October Novel Prep Challenge

Part of the answer is to use your characters to generate conflict? We create them one by one but it's worth considering how they're going to relate and react to each other, in the creation process. Set up their personalities so they're destined to irritate one another and clash.

Plots can't deliver non-stop conflict all the time (unless they're Tom and Jerry). You open your story with a bang: your character fights and defeats a vampire, and then discovers she alone can save civilisation from the demons. What happens in chapter 2? At some point, the reader needs some info on how the situation is set up, the stakes, the danger. etc. and the pace has to shift down a gear or two.

When you need to do exposition, readers might not notice information is being dumped on them, if it's in the form of thoughts and dialogue between two characters arguing and winding each other up.

I stumbled on an impulsive character with a short fuse and a low boredom / frustration threshold, and then discovered she's useful in the 'quiet' moments when other characters need to explain things, because it brings her into conflict with inertia.

Impetuous hotheads, driven by passion, are better at driving stories and generating conflict than ponderous, circumspect characters because they make mistakes and repent afterwards when all the consequences have been unleashed and the [beep] hits the fan.