The inciting incident has several names, such as the initial conflict, the exposition, the beginning hook, among other things. What you call it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that your scene, your sequence, your act, and your book have one.

The inciting incident is the thing that gets your chapter going. You can think of it as the problem at the beginning of a scene that gets things going. It can come in many different shapes, sizes, and intensities.

You can even think of the inciting incident as a mini-event.

So, in order to give you an idea of what an inciting incident is, I’m going to break down the first chapter of one of my all-time favorite books.

The book is called “The Son of Neptune,” by Rick Riordan. The book is pure gold, and it’s chalk full of great examples of great writing.

The inciting incident in the first chapter of this book is really easy to identify. In typical Rick Riordan fashion, he throws you right into the action. The scene starts off with the hero trying to escape from two gorgons (Medusa’s sisters), and he can’t kill them. However, you quickly find out that they want to kill him.

It’s a great start, and the details Rick Riordan give you to make this particular chase scene more interesting are great.

The protagonist can’t remember anything about his past except for the name of a girl. He’s trying to find something, but he’s not exactly sure what that thing is. And, apparently, he can’t be killed either.

It’s quite the setup, and all of these things end up with huge payoffs later on in the story.

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