This is the first definition for inciting incident that google pulls up:
The inciting incident is an episode, plot point or event that hooks the reader into the story. This particular moment is when an event thrusts the protagonist into the main action of the story.
This is why so many writer's are confused about story events. How many story events "hook" the reader? How many story events "thrusts the protagonist into the main action?" How is a writer supposed to determine if the story event they came up with is actually a satisfying inciting incident from the wording used in this definition?
I've grown increasingly unsatisfied with the traditional definitions for story structure events. This has lead me to creating my own definitions for story structure events that use more precise language. I need to update my definition with the sentiment expressed here -the inciting incident should occur as early as possible to avoid exposition. A story that delivers the Inciting incident as soon as feasibly possible, is one that engages the reader.
de-rock, I hope you add more remarks here like the ones you showed me in the Google doc. You have a lot of truly great insight about this.
I'll say one thing about the inciting incident that most definitions forget to mention, and that is the impact of the inciting incident on the protagonist. A good inciting incident causes the protagonist anxiety. The anxiety can be positive or negative, but it is the first high point of anxiety for the protagonist.
But don't some stories throw the protagonist through a roller-coaster of anxiety prior to the inciting incident? Yes, absolutely.
But all stressful events prior to the inciting incident also have some semblance of a routine. The routine causes the protagonist to become accustomed to the stress and tempers their reaction to it. This is the "before" mentioned in the article.
Because the inciting incident is a new experience or new information that breaks the routine, the anxiety hits the protagonist with full force and the stress it causes feels fresh and new.
The protagonist is now in the "after" phase mentioned in the article.
EDIT: do not confuse this for the point-of-no-return aka the disaster. The inciting incident is the first time this type of anxiety hits the character in act I. The point-of-no-return is traditionally the end of act I.
I hear you, @de-rock!
"Put your protagonist up a tree and shoot at him" - I get it. Yes. We need challenges for him/her to overcome. But sooooo often, in Hollywood movies, TV, best-selling novels, what I see is contrived conflict and over-used tropes for character arcs. "Tropes" are actually fine and good; it's the ubiquitous and gratuituos tropes I hate, like every chick flick or women's fiction seems to require a gay best friend who urges her along and helps her transform or get enlightened somehow. It's always a guy. Never a gay woman (lesbian). At least, not in what I've read.
Advice to imagine "the worst thing that could happen" to your character led me to write in a sub-plot in my first novel, and at 500 pages I reached "The End," but somehow it felt "off," and I came to realize why: the "worst thing that could happen" would be for the father (the eye of the storm in this novel) to learn his child was someone else's daughter (that someone being the person he most resents and hates). Maybe it was such a great idea, it needed to be broken into second novel - or maybe the girl's mother was right. One day. 30 years after I'd written this novel, the mother told me she would NOT have cheated on her husband, no matter what a jerk he is, and she did NOT deserve to be so maligned in this way... ok, I spend too many hours in the hot sun weeding, and my brains get baked into idiocy, but this all got me thinking how many stories might be better if the author had NOT contrived a "worst-case scenario" for the plot.
This is not to undermine any of the suggestions above; just, "I hear ya, de-rock," and as a writer, I tend to dig in my heels and resist talk of STRUCTURE even though I know it's as important to writing as math and chemistry are to drawing and painting.