Moving on from our previous post, which covered the Inciting Incident, today’s post will be addressing the third plot point you need to be familiar with; the Call To Action. As always, Heidi Fuhr, is guiding us through the mechanics of engaging script writing, using the pilot episode of Breaking Bad as an example. Follow the series here and be sure to read the introduction.

This article will cover the third and final plot point of act one. To quickly review, act one consists of three plot points: stasis, the inciting incident, and the call to action.

In the last article we looked at how the inciting incident causes the instability in the protagonist’s world. Now, he has to do something to restore that stability – to return to some form of stasis. The call to action is the “invitation” to the journey that will directly resolve the external conflict. Though the protagonist doesn’t know it yet, the journey will also address the internal conflict. The more internal conflict there is, the more character-driven the story is.

In the classical sense, the call to action is a literal invitation, often from a mentor or spiritual guide, like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. Many protagonists in old-school “hero’s journeys” follow that model, where the hero is “chosen” for the quest because an authority figure or mystical guide recognizes some singular specialness within them. Contemporary realistic stories tend to translate the call to action less literally. The impetus for the journey can come from within, or the idea can be implanted in the hero by more abstract means, like a dream or an observation. In other words, in modern stories, the protagonist is more likely to have agency in choosing how to solve the problem. In either case, there is often, but not always, a moment of indecision before the protagonist accepts the “quest” (again, don’t think about these terms too literally).

Call to Action in Breaking Bad

Walter White has just learned of his imminent death. He doesn’t tell his family yet; first he needs a plan to secure their financial future. If he does one thing right in his whole life, it’ll be this. That evening, he sits in his back yard and flicks lit matches into the pool, an action he repeats every season when heavy decision-making is called for. It’s obvious he’s looking for a solution to his inciting incident. Having seen news footage of the huge pile of cash seized at a recent drug bust, Walt calls his DEA-agent brother-in-law Hank and asks if he can ride along next time he raids a meth lab.

There’s also a second call to action in this episode, but strangely, it doesn’t happen to Walt: When Walt is on the ride-along, he sees his old student-turned-drug-dealer, Jesse Pinkman, fleeing the scene. Later, he goes to Jesse’s house and proposes teaming up with him to make and sell meth. Jesse doesn’t want to get involved until Walt pressures him by threatening to turn him in to the DEA.

It’s arguable that this moment functions as a call to action. After all, Jesse isn’t the protagonist. However, if you’ve watched at least a season of the show, you might have noticed that Jesse actually becomes the moral center of the story at times. Even though he’s an addict and a career criminal, he’s less prone to being blinded by ego than Walt is. Eventually, Walt and Jesse become two sides of the protagonist coin.

Other Examples of Calls to Action

• The Big Lebowski: The Dude is actually one of the few characters I can think of that have almost no agency at all (but this is utterly appropriate for his character). His call to action happens when the other Lebowski asks him to deliver the ransom money to his wife Bunny’s kidnappers.
• Game of Thrones (pilot episode): Ned Stark is asked to go to King’s Landing to serve as the Hand of the King for Robert Baratheon.

Tag along as we soon venture into Act II and the plot points that will carry the story onward.

In the last article of our screenwriting series, we talked about stasis, the before situation of the protagonist. Here, we’ll cover the inciting incident. In the next article, we’ll finish out act one with the third plot point, the call to action. You can follow the series ‘How Do You Plot Character-Driven Stories?’ by Heidi Fuhr here.

ACT ONE – PLOT POINT II: THE INCITING INCIDENT

At this point in the story, something happens that interrupts the stability of the protagonist’s before situation, or stasis. Usually, the inciting incident is just that – an incident. Unlike most examples of stasis, it happens quickly. This incident doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. In a basic love story, for example, this is usually when the protagonist first meets the love interest. The important thing about the inciting incident is that it causes the necessity for change. In the basic love story, change becomes necessary because the protagonist suddenly realizes he needs to be with the object of his affection, or he realizes he can’t bear the loneliness anymore.

Inciting Incident in Breaking Bad

In Breaking Bad, Walt collapses at the car wash and is taken to the emergency room in an ambulance he can’t afford. There, he’s told he has end-stage lung cancer.

In most stories where the inciting incident is the protagonist finding out about his imminent death, the concrete objective (or external conflict) that follows is to figure out a way to stay alive. This isn’t the case here. Walt is a scientist. He knows he can’t save himself. No, Walt’s concrete objective is to plan for his family’s financial security after he’s gone. In simpler terms, the external objective is to get money, and the internal objective – which is closely aligned with the character debits in Walt’s stasis set-up – is to finally be a man. Providing for his family’s future is Walt’s last chance to seize control of his situation, to be a doer, to be potent, and to get respect. But how does a guy like Walt – who makes so little teaching high school that he has to work a second job at a car wash just to make ends meet, whose disabled son will soon be going to college, whose unemployed pregnant wife and unborn baby will incur huge hospital bills in the near future, whose own time is running out – manage to do that? We’ll find out in the upcoming article, the call to action. But first, a few more notes on inciting incidents.

Other examples of inciting incident

School of Rock: Jack Black’s character is facing eviction because his roommate’s girlfriend has had enough of his inability to pay the rent.

Amadeus: Austrian court composer Salieri can no longer ignore his musical mediocrity when Mozart comes to town.

The Big Lebowski: The Dude is going about his business when two men break into his house and demand money, mistaking him for another Lebowski. In the parlance of The Dude’s world, the Chinaman pisses on his rug. The Dude’s stasis situation is so simple (in fact, it passes almost without notice), the ruined rug is the impetus for change, because that rug really tied the room together.

Side notes: Story arcs and ticking time bombs

There are several ways to deal with story arc in TV. Some shows only use one type, some use a combination. Breaking Bad has three types of story arc. The first is the series story arc, which plays out from the beginning of the first season to the end of the last. The second is the seasonal story arc, where each season has its own set of plot points, its own major antagonists and conflicts. The third is the episodic story arc, which lasts only one episode. The act one stuff I’m covering here applies to all three: the stasis, inciting incident, and call to action of the pilot episode also serve as act one for season one and for the whole series.

Walt’s inciting incident also functions as a ticking time bomb, a plot device that essentially works just like it sounds – sometimes it’s even a literal ticking time bomb. Any time a ticking time bomb is introduced, it must either be defused or explode (figuratively, if not literally). In Walt’s case, because of the dramatic way the cancer was introduced and its integral role in the action of the story, it has to play out. Walt either has to die from it, or the cancer has to be cured in an equally dramatic way. If it didn’t – if, for example, it went quietly into remission and ceased to be a driving force of the action – the story wouldn’t be satisfying. That said, it’s okay for this ticking time bomb to stay active at the end of the episodic plot arc, and even the seasonal story arc, but it has to be addressed by the end of the series story arc.