October Novel Prep Challenge

I just realized that my Call to Adventure / Inciting Incident / Trigger happened before this novel begins. In my case, it happened because I'm writing a sequel, and the trigger occurred at the end of the last book (PS: that's a literary device called a "cliffhanger"), but thinking about it, inciting incidents happen outside of the novel (or even the novel series) all the time. Using the ever-popular Harry Potter example, I suggest that the inciting incident (for the story arc, not the individual books) was Volemort's murder of Harry's parents. We do get to learn about it, but it happens outside the chronology of the book series.

I bring this up because I was stuck on my trigger. I had a general grasp of where my character goes from here, but I was stuck on why. It seemed like she was already on the path and didn't need a trigger... that's because it already happened.

Cheers,
Michelle