Origin Story: Power of the Inciting Incident

By Carrie Klewin Lawrence

Have you ever considered that the key to your future success is a great story?

In this book, stage director, acting coach, and storytelling expert Carrie Klewin Lawrence will break it all down for you. Discover the necessary elements that will help you write your own story. She will teach you how to dig deep in

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: May 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889269762

Carrie Klewin Lawrence

Carrie Klewin Lawrence (she/her) is a quirky, collaborative stage director focused on social change. Carrie is also an acting coach, professor, personal branding coach, and mother of three, who enjoys lindy hop, traveling, and photography. As the author of Origin Story, Carrie weaves personal discovery storytelling into a journey of action and evolution, encouraging readers to control their(self) narrative. Once, when she was ten years old, Carrie wrote a play called Little Red Riding Hood Says NO to Smoking. Rediscovering that play and subsequently reframing her own personal narrative was the inciting incident for Origin Story.

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Origin Story

Carrie Klewin Lawrence

Origin Story

Power of the Inciting Incident

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2023 Carrie Klewin Lawrence

All rights reserved.

Origin Story

Power of the Inciting Incident

ISBN 979-8-88926-932-8 Paperback

979-8-88926-976-2 Ebook

For David, Genevieve, Katherine

& Lucia

1.

What’s Your Origin Story?

As we prepared to move from Maryland to California in the summer of 2021, my mother handed me two small, sad printer-paper boxes of elementary school memorabilia. As my mother celebrated her delight at reclaiming a few cubic feet of basement storage space, I smirked an unenthusiastic thank you. I took possession of the boxes covered with decades of dust and must. I rolled my eyes at my husband and thought, I’m sure I don’t want any of this. 

We were busy planning our cross-country move, filing homeschooling documents for our three youngsters, and trying to concentrate among the din of the cicada invasion. I wasn’t excited about anyone adding to my list of things to do. 

After a few days, I felt worn down by the weight of the unknown. Curiosity eventually won me over, along with the pressure of not throwing away something irreplaceable. Maybe my kids would get a kick out of something inside. I picked up the least offensive of the two interlopers and placed it squarely in the middle of my desk, a small puff of dust settling around the exterior. 

Taking a deep breath, I lifted the lid. 

In the box, among finger-paint drawings and disintegrating crafts, I discovered a play script. The paper was worn, with a bluish typeface that gave me flashbacks of standing by the manual machine, cranking copies by hand. I cowrote this play, titled Little Red Riding Hood Says NO to Smoking—a meta-theatrical adaptation with a sassy narrator and many of the familiar characters. Immediately, what stood out was that I wrote a social justice play when I was just ten years old—the same age as my oldest daughter. 

I am a stage director. I have been doing theatre since before I can remember. Yes, I had been an actor at a young age, and stories of auditions and performances from my early years are well documented. But the process of rediscovering that I had also been a playwright and a dramaturg meant that I had hard physical evidence in my hand about how the journey of becoming a stage director began.

At the moment I rediscovered the play, the inciting incident of my Origin Story became crystal clear. When I read the title, I saw I was already exhibiting intrinsic characteristics of my identity by year ten. Stories I told myself, and stories I had been told about myself, shifted. I experienced a powerful realization that instantly changed my perspective about my career path over the past several decades. 

This is the way I usually tell my story.

When I was in college, I was asked to direct a show. I was handpicked by a group of my peers to be trained as a stage manager and then offered a role as the stage director. I didn’t seek this position—at least, not in the traditional means of applying for it or actively pursuing it. For decades, I held fast to the belief that this career somewhat happened to me. I maintained that I didn’t make it happen by acting on my own desires.

The clear message from multiple sources was that theatre wasn’t a viable option as a career. I did not realize then that I was being influenced to make choices against my instincts—or, rather, that having limited options also limited the choices available to me. For example, my college didn’t offer a theatre program, not a major or a minor. That didn’t stop me from participating in several extracurricular theatre organizations around campus. I also became the work-study assistant to the theater manager. For four years, I worked much more than my allotted twenty hours a week selling tickets, organizing costumes, and working stage crew. I even skipped class to paint sets in my happy place. Yet, somehow, I still couldn’t commit myself to a theatre career. 

I listened to the voices of my parents and counselors and majored in something practical—marketing and public relations. Right before graduating, I started working for a chemical corporation that makes titanium dioxide, the mineral used to make white pigment. The irony of this is not lost on me. The environment lacked color and creativity. I was miserable. I had lost my true north by focusing on success and stability. How did I stray so far from my dreams and desires?

I had earned a degree in something I didn’t really want to do, I had a ton of experience in something that wasn’t acceptable, and there was a growing chorus of voices demanding responsible choices. But the pull toward becoming a theatre artist never stopped. I started to pick up directing gigs around town and kept working corporate jobs simultaneously. I was desperately trying to find a balance between my creative needs and financial independence. My attempts to find a solution were failing miserably. My mental health was a mess. 

Taking a pause from corporate marketing, I enrolled in a master’s program at NYU with an eye on completing a PhD because that’s a more serious approach to being an artist. I landed a job in the infamous Experimental Theatre Wing and another at a real estate company in the Empire State Building. I felt like I was leading a double life—suit by day, artist by night. I was still looking for the right formula to make money and pursue my interests simultaneously. I worked on dozens of shows, traveled abroad, and finally graduated from NYU after they kicked me out for overstaying my welcome. 

NYU declined to accept me to their PhD program, so I moved back to Baltimore and started my own company directing, teaching improvisation, and acting while I applied for other PhD programs. 

I got rejected—several rounds of hard rejections. I couldn’t figure it out. 

One day, I pulled out my résumé for review. There I saw it, the evidence, right there in black and white.

Director.

Director.

Director.

Dozens of credits of director to my name.

Somehow, a quiet and persistent inner voice had been navigating through the noise and the naysayers.

That was the first time I looked hard at my own Origin Story. Actual printed evidence was staring me right in my face.

Everyone had been trying to tell me. I wasn’t listening—especially not to myself.

I was a director. 

What to do now with the newfound knowledge of this aha moment?

I made a new round of graduate school applications, this time to MFA programs. Suddenly, it was obvious. I didn’t want to be in a library studying about theatre in a PhD program. I was destined to be in a theater doing theatre. I found a place as a graduate directing student in my first round of MFA applications. The inner voice that had appeared in so many dreams and journals—that voice started to make so much sense.

This was where I was always meant to be.

Looking back, the evidence is overwhelming. 

As I have reached middle age when so many of my friends and colleagues are making career changes, I have taken on a new role in addition to stage director: personal branding coach. In my personal branding workshops, I started asking people, What is your earliest memory of your career path? or perhaps, What is an early memory you have of recognizing your career dreams?

My friend Heather, who paints abstract works, talks about being under the kitchen table as a child while her family listened to classical music together in the kitchen. She recalls drawing pictures as an artistic response to the music. Instantly, I recognized what she described from her childhood in her painting work. Not only does she use recognizable elements in unusual and animated ways, but a visual storytelling quality is evident in every aspect of her art—from the title of a painting to the colors and elements she uses, even down to the size of the canvas. Every personal statement she has ever written has a descriptive storytelling quality. The connection seemed so obvious when she described that core memory. Things started clicking for me. 

Now, I am investigating. At what age do we already know or exhibit abilities related to what we want to be or do in the future? At what age is this possible—to the degree that if somebody is paying attention or given the right opportunity, one will become even earlier in life the person they were meant to be?

Wherever you are in your journey to connect with your true north, be it applying for college, changing careers, starting a new business, fortifying your personal brand, or creating a speech for a special event, you will gain the ability to see the choices you have made in a new light. 

I have realized we have the key to unlocking our Origin Story to let it inform us of our instincts and intuitions. We can shut out limiting perspectives and create our own measures for success. 

Perhaps it is true that stage director and personal discovery storytelling coach were not part of my vocabulary when I was ten. But the skills I was naturally good at back then are the exact same skills I have fine-tuned almost forty years later, the same skills I use to help others bring joy and excitement to their lives today.

You will gain the perspective to tell your story in a new way that will move you toward your future goals. 

Can you listen harder to yourself?

Can you learn to avoid detours and shut out societal voices that claim dominance over your decision-making?

Let’s discover the power of your Origin Story.

#whatsyourOriginStory

2.

How to Wander around in This Book

This book has been written as a guide, a map, a provocation, and a salve. You can approach it in a linear fashion, one page at a time, or you may prefer to jump around and return to the material later. Keep in mind: On a circle, an endpoint can also be a beginning point.

After reading Chapter 1, you may already have some ideas on how to use this book (and in what order). There are three sections:

CRAFTING: Each of the essential Origin Story elements is explained.

DISCOVERING: Exercises and anecdotes to help you dig into the themes explored in crafting.

CONNECTING: Thoughts on audience, objectives, and communicating your Origin Story after it has been crafted.

Here are some suggestions for navigation: 

Don’t know what an Origin Story is or why it is important to you? Start with CRAFTING.

Do you already have an Origin Story and want to fortify it? Get more specific, enhance the details, and pinpoint the inciting incident. Start with DISCOVERING.

Looking for affirmation, confirmation, and justification to deal with that inner voice? Start with DISCOVERING.

Want to consider the larger implications for storytelling and building community? Start with CONNECTING.

Do you have a rough idea for a personal discovery story or have you been tasked with articulating one (like a TED talk) but don’t know where to get started? Start with CRAFTING.

Want to level up your business by creating content on social media or fine-tuning your personal branding? Start with CONNECTING.

For those of you considering a nonsequential journey, here is a checklist to make sure all of the bases are eventually covered:

Origin Story Checklist

1. What’s an Origin Story? How uncovering an Origin Story can change your perspective.

2. How to Wander Around in This Book. You are here. 

3. Cast of Characters. Short bios of the people interviewed in the book.

4. Why an Origin Story? How your Origin Story can be your secret weapon for success.

Part 1. CRAFTING 

How does rewriting or reframing our story help us to feel empowered and life is not just happening to us? Learn to identify and utilize the elements and structure needed to tell your story.

CRAFTING—Introduction: Where and how to begin creating your Origin Story.

5. The Inciting Incident: Basic story structure and discovering the spark.

6. Context Is Everything: Investigating circumstances and exposition.

7. No Character, No Story: Values, antagonists, and other main character components.

8. Stormy Weather: Rising action, inner voice, and damage control.

9. Detours: Owning obstacles, surviving, and thriving.

10. The Pop: Recognition, reversal, and flipping the script.

11. Resolution: Onward and upward, and forging future pathways.

Part 2. DISCOVERING

What pieces are necessary for your story, and how do you gather them? You do this by collecting evidence to support your suspicions, instincts, and intuitions about where you came from and where you are going. Exercises are available to help you curate and articulate origin stories by investigating core memory moments, physical evidence, and preexisting stories, which will be reconnected with the sparks of inciting incidents. Finally, you will work through a crafting exercise on how to write your own Origin Story.

DISCOVERING—Introduction: How to solve the mystery of you.

12a. Reconciling: A reality check comparing your past self with who you are today. 

12b. Characterizing: An in-depth look at describing your character and identifying antagonists. 

12c. Evaluating: Examining core beliefs, values, and kryptonite. Where do you draw the line? 

12d.Measuring: Creating personalized measures of success for balance in your life.

12e. Reframing: Shifting the experience of a detour to a growth mindset. 

12f. Tracing: Investigating the validity of narratives by tracing them to their source.

12g. Reconnecting: Identifying activities and interests quietly waiting their turn. 

12h. Sparking: Inciting new Incidents by provoking playfulness, vuja de, and adventure. 

12i.Crafting: Controlling your(self) narrative by writing your Origin Story.

Part 3. CONNECTING

Who is your audience? How will you use your story to achieve your goals? 

Consider your reasons for wanting to connect. Make a change and/or communicate your message through personal branding, marketing, social media, developing entrepreneurial or creative projects, and personal discovery storytelling.

CONNECTING—Introduction: Reasons for connecting with your story.

13. The Story Circle: Audience, community, and the broader impact of storytelling.

14. Control Your(self) Narrative: The power and purpose of personal discovery storytelling.

 Connecting the Dots

As you engage with each section of this book, you will also find suggestions to cross-reference other chapters, exercises, and prompts. Watch for this symbol .

3.

Cast of Characters

Bios (stories en breve) of the people interviewed for this book, in their own words.

As I investigated theories of Origin Stories for this book, I commenced a series of interviews where I asked friends, colleagues, coaches, and authors from my writing cohort to share their stories with me. Could we get to the base of their origin story during our conversation? How would our conversation effect their current project or perspective? You won’t recognize many of the names, but that won’t matter. We all have a story to tell.

Che’Rae Adams (she/her) is an advocate for playwrights who values community, collaboration, and creativity above all else. Che’Rae discovered she wanted to work with playwrights as an intern for the Mark Taper Forum on the writing workshop of Angels in America: Perestroika. She is currently the artistic director at PlayPenn in Philadelphia, a new play incubator. She has been the producing artistic director of the LA Writers Center since 2006, director of operations and programming for Moss Theater in Santa Monica, development executive for Playhouse Pictures Studios, co-artistic director of Road Theatre Company, and managing producer for the LA Women’s Theatre Festival.

Zuleyma Bebell (she/her) is the cofounder and COO of ImpactAlpha, the leading social publication for impact investing. Responsible for business development and strategic partnerships, Zuleyma is a military spouse, mother of two, and reality television aficionado. She worked as an analyst for UNDP while living in Amman, Jordan. Zuleyma credits her childhood growing up in Colombia (the country) selling candy, ice, and handmade crafts as the inciting incident for her career as an entrepreneur.

Diana Cherkas (she/her) is an offbeat actor/writer/content creator. When she’s not writing her own comedy scripts, Diana works as a creative director at that funny agency. She has been working from home since 2013, which led to her first web series pilot about the perils of social isolation. Diana enjoys traveling, cooking with her hubby and son, and coffee—lots and lots of coffee.

Carla BaNu Dejesus is a bicoastal actorvist, poet, writer, choreographer, director, creative producer, teaching artist, and playwright. Carla has won awards for her artistry (San Diego Broadway World’s Best Performer in a Streaming Play 2020) and performed all over San Diego and the West Coast. Carla’s mantra is, Life is a never-ending adventure—be ready! An important inciting incident: "A very hard but absolutely necessary breakup in 2015 led me to living, loving, and laughing in all of