I think so long as you do your historical research, and don't put anyone up on soapboxes, it should be a fairly easy-to-pull-off storyline. If you really want help, maybe On-Topic Conversations could help out...
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaWhat sort of bad guys do you need? Motives for plot already outlined? Plot for motives already established? Decisions between Affably Evil or Complete Monster?
Thinking up bad guys isn't too tough, but finding reasonable motivations is much harder in my experience. I usually leave off mentioning it until necessary so I have more time to think about it.
Someone just told me that as soon as he realized that the first third of Chapter 1 was actually a flashback, he decided I didn't deserve a critique. Something went wrong somewhere.
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey BitchfestSome people are also uptight, with bugs up their asses about things like flashbacks or prologues or whathaveyou. These are not necessarily people you want critique from in the first place; Single Issue Wonks do not necessarily have your best interests at heart.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada@snowfoxofdeath: Why are people bothered by things like prologues and flashbacks?
I'm really bothered when authors don't use section breaks, for both flow and pacing reasons, but that didn't stopped me from reading The Hunger Games.
Hmm...should I start a thread on Reading Pet Peeves in this forum, or in the Literature forum?
edited 3rd Jun '11 11:47:49 AM by chihuahua0
It seems that they think they don't contribute to tbe story, but I need mine for essential background information, so I'm going to need a really good reason to get rid of it.
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey BitchfestFlashbacks break the flow of a story —coughNarutocough—
Prologues are either a bunch of information to a story we have no emotional attachment to, OR a scene that makes no real sense since we don't know the context and isn't really needed(Like Eragon).
Read my stories!_| ̄|○ <——- This is me after I get home and see that Everyone has dibs on the computer before me.
I am tempted to just type this thing out on the PS 3.
I just don't know what to do with this anymore, then.
On the bright side, I have conveniently arranged the sequence of events in a way that allows me to plow on without having to kill everything if I have to completely rethink Chapter One.
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest…I totally just realized that, after cutting out the original scene #1, my story now starts with a flashback. Not that that's a bad thing, but now I feel really stupid for not realizing it a lot earlier…
600 words. Pulling my hair out over the chapter #2 subplot again. Dear God, WHY WON'T IT END??? /melodrama
Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit Deviantart.
The problem is that some of them require research, and I don't want to do any right now.
Maybe I should just try to write the short story for the contest for now...
...What is a good software to use to outline stories? yWriter5 doesn't seem to be my cup of tea.
edited 3rd Jun '11 2:07:21 PM by chihuahua0
Bullet points. Most writing programs have them.
Hell, I wrote an outline once, and didn't even USE bullet points. Just a lot of spaces and a casual typing attitude.
edited 3rd Jun '11 2:11:46 PM by MrAHR
Read my stories!Notebooks. You can buy them at the supermarket.
...But no, seriously, I don't know. I know Scrivener has some interesting things like virtual note cards you can move around, but that costs money. That and the fact that I've never used it, so can't vouch for it.
Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit Deviantart.

Uh...well, there's one story where all these stock-British personages start appearing in Britain, and they find out it's because a comet passing Earth exudes a mysterious force that causes the world to resemble the British Invasion and so fall into chaos. (In fact, most of the stories are that weird.)
One thing I'm kind of concerned about is the Chinese-American wizard guy's father, who is also a wizard. He and his brother are both parodies of Fu Manchu and the Mandarin, but they're not really particularly villainous. Their dad (the Chinese-American wizard's grandfather) is a deconstruction of the Yellow Peril villain - he fought for China against the European and Japanese when they were grabbing lots of Chinese land, so they all demonised him. (The 'your terrorists are our freedom fighters' dichotomy.)