Writing.Com General Discussion

Please don't take this the wrong way, but what you have here is a setup - an environment if you like. This is where the story will unfold, but it isn't the story. What you need to do is find a story within this rather intriguing world.

The two most common ways to do this are:

1. Characters
Create some interesting characters, and examine their present. Once you start to get a feel for who they are, start delving into their backstory, looking at the important moments in their life that made them the way they are today.

2. World-building
Flesh out your world with social structures, economics, politics, technology (killing deer with pointy sticks is a huge technological leap up from chasing them down and hitting them over the head with a club), religion (I assume religion will play a role in your story), climate and anything else you can think of.

Either of these will start to generate lots of potential story ideas, and if you develop both side-by-side, they can feed each other so the world becomes richer and the people that live in it are adapted to - and products of - that world.

Stories are about problems, and the things people have to do to resolve them. Ultimately, a story is about change, the personal change a character has to go through before the story can end.

Plot is the sequence of events (which in themselves form a story) that trigger and escalate problems for the protagonist, driving them toward that moment of change, where they either become a better person or a worse one. Bruce Wayne has to embrace his dark side before he can become Batman, so you could say he becomes a worse person, but one better suited to his task. Superman has to come out of hiding (embracing his nature) so he can be who he truly is (the better man).

Once you've found that elusive underlying story - the one about character change - then you can start developing the plot to hound the protagonist and drive them toward the change. Only once they've evolved can they do what's necessary to reach the climax of the story (and have a hope of winning).

Sometimes that change can be very subtle. You could, for instance, have the perfect character for a given task, but drive that character beyond what they thought they were capable of. Teach them how to dig deeper, find that inner strength that other mortals couldn't have. It may ultimately kill them, but sometimes sacrifice is necessary.

Since it is a religious theme, you could have a moral as the point of the story, so then you only need to find a way to express the underlying issues, and the resolution of the story will teach what happens if you do the right thing or not.

I hope these give you plenty of things to think about.