Soon, I'm going to get a school assignment where I have to write a short story using Freytag's Pyramid of Dramatic Structure. I already have a basic idea of the plot but I want to get some ideas in here that I haven't had yet.
The setting is a magic-less "fantasy" (swords and bows still) setting that has some realistic parts to it. There are no alternate dimensions, no separate realities, just the physical world. The center species for the story... well, they're demons if you want to call them that. They're more like a hegemony of different inhuman races and species who've all banded together and formed a society of their own. In addition, a lazy person can say they live in hell because it IS a living hell to live in it; but it's not a different plane or anything like that. It's just a really nasty continent. Poor demons live in ramshamble communities ala Borderlands but actual cities have elegant, Darksiders architecture. Demons are not all bad in this world either.
The protagonist is one of the worker castes, who are biologically fitting for their roles. They might be strong but since they're hunched over and look more like monsters than the higher-class demons do, they give off this impression of irrelevance. Nobles are more human-like, less intimidating, and tend to get better education -making them like tieflings from Dungeons and Dragons or like Samael and Lilith from Darksiders.
After a significant event that's left the demons weakened, people like the protagonist are critical to restoring the economy back to running condition. But it's here where I'm having problems at. I'm not sure what the plot could be as of this moment, so I came here to gather some ideas. Thoughts? Opinions?
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Edited by Blazorazor: 2/9/2013 7:26:04 AMTime to get serious. It seems that crucial element you are missing is a conflict. You need some type of conflict that the main character endures. It could be from an antagonist, an idea, a natural occurrence, or anything really. One idea you could use is this. While the protagonist is trying to rebuild society, the lowest classes are staging a revolution that would drastically change the way their society works, leaving him and many others in much weaker positions, eventually leading to total economic destruction. So he has to not only rebuild the world, but make sure that the revolutionaries don't rebuild it incorrectly.