I came up with an ingenious plot idea (or so I've been told by the people who I've shown it to on IM)... It's for the story for HardPoint 4 (see my recent posts for a link to the corresponding thread in Help Wanted if you'd like to join, or go to The Game's Site to view some WIPs. Anyway, the interesting parts of the story are these: Story: The player is actually not a human fighter pilot but a super-powerful telepathic entity, trapped in an almost indestructable interstellar warship body. For the majority of the story, it is happily going around 'possessing' human fighter pilots and helping them through their struggle against the Kryn, Vuntu, and Taurukseth. Then it begins to realize that it has lost control over its body, which has become the greatest of dangers to its human friends. In the final battle, it possesses one final pilot who is able to destroy it, thus saving millions if not billions of people. Endnote: The humans never learned of the heroic self-sacrifice that went into their survival in the final battle. Possible Problems and Areas that Need Work: 1. I don't want the victory in the final battle to be too similar to that cropduster flying into the beam at the end of ID4. 2. I'm not sure whether or not I might have to redo respawning of the player to account for this plot change. Working Ideas: Something you must accept in this plot is that when the entity 'talks' about 'love' it means 'affection,' nothing more. It's an asexual entity as far as it matters to the story. I haven't decided where it came from or how it came into being. I was thinking about having other similar entities that do not accept the entity for its love of humanity, and there might be some off-to-the-side conflict there, but the humans can't know about that. They only know that there is a huge, almost indestructible interstellar warship that poses a huge threat to the survival of humanity and which is clearly not of Terran, Kyrn, Vuntu, or Taurukseth construction. The following would require a one-shot final mission (no respawns) and/or cinematic cutscenes (the pilot is assumed male for the purpose of simplification, but could possibly be female as well): When the entity possesses the 'hero' of the game (the pilot that either is lauded by the humans for his heroism in the final battle or who dies to destroy the entity and save his people (I haven't decided)), it first speaks to him telepathically. It gets him to voluntarily turn over the control of his body and mind to the entity, which gives the entity power over him that he had over none of his previous hosts. It guides the pilot (in-game) to destroy the entity's ship. The entity says its farewell to the human pilot, in a cryptic-to-the-pilot but understandable-to-the-player way. Then its ship explodes in a colossal nuclear fireball, and the pilot either returns home or is incinerated. If he returns home, this would be added to the endnote: The pilot who defeated the (name for the entity's ship) was lauded as the greatest hero in the history of space travel. He had saved them all. Yet in the depths of his heart he felt a horrible loneliness which he could not explain, but for which he knew he was in some manner at fault. And if I want to be really mysterious and make a sequel, I might tack on: "And in some far corner of the universe, he too would be missed."

Aken,
The devil isn't so much in the details as it is in the point you want to make with your story.

What point do you want to make with your story?

What epiphany is it that your super-powerful telepathic entity, trapped in an almost indestructable interstellar warship body, should come to?

You have to start with that. All great writers say that this is the essential nature of writing about a character's development. If you want your super-powerful telepathic entity, trapped in an almost indestructable interstellar warship body, to come to the realization, "it doesn't matter what I do," then that informs what your story's details should be.

Hmm... I wasn't planning on making a point, so much as telling a compelling story. But "compelling" I suppose implies that it has a point, doesn't it?

Great Falls end in great impacts.

The secret to storytelling is character transformations. They should change during the course of the story. The events transform them. At the beginning of the story you have a lonely, unconfident boy who wants to quit at everything uncomfortable. At the end he should be a man consciously choose to face his greatest fear. At the beginning you have a kind, loving, compassionate optimist. At the end you have a nilhist who sees only doom for mankind.

Their journey is what moves us. How they change is what the audience cares about. Every scene transforms a character, otherwise the scene is useless. Every beat progresses towards their growth as characters.

By what your point is, we mean what is your story about, in a metaphorical sense? On the surface it's about aliens and pilots and all that. But what are the two prime forces that are fighting? Love versus Duty? Survival versus Love?

Why is the alien killing himself?

Those are the details you need to worry about. What led to this noble sacrifice. And why exactly is it noble.

The characters don't necessarily have to change. The layers of the characters can be pulled away, piece by piece to reveal who the character really is by the end of the narrative. There was an interesting post about it in Joshua James's blog. You can read it here at http://writerjoshuajames.com/dailydojo/?p=380 So yeah, I'd recommend reading that, definitely worth the time. But back to the main question.

I'm going to suggest what's pretty much already been stated. Decide what you want your story to say, and then build it up from there. Shape the world you've already built to accomodate for the themes you plan on pursuing. I can't make recommendations on story details, because I don't know where you want the scenes to lead. But I can say that you definitely need a solid catalyst, midpoint, and lowpoint. It sounds like you've already worked out details regarding your climax, so that's pretty well taken care of.

Character's don't have to change if you're writing an anti-plot or mini-plot, but most archplots demand the character to grow from his experiences. For more about this, I suggest you pick up McKee's Story. It's a really enlightening read.

I think the other two types of story structures are EXTREMELY hard to put into videogames and have players go gaga over the story.