Two reminders as we near the end of the big writing period: desire and escalation. Plot is, ultimately, rooted in character (and visa versa). Return, with a vengeance, to what your characters want, need, cannot live without. Then keep getting in their way. If they cannot turn back, they have to go forward. If the way forward is impassable, they have to find a way, invent a way or create a way. But nothing happens without desire. At this point in your novel, the conflicts are converging, the impossibilities exploding, the desires erupting.
Here are a couple of examples of real desire in narrative, and how it is shown.
In Alice Munro’s short story “The Turkey Season,” she shows what the other characters, as a group entity, want (desire) from one charismatic character. The group aspect strengthens the desire.
We all wanted to see the flicker of sexuality in him, hear it in his voice, not because we thought it would make him seem more like other men but because we knew that with him it would be entirely different. He was kinder and more patient than most women, and as stern and remote, in some ways, as any man. We wanted to see how he could be moved.
In Mark Richard’s “Strays,” we are shown a series of escalating actions that reveal character’s motivation (desire) and its strength.
Uncle Trash finds out that he has left his bottle under the seat of his car [which is gone]. He goes in our kitchen pulling out all the shelves our mother missed. Then he is in our parents’ room opening short doors. He is in the storage shed opening and sniffing a Mason jar of gasoline for the power mower. Uncle Trash comes up and asks, Which way is it to town for a drink? I point up the road and he sets off saying, Don’t y’all burn the house down.
Get your characters’ desires in there, make them strong and specific, and put them into the action.