When his best friend dies in a drive by shooting, a naive vagrant must escape the harsh streets of his home world to join the galactic armed forces, endure their harsh training and battle nightmarish aliens to become a space knight.
The_CNISamurai
When his best friend dies in a drive by shooting, a naive vagrant must escape the harsh streets of his home world to join the galactic armed forces, endure their harsh training and battle nightmarish aliens to become a space knight.
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The causal link between event (friend murdered in drive-by) and goal (become space-knight) is unclear. How is the latter response to the former?
Is it because, in the rules of your story’s universe, the space-knights are some sort of police force, and with his newfound space-knight powers he’s going to chase down and catch his friend’s killers?
Why must he become a space knight?? Isn’t that merely a milestone along a path to his ultimate objective goal?? Isn’t his ultimate objective goal to avenge the death of his best friend?? To develop the skills he needs to defeat the bad guys?
Luke Skywalker accepts Obi-wan’s call to become a Jedi? knight not for bragging rights or status.? Or to score with women.? Or to use a cool light saber.
His objective goal is to avenge the death of his step parents by defeating the evil Empire.
The logline for this story needs to be framed accordingly.
How does the inciting incident relate to his goal of becoming a space knight? Couldn’t he become a space knight before his best friend died? Is his friend’s dying wish for him to become a space knight? Why do we care about him becoming a space knight? I’ll stop saying space knight now.
What happens if he doesn’t reach his goal? I’m struggling to see any interesting conflict other than enduring training.
In Starship Troopers, the characters only get citizenship if they enlist – something that’s desired. Even then, the protagonist, Rico, only joins to follow his girlfriend, Carmen, who has dreams of becoming a pilot. They have motives for enlisting. Currently, your character doesn’t. If you connect his friend to the military then it could work, or if the protagonist has no choice or is arrested and forced to choose between prison or enlisting then it could also work.
Problems on a global scale should have an appropriate goal. The world is threatened by aliens so the goal should be to save the world. What I want to see is how this guy saves the world after he becomes a space knight – and I want it to be something that his best friend has taught him. Tie it all together!
Hope all this makes sense and helps in some way.