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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38697
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If your character has no reason at all to go on the Plot Quest, then you're missing more than an inciting incident - you're missing a functional antagonist. The antagonist is often (not always) the force behind the inciting incident. It's literally the antagonist's job to be the thing that drives the protagonist forward. If you don't have an antagonist, your protagonist has no reason to move.

So consider: What is preventing your character from finding the goddess? If nothing is preventing him, why not?

My own beta described this phenomenon as " **someone in this story needs to want something**". Either your protagonist needs to want to find the goddess despite obstacles standing in his way (in which case whatever alerts him to the existence of the goddess and the benefits of finding her is your inciting incident), or someone wants to stop him from finding the goddess badly enough to take action to prevent him (which would result in your inciting incident, as your protagonist narrowly escapes whatever the antagonist does to stop him).

**Figure out what's standing in your protagonist's way. Once you know that, you'll be able to craft an appropriate inciting incident based on that antagonist.**

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