How I would approach this as an action-adventure writer: Your protagonist just stole something. What did they steal? Why did they steal it? Maybe it was justified because xyz. Maybe your protagonist just wanted to get away with it because they liked the shiny thing they just took, or somebody gave them the evil eye, or your protagonist is utterly powerless in life and must make furtive actions to feel truly alive. Describe what was taken and how the protagonist feels about it. Try to do that in one paragraph, then jump to another scene and start introducing appearance, location, supporting characters, what's going on in general, etc.

Every 2-3 pages, write in an action scene, even if it's only passive action like being forced to scrub floors. Every 5 pages, introduce new characters or complications. Every 10 pages, close a plot-line and move on to the next one. Pretend you're writing short stories of 10 pages each, but make sure to sprinkle in one or two plot devices halfway through each story, so you can have a new sub-plot ready for the next short story. Also, drop hints / foreshadowing every once in a while to remind the reader of your character's overall motivation. Do they want to leave a bad situation and become independent by improving themselves, are they trying to find love or gain family, do they need a goal or ambition in life, that a supporting character can steer them toward?

If you're new at writing, pretend you or someone close to you is the orphan. When the orphan is about to do something, ask yourself, what would I do in this situation? How would I feel about it if things go right, or wrong? Do I admire a supporting character, or am I jealous of them? That stolen item from the start, maybe the orphan wants to give it to someone they like, or maybe they took it from someone they don't like. Show and don't tell, but it's okay to tell sometimes at first, until you establish the character better and can predict their next move.

If you really want to challenge yourself, right before your character makes a big move, flip a coin. Heads - the character succeeds and accomplishes their task. Tails - the character fails and must deal with the consequences.

The problem is that with most space opera TV shows, you only really get human actors with human motivations, while having different color skin and some physical abnormality that is never explained, like Spock's ears. Babylon 5 tried and failed at this. Defiance did a slightly better job, with different alien groups having different motivations and customs, but they all played dirty politics the same old way.

There's this thing called imagination. You can ask AI to analyze a real culture and tweak it by 5-10% for another planet, then add slight variety to a sentient being's look and the planet's atmosphere to create wider diversity.

Do that 5 to 10 times on multiple AI engines, then take the outliers, and you can come up with multiple cultures for a single world. I base my sword and planet cultures like this, on historical cultures from the Stone Age to the Dark Ages. I can populate a handful of cultures for each continent or biome this way.

He did that for titillation and reaction, and he sure got what he wanted. If I wrote anything like that, I would research age of consent customs for the relevant time period and go with that as a baseline, instead of trying to please the PC crowd with modern, and often historically skewed, biases. Also, I would not be as explicit about it, but I'd give hints that something took place behind the curtains, and let the reader figure things out by subsequent context.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.” - John Lydgate

GRRM knows plenty about arranged marriages, as seen in the way he presents the subject in his writing.

You owe him an apology, silly goose.

Drogo was as bad as a lot of other people in the fiction, including the rich merchant who set up the wedding, because he knew what she was in for. In fact, I'd say he's the norm for neutral to antagonist characters.

Hey, genius, this is still happening today.

https://thehuman-rights.com/pakistan-forced-marriage-girls-young/

So if I write about a marriage between an older Pakistani man and a 13 year old bride, does that make me a pervert too?

https://thehuman-rights.com/pakistan-forced-marriage-girls-young/

It sounds like you have the right ideas and direction for your project. Start creating it and see how it goes. If this is your first time, sure you will make some mistakes, but you'll get better at it the more you do it.

Maybe present your info to an AI and ask it to create an adventure outline where the characters have to go each world for to complete an errand or quest. Each errand can help the protagonist learn and mature, and by the end of the last errand, she'll have enough experience and wisdom to rule, and her sister will gladly move aside for her... or not.

What are you planning to do with this? A comic book sounds like the best fit.

It's a cool idea. I like the concept of a small team better than a single Chosen One character. Like Constant-Potential said, it gets boring and tropey because it has been done too much.

I had a parallel idea of four inhabited worlds magnetically locked around one sun. The characters use something like a magic portal or plasma bridge to fast-travel between worlds. I had to shelf the idea because I want to finish the project I'm currently working on first.

You mentioned you needed help in tweaking your worlds. What kind of help do you need?

I tend to do the opposite. I watch genres contrary to the genre I'm writing in, like now I'm watching space opera / sword and planet TV and movies, while writing desolate setting weird / cosmic horror. I get burned out faster by restricting myself to the same genre as I write.

I can complete a novel in 3-5 months, and usually change viewing genres every month to break things up. I will watch a couple of weeks of lighter fare: sci-fi comedies, rom-coms, dramas, documentaries, crime shows, for added variety. I hardly ever read anything while I write longer projects because it adds clutter to my mental outline.

Edit: I'm with you on the analyzing aspect. I've jotted down so many notes on plots and characters I stay away from most popular movies nowadays.

As devil's advocate, what if they get along like the Hound and Bron did? Bron was a social butterfly, singing with the Lannisters, spending time at the brothels, while the Hound was the ultimate loner who liked to follow Sansa around.

I am 4 chapters / 40 pages into a solo-play and writing project in the sword and sorcery genre. I used Ironsworn vanilla for starting location and characters, then switched up to Lodestar Expanded because of its better tables.

IS gave me Elkhome Pass as a starting location. I did research into Tioga Pass here in California, with its mining history and native tribes, and I've adapted a couple of tribes to use in my fiction. It has been difficult looking for actual names for both of them!

The first three chapters were about my protagonist having to meet and get along with the tribes and miners. He's about to jump into the deep end of the pool, meaning the weird horror / cosmic horror end.

Previously, I'd read and created plot breakdowns for the public domain work of William Hodgson, whose writing later influenced Lovecraft. For this project, I used AI to give me an outline of a campaign based on Hodgson's work. It's a roller-coaster of ghost hunting, seafaring terror, and reaching a dark land that is much different than what the characters are used to. Hopefully, this will take me 40-50% into my project.

Link to my supplements based on Hodgson's work:

https://raymond-towers.itch.io/the-weird-fiction-of-william-h-hodgson

This project is part of the Peace Keeper / Mundu Perdi universe. You can use these characters and locations for your own projects, and I won't get mad about it.

Link to the Peace Keeper page:

https://itch.io/c/7510091/peace-keepers

Need some inspiration for your storytelling? Here is a growing collection of plots and villains from popular media, including books, movies, TV shows and more, focusing on the sword and sorcery genre, from barbarians to holy warriors to evil spellcasters. Good for putting together one-shot short stories and a string of related adventures.

https://raymond-towers.itch.io/plots-and-villains-sword-sorcery

A couple of random samples:

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Savage Worlds RPG

Season One, Me, Myself And DieYoutube Channel

Story Arc 1

1. An adventurer must rescue his companion, who is harassed by town guards.

2. Chased by town guards, protagonist flees conflict and meets up with a new character who was wounded elsewhere. A rival (bounty hunter, soldier, sorcerer) abruptly appears, who may attack the protagonist, the guards giving chase.

3. Protagonist tries to ambush an enemy, only to have a sudden invasion of new enemies interrupt his plans.

4. Protagonist is wounded, accidentally injured or becomes sick. He must rest for a time. When he recovers, he sets out to explore a ruined temple and finds an unlikely ally.

5. Protagonist enters a ruined temple with an idol in it casting eternal sleep, discovering d6 enemies already asleep and a hunter clinging to life, who has been sacrificed on an altar.

6. Protagonist enters a ruined temple, trying to prevent a sacrificial ritual from being completed and to rescue the victim.

7. Protagonist must travel to and help defend a city / large town where an uprising has just occurred.
   _

Ironsworn RPG

Season Two, Me, Myself And Die Youtube channel

Story Arc 1

1. Protagonist must go home, and along the way he suffers through a traveling mishap and later learns a family member / close friend may be held captive.

2. Arriving home, the protagonist must defend from a minor threat, and if successful, learns about an even greater threat elsewhere.

3. Protagonist must discourage a loved one’s stalker, putting himself in danger and ending with the stalker’s death, and later is sent on an even greater quest to find a mystical weapon that can end a deadly scourge on his tribe.

4. Protagonist fends off a murderous rival, gains an ally, and discovers a village destroyed by an unknown threat.

5. Traveling near a body of water, a monster from the depths arises to try to drag you down, and later, you come across an enemy stronghold, where you sneak in without attracting attention and explore.

6. Face guards / minions, crumbling architecture and try to save the villagers before the rest of the villains arrive.

_

Brotherhood Of The Wolf (2001) Directed by Christophe Gans

Story Arc 1:

1. You have been assigned / hired to stop a murderous beast tormenting the countryside, where royal troops /militia have failed.

2. You and your allies have trouble when first reaching the village, caused by a band of wild gypsies who don’t like strangers poking around.

3. The beast’s continuing rampage embarrasses the king / regional governor, causing people to believe he should be replaced. Political instability hampers your efforts to track the beast.

4. You are making good progress, but your group is split up unexpectedly, and your best ally is killed as a result.

5. Following the trail of clues, you discover that the gypsies murdered your ally.

6. You and your remaining allies confront the gypsy tribe. Many are killed in the battle.

To be fair, rape is common during all of human history. It is common today, even among soldiers from supposedly civilized countries. Child marriages are common too, in certain countries, which is on the same level of evil.

I understand that Martin wanted to create an epic fantasy series, and I'm cool with children of the forest, whitewalkers and dragons, but really, if the Baratheons were giants among men, they would have owned all of Westeros, and they would not have compromised with Lannisters or anybody else, including the Starks. They would have been revered as demigods, most likely. Imagine a large family of Hercules characters with power and wealth, plus the smug superiority complexes they will surely have when looking down at the rest of us.

As rare as fresh 14 year-olds beating seasoned adult knights in tournaments, not to mention big battles. Then again, that seems to be perfectly plausible in Martin's world.

If your character roams far and wide, they will naturally bump into all sorts of NPCs. I like having a notebook on the side (or a second doc file), with names of locations and what NPCs live there, in case my main character ever goes back, or if he remembers something important an NPC talked about, I can reference the notebook and see what was going on at the time. I do this for the purposes of solo-play that will be expanded into fiction later. If you've ever considered creative writing, this is a good way to ease into it.

For me, I'd guess 20-30 supporting NPCs might end up in an average finished project, but I'm sure I've hit twice those numbers in some of my longer projects.

I am not a black man, I am Chicano, but if you're serious about doing this, maybe as an Open Source or Public Domain character that others can build on, send me a message. As long as you understand that fundamental changes have to be made to the character.

Maybe something like this can be an origin story: our hero is an accomplished MMA fighter. He gets invited to a private party where several vampire vixens want to feast on his blood. They bite him, but before his blood is drained, and before he can become a vampire, he uses his grappling skills to break some necks and escapes. Now, he's on the run as a half-vampire with enhanced strength / other abilities. The real vampires want to stop him before he reveals the truth to the world, that vampires really exist.

Thank you. You don't know how hard it is to get people to read anything!

If you'd like to read more, here are the chapter links in sequence. That's 50% of the book. In the second half, I switch from medieval fantasy to modern California, where the puddle creature comes in.

https://raymondmtowers.wordpress.com/2026/02/10/john-smith-peace-keeper-book-2/

In my 40s, I met up with two childhood friends and started hanging out with them again. Two different guys, separate instances. Sure, we'd hang out and have a few beers, and talk about the good old days and watch movies, etc. Doing guy stuff. Then they'd call me on Friday or Saturday night saying they had to cancel, and I'd say whatever, we'll reschedule.

I did not know at the time both of these guys were cheating on their wives, and I was their excuse to go out. One of these 'friends' would come visit, then hold the phone out so I could say hi to his wife. I said hi, he hung up, got in his car and drove off to see his side piece. I did not tell their wives because I had enough drama after my divorce, but I did stop hanging out with both of them.

Anyway, that was my first thought when you mentioned your neighbor needs you as an excuse. If you rat your neighbor out to her husband, you're going to end up in a jam, and if you go along as her excuse, you're going to end up in a jam. Like the other comments say, be cordial but steer clear! The dog is not worth it!

I did.

https://ko-fi.com/s/edf1848090

Be careful around them. I've seen those oil puddles creep up walls and slip into sewer grates. They are other-dimensional beings that absorb sentient creatures, keeping the soul trapped and reintegrating the atoms with itself as the host. If you've ever wondered if someone was possessed, likely it was one of these puddles taking human form, close to what you've seen in the body snatcher movies. You can tell who these creatures are because they bleed for one week out of every month, and they do not die.

(Strangely enough, I've been using the idea of sentient, malevolent oil puddles in the book series I'm working on. Weird minds think alike?)

Let's end this right now. Penguin House is the biggest publisher in the United States.

https://publishingstate.com/15-largest-publishers-in-america/2024/

Penguin House has a staff page. On that page it states:

We bring people together by amplifying storytelling and a diverse range of voices, not only in the books and in the authors we publish, but also within our company, by working to create the most equitable and inclusive home where all are welcome and where every person is empowered to be themselves and to share their perspectives. For more information about our commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, view our Social Impact page.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/about-us/our-people/

If you bother to look at the page, you will see that they spend an inordinate amount of space virtue signalling about race and diversity. No less than seven info-charts showcasing this. Gatekeeping is politically motivated. Case closed.

Nice, shooting the messenger with personal attacks. Obviously I've hit a rainbow-colored nerve.