I can't count the number of times I've started a story, or had an idea that I wanted to make into a battlecorps submission, but has crashed and burned due to getting hung up on small details. For example, I was once trying to write a story from a Steel Viper point of view during their ejection from the Inner Sphere - but I wound up getting stuck on whether or not they had ATMs available to them during that time. How do you figure out the small details like that?
First rule of writing: Finish what you start. Get the story down in some physacal or eletronic form that you can see. Once the story is down, then you can worry about details.
As for the details, if they're major details, find out before you start. One of the things I do is start listing the forces I need for any combat in the story. Before I start writing any combat, I know what the forces are and who is piloting what. I try to chose a vehicle that I feel fits the character, so it becomes an extesion of the character. In Thirteen, I chose a
Zeus for the main character because the story was set on Tharkad, and the 'Mech is a Commonwealth/Alliance icon design. For
The Blood of Man I chose a
Highlander because it fit the character. Decide before you do anything what equipment and vehicles your characters will be using.
As for the Vipers having ATMs - unless there is some written somewhere that makes it impossible for the Vipers to have ATMs, you can assume they have ATMs. After all, they did overrun a few Falcon worlds, it would make sense they would have aquired Falcon equipment and supplies.
I just loked up ATMS in Technical Manual. Clan Coyote created them in 3054, which is plenty of time for Steel Vipers to aquire some, either through trial or salvage. When is the story set?
Also, I know the last time I checked the submission guidelines, it tells new writers to stay on the sidelines of major events - how far off should we stay? And where is the line between a small time story and something that's outright irrelevant?
You can run along the sidelines of events, or taking a small sliver of a major event and making your own.
Salvage was a coming of age story, with a major event for the main character, but one that doesn't affect the rest of the large narrative. (It also allowed me to recon a mistake the the 4th Sucessor War Atlas, but to do so in character development). the same with
Hero's Bridge, using the events of Operation Rat to tell the story.
As I look at my story list I see that
Thirteen was in the immediate aftermath of the Word of Blake's attack on Tharkad,
Family Ties took place during Operation KLONDIKE,
State of Grace took place during the Battles for New Avalon during the Jihad,
The Lance Killer during the Fed-Com War, and
My Father's Sword took place during the opening of the Clan Invasion. Despite all those stories being a part of those events, the characters have no influence on the great stage.
My suggestion to to use the events as a backdrop to your story. Instead of the Main characters influencing events, have the events influence
them. From the stories above, all the main characters have been changed by the events they experienced. From the TerraSec officer fighting a desperate battle against a larger force, to a man who has survived when everyone else around him fell, to the young warrior willing to fight a superior foe to allow his comrades to escape, none of them are the same as they were at the start of the story.
On the other hand, I have a number of stories that aren't set against any documented events, but they don't need them. Yet the characters are still not the same ones as they were when they started.
So, instead of having your characters influence events, have the events influence the characters.
Hope that helps,
Craig
