I've been developing two series of short stories. One takes place in a futuristic city where there are lots of possibilities for things to happen. The other is a present-day series with a more limited concept. Without giving anything away, I'll say that it's pretty much one-note inasmuch as the main character will be doing pretty much the same thing in every story. Sure, she'll have questions to ask, but it's pretty much "Should I do it?" *does it* "How do I feel about this?" *does it again* "Am I helping or hurting?" *does it again* And so on. It's almost like "Sailor Moon" in its repetitiveness but with more moral ambiguity. How do I add to the plot on an individual story without making it seem extraneous?
Hard to say without knowing more about the story. But a couple things that might work: Firstly, do you have any unrelated story ideas that could work as plots for this character? That's where I've gotten cases for my vampire detective from - unrelated story ideas. (Such as a juvenile delinquent whose crimes were done at the urging of naughty ghosts.) Secondly, you could add twists on the main conflict, give it a different flavour each time. Say, for example, imagine you have a character killing some supernatural nasties that keep murdering innocent humans, and the conflict is that these supernatural nasties aren't 100% evil. In one story it could be that one of them was taking care of an orphaned child while killing other people, in another it could be the obvious signs of grief one supernatural beastie shows when the character kills another of his/her kind that he/she was close to, in a third it could be someone turned into that kind against his/her will and fighting against the instincts that cause these creatures to kill, etc. Or the twist could be in the main character doing the same things for different reasons, which show their growing disillusionment - at first they're thinking about being a hero and helping people and how evil the supernatural baddies are, then they start thinking 'I have sympathy for them, but they're still evil', then they're thinking 'I wish we could make peace with them but I don't see any way we can', and later 'if I could get both sides to listen to me we'd have peace, but that'll never happen so I guess I have to kill them instead'. The last option would be to just gloss over the many different incidents and let them run together, only highlighting particularly interesting ones. I did this in one story of mine with a kid who kills undead until eventually he becomes one - the individual fights run together, I think I only mention the first one, a couple that reveal particular skills the kid or the undead have, one where a teammate gets killed, and the fight where the kid himself gets killed. Then when he becomes a fighter of his own kind, I gloss those fights together in a similar way, until the resolution comes.
