Filling in the middle of a quest story

Post Reply New Topic

NaNoWriMo is coming up in a few weeks, and I've decided to plot my story ahead of time. Unfortunately I've once again stumbled upon a problem that has always haunted me.

The story I feel like writing involves the main character traveling over a great distance to find someone. I know how the story will begin (e.g. what gets the character to go on the quest) and how it will end (e.g. the result of the quest), but the middle is more mysterious. How do I figure out the number of obstacles I should throw in my character's way? I don't want the story's middle to be a repetitious series of dangerous events that the character always escapes in the end.

I find that those kinds of things just kind of come to me. I'll often consider what I've seen/read/heard in other similar stories to what I'm writing (or just events or situations I think would be appropriate and conducive to the story that I'd like to include) and twist those to fit in with my own work.

In my current WIP, I'm taking a couple of significant plot (and background) events from the past decade or so's real-world news, while including stuff I've seen in other works of the same genre and also extrapolating on various scenarios I come up with when I'm bored.