As far as the canon part...I have about fifteen fully plotted frameworks that I'll never use. I'd rather see someone else develop them than have them never see daylight.
I don't know if you've ever heard of the Meisner Method of acting, but this was one of the most basic examples and experiments (?) / situations we had in class.
I'm packing my back in order to get on a plane. A friend of mine comes to the door telling me his cat is missing and he needs help looking for her. My current goal is pack the bag and leave so I don't miss my flight. His is convincing me to help him find his pet.
When he gets in my way, my goal becomes to get him out of my way. When he is faced with me, not wanting the same thing he wants, he has to make the choice of continuing to persuade me or to leave and ask someone else for help or to look for the cat on his own.
Moment to moment, we have a goal and the goal could be so small as we're bored, looking for something to do, a book on a shelf caught our eye so we pick it up wanting to know more of what it's about... Each decision and move we make is in response to something we want on a big or small scale.
So if she's laying in bed and everything has been taken from her, it depends on what her personality and mental state is. Does she want to commit suicide? Does she want to know who did this to her? Does she want to get back and who did this to her?
So there you go. You've got her immediate goal for action. Now she has to make choices on what options are currently available for her to get more information based on what's around her
Very, very true about short stories lmao. I know a lot of people that recommend starting with short stories to get the idea of conflict, pacing, etc, down because a novel is the same thing, just on a bigger scale... but it helps
I know that vibe too. I've got some short stories, some novellas, and some novels. They all required the length they had. Some stories are shorter, some just can't be.
