Unlock the Secret Timing: Where Should Your Inciting Incident Truly Land to Hook Readers?
I don’t know anything about your story, James, but I would think that “some emotional stuff” about a girlfriend your protagonist is about to propose to sounds reasonably interesting already. Fiction is about giving your reader a powerful emotional experience. I would also guess there’s some conflict here, even though only your protagonist is in the scene. Internal conflict is conflict.
James, you asked if all scenes must have a Goal, Conflict, and Setback. The answer is no. That’s one strategy, and we call that strategy a Proactive Scene. But another strategy is the Reactive Scene, where you have a Reaction, a Dilemma, and a Decision. (For much more on both of those, see my latest book, How to Write a Dynamite Scene Using the Snowflake Method.)
