At the start of a Noir story, characters are doing their best to cope with the trauma of losing their happy pasts... but usually in unhealthy ways: they're indulging in vices like gambling or drinking in an effort to dull their pain. But nothing they do make them forget what they lost.

3. Opportunity to Reclaim the Past And this leads us to the central motivation for characters in Noir: the inciting incident in the story will present a chance for the characters to rediscover or reclaim the past that was so violently taken from them.