally convinces Cady to step up and take responsibility for her actions. Cady makes an active decision to be a better person. It took the climax of the story, the argument with Janis, to show her exactly what she’s become and how she’s affected the lives of others.
It would have been tempting for Cady not to say anything and let the victims of the Burn Book continue to be affected, but Act 3 Cady is a new Cady, one who is on the path to overcoming her flaw. The events of Act 2 have fundamentally changed her. She is able to take a stand and be a leader this time, not a follower. Staying silent would help preserve her popularity, but she decides she can’t live with herself if she stays silent.
At the Mathletes competition, Cady has her Epiphany moment where she realizes that there are more important things than popularity and looks. Before this moment, she knew that she had made mistakes, but now she truly understands why those things were bad and how she can be a better person going forward.
Act 3 is not a return to Act 1 Cady; it is a new Cady altogether, an Act 3 Cady that has learned from her mistakes and grown as a person. But she still has some more growing to do: Cady proves her growth with the speech she gives in front of the school after winning Spring Fling Queen. This level of popularity is what Act 1 Cady would have dreamed of achieving; it is the ultimate test for her to resist temptation. She rises to the challenge by making it clear in front of everyone that she has changed as a person.
In the end, Cady achieves her goal of getting the full teenage experience, and she even achieves her goal of being popular for a short stretch of time. But she does not end the story popular; the story ends with Cady not as queen bee, not as a Plastic, but just as herself, hanging out with her friends, having fun without any ulterior motives. She also achieves her need of standing up for what’s right, being a leader, and avoiding the temptation of popularity.
Two inciting incidents
Remember when I said it might be tempting to label the moment Cady sits with the Plastics at lunch as the inciting incident? That’s because it’s the first real piece of movement in the story. A lot of times, when outlining a book, we misunderstand the primary function of the inciting incident, and we think that it has to be immediately at the beginning of the story. It doesn’t.
Instead, stories tend to be more effective if the reader can sit with the character for a little bit before the inciting incident arrives. But this doesn’t mean that the opening chapters of a book should be boring or show the character going about their life with no movement. The key to making this work is by putting the characters into scenarios that are different from what they normally experience and giving them a chance to react, like mini-inciting incidents. That’s why I like to think of this section as having two inciting incidents. Some may call the first one a pinch point, or plot point #1, or something else, but I like to think of it as two climaxes that occur in the first act.
In Mean Girls, Cady is already a fish out of water just by going to high school for the first time. There is a short introduction to her life in Africa, and then she is thrown into school in Illinois. Before anything has even happened, this event is adding movement to the story. We don’t need a whole scene of Cady packing her bags, getting on the airplane, eating airplane food, landing and leaving the airport, going to her new home, etc. All we need is to understand who this character is before the story events happen.
Since Cady is a fish out of water already, we need the opportunity to understand her before the inciting incident. This is shown in the first few scenes when Cady is learning how to navigate high school. She is confused, keeps messing up, and has a hard time making friends. If the story skipped this section entirely, then the reader would just have the knowledge that Cady moved from Africa with no understanding of what that actually means for her character.
The next main event that pushes the story forward is when Cady is invited to sit with the Plastics at lunch. This is the first climax (or pinch point, plot event, etc.) of the first act. It pushes the story forward, adds movement to something that was becoming familiar. This is what pushes Cady outside of her comfort zone. Through this event, we get a glimpse of who she is: easily tempted and curious, but sweet and innocent, often unsure of what to think of Regina and the Plastics. This is the first time Cady makes a true decision that sets her story into action.
It’s not the inciting incident of the story, but it’s a mini-inciting incident that raises the stakes, shows us who the character is, tests her in a situation where she has to react, and adds movement to the plot.
Why is the real inciting incident when Regina kisses Aaron?
There are a few main guidelines for what makes an inciting incident work.
Done to the character, not by the character
Upsets the status quo
Creates question to be answered
Unable to be ignored by the protagonist
The kiss scene checks all of these guidelines. It is done to Cady by Regina, and it upsets the status quo by triggering Cady to go down a new path. The question that this event raises for the audience is: “Will Cady be able to topple Regina?” Technically, she could ignore that the kiss happened, but she feels so angry and betrayed that she can’t see any other path at that point.
This event happens all the way at the end of the first act. Notice there is nothing in the guideline list that an inciting incident must happen right at the beginning of the story. Inciting incidents can absolutely come later, as long as they don’t come into a story that’s stagnating. Before this inciting incident arrives in Mean Girls, a lot of the story events have already happened, which helps the audience to see the difference between Act 1 and Act 2. Cady plotting to get revenge on Regina is only interesting because we’ve been watching Cady and Regina interact for a while now. It’s interesting because of what we know about the characters, not because of the fact that it happens.
In a previous blog, I wrote about The Hunger Games and the mini-inciting incident at the beginning. The inciting incident of the story is the reaping, but the mini-inciting incident is when Gale and Katniss go hunting, and Gale asks her to leave with him. She says no. This event isn’t enough to upset the status quo of the world; it’s not something Katniss is forced to reckon with. But it does set her life on a specific path, one where she attends the reaping and volunteers for the Games. Through this one event, the reader is able to see who Katniss is before the Games and what her life is like.
I love stories that have a meaty first act. When outlining, the main event in Act 1 is the inciting incident, so we tend to come up with the inciting incident and then move onto Act 2. But Act 1 is such a rich opportunity to show who the characters are and put them into complex situations. We learn how they see the world before they’re put to the test by the Act 2 world.
Ok, but how do we actually do that in our own stories?
The key to making this work is to have multiple scenes in Act 1 that move the story forward. These scenes should add to the tension as we get closer to the inciting incident; the opening act doesn’t exist to drop information on the reader about who the protagonist is, but rather it shows us how they see their world by putting them in scenarios that aren’t typical for them. It’s not every day that Katniss gets asked by Gale to leave with her; this is something new for her, that we as the audience get to experience with her. It’s not every day that Cady gets invited to sit with the Plastics at lunch, and the interesting part of that scene comes from Cady’s decisions and how they place her on a path towards the inciting incident.
Mean Girls gives us a story with movement. There is never a dull moment in this movie. Part of how Mean Girls does this is by understanding what its inciting incident is, and what it does to the story. Then it gives us a first act that makes it so easy to understand Cady that by the time the inciting incident does come around, the audience is invested enough to care about the outcome.
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