The event that kicks your story into motion by disrupting your protagonist's normal world and forcing them to act.
The inciting incident is the specific event that breaks the status quo and launches the central conflict of your story. Before it happens, your protagonist is living in their ordinary world. After it happens, that world is no longer an option. It does not have to be explosive or dramatic. It can be a letter arriving, a stranger knocking on the door, or a quiet realization that changes everything. What matters is that the story cannot happen without it.
Without an inciting incident, you do not have a story. You have a character sketch. This is the moment that gives your protagonist a problem worth solving, a question worth answering, or a journey worth taking. Get it right and your reader leans in. Bury it under ten pages of backstory and they put the book down.
Prim's name is called at the Reaping, and Katniss volunteers in her place. One sentence changes the trajectory of the entire story and immediately establishes Katniss's character through action.
Mr. Bingley moves into Netherfield Park. This single arrival sets off the chain of events that drives the entire novel, from the Bennet sisters' romantic prospects to the clash between Elizabeth and Darcy.
Gandalf shows up at Bilbo's door and invites him on an adventure. Bilbo says no, but the dwarves arrive anyway, and his quiet life is over.
Your inciting incident should happen within the first 10-15% of your story. If your reader is fifty pages in and nothing has disrupted the status quo, you have waited too long. Cut the warm-up.
The inciting incident happens in the present timeline of your story, not before it. A traumatic childhood event is backstory. The letter that arrives today and forces your character to confront that trauma is the inciting incident.
The inciting incident needs to create a problem big enough to fuel your entire plot. If the protagonist could solve it in a conversation, it is not an inciting incident. It is a minor inconvenience.
The inciting incident disrupts the world. The first plot point is when the protagonist commits to dealing with it. They are related but separate beats. Katniss's name being called is the inciting incident. Her stepping onto the train to the Capitol is the first plot point.
Write three different inciting incidents for the same character: one external, one internal, and one accidental. Keep each to two or three sentences. Then ask yourself which version creates the most interesting story and which one reveals the most about your character. That is probably the one you should write.