Quest Generator

What makes a quest work

A quest is a character with a goal, a road and a price. Each result gives you all three in a few lines: someone asks, something stands in the way, and failure costs something. Those parts are enough to start a plot, and they are the same parts a published novel builds on a larger scale.

Look at the complication first. A good complication does not only slow the hero down, it forces a choice. A road that passes through a village that hangs strangers cannot be fought through if the hero wants to stay alive. It asks who the hero is willing to pretend to be, and that question is the scene. If the complication in your result could be solved by being stronger, make it one that has to be solved by being wiser, kinder or more dishonest.

Main quests and side quests

A main quest carries the spine of the book. It has stakes the reader can name, a deadline and a failure that changes the world. A side quest is smaller and more personal. Its job is to show who the characters are when nothing huge is at stake, to introduce a place and its people, and to plant something the main plot will need later.

The best side quests rhyme with the main quest. If the main quest is about a debt, let the side quest be about a smaller debt that is settled the wrong way. If it is about a lie, let a villager lie for a kind reason. The reader feels the theme without being told, and the detour stops feeling like a detour.

Turning a result into chapters

Split the quest into three stages: the ask, the road and the cost. Write the ask as a scene in which the giver wants something they cannot say plainly. Write the road as two or three obstacles that each change the hero a little. Write the cost last, and decide before you start what it will be, because the ending is easier to land when the price was paid on page one.

Check the giver before you write. A giver who tells the truth makes a plain adventure. A giver who lies about why the quest matters gives you a second plot underneath the first, and the moment the hero finds out is usually your midpoint.

Ten example quests

• Main quest A ferryman who has not slept in a week asks you to carry a sealed letter across the salt marshes, but the only guide who knows the way has just been arrested. If you fail, an innocent person will hang at dawn.
• Main quest You have until the first snow to cross the mountains before the pass closes for winter, and the map is wrong in exactly the places that matter. If you fail, the winter will not end for another year.
• Main quest Your task is to prove that a hanged man was innocent. The catch: half the people involved are already dead, and the rest will not talk. In return, a retired general with a bad leg offers you a pardon with the right signature.
• Main quest A queen who has not been seen in public for a year offers you a seat on the council if you can find the missing heir before the regent does. The difficulty is simple: the person you are meant to trust is the one reporting your movements.
• Main quest A lighthouse keeper with a locked drawer asks you to repair the beacon chain before the autumn storms, but a rival party has been hired to arrive first. If you fail, the beacon will go dark and the ships will follow it onto the rocks.
• Side quest A baker whose ovens burn blue has a favour to ask: fix the village clock, which has been wrong in a different way every day. It sounds simple until you learn that half the town depends on it failing. The reward is a good meal and a better story.
• Side quest Side quest: escort a goose to market, since it has already bitten three people. It sounds simple until you learn that the job is being watched, and not by friends. The reward is a jar of honey that never runs out.
• Side quest A widowed innkeeper wants you to find out who has been leaving fresh flowers on an unmarked grave. The problem is that every clue points to someone you like. The reward is the best seat in the tavern, for life.
• Side quest A gravedigger who has started to hear knocking has a favour to ask: bring a priest to a house that has never had one. It sounds simple until you learn that the problem is older than the village. The reward is a lantern that burns without oil.
• Side quest On the way through, a child with a very old voice stops you and asks you to find a song that a dying man half remembers. The twist is that nobody can say who first asked for it. The reward is the key to a door you have not found yet.