So let’s take a look at it all - idea, characters, setting - and come up with a synopsis of the story-to-be.
Before we do that, though, I’m going to admit something: I’ve been cheating a little.
It’s taken me longer to write this down than it did to think it up. So if it seems somewhat coherent - it wasn’t at the start! Coming up with a story is an iterative process. The idea feeds into the setting feeds into the characters feeds back into the idea. Along the way, everything changes.
So here’s the synopsis so far. I’m pulling in elements that I’ve sketched out from all three previous stages - idea, characters, and background. It’s not an outline (yet), but a synthesis of all the thinking that’s gone into this so far. So it’s not a story (yet). It is a list of all the things that I will have to keep in mind while I outline & write the story, though.
Think of it this way - an architect has to keep in mind what materials they have available when they’re planning a building. That’s what I’ve done so far: inventoried my materials. Now I’m going to take what I have available and think about what kind of things I could make from that, so I can develop a vision of what the story will be once I start plugging things together…
Long ago, there were a race of Others in the universe. They were galaxy-spanning and held thousands of worlds. At some point, they disappeared, leaving behind dead planets. Places scoured of life and all but the faintest evidences of their existence.
When humanity first went to the stars, centuries ago, they did so in slower-than-light ships. One of the first worlds they found had a fragment of Other technology that hinted at what eventually became a subspace drive. Travel that used to take a century now took mere weeks. While that is horribly fast compared to sub-light speeds, it's still painfully slow for humans. Four or six month journeys are typical, and few people leave their planet. Boredom on the long journeys is a constant problem, and many people isolate and retreat to entertainment - books, movies, and the like - in between ports.
Humanity spread to the stars, and encountered other alien races, but not the Others. Of all the races met so far, only humanity has really established a large-scale society like the one the Others may have had.
The Captain and his Crew are dead-heading from Planet A to Planet B. With no cargo, their only income is from the Outsider, a lone passenger. A stellar event of some sort causes them to have to reroute their trip into a region of dead space. That has added potential months to their trip, which irritates everyone. Especially the captain - a haul that was going to be revenue-neutral is now going to cost him enough that he'll be digging himself out for years.
While at the farthest in their travel from civilization, they pick up a faint distress signal - an alien one, from a known species. No details. They are obligated to answer; someone suggests erasing the logs and ignoring it. The captain refuses, and points out that while they are obligated to rescue, the rescuees' ship is treated as salvage. Salvaging the ship would be a pain; but selling the location of the ship would be very profitable. So they have the chance to turn things around and actually make money from this trip.
The planet they land on is one of the Other's old worlds - dead. Reddish-yellow sand everywhere. The alien ship is open, but empty. Power is gone - the core is drained and useless. The main hatch won't move, jammed open by dust. Inside there are logs, but nobody can read or understand the alien pictographs, except the one for "money".
There's a cable from the ship leading to a granite outcrop and down into a crevice. The crew follows it, and finds a painting. It looks like a dead forest at night, alien tress sticking up from glassy still water. Stars are visible in parts of the sky. The surface of the painting is glassy. They wonder what it means, why the aliens would do this, then there's a lightning strike in the "painting". The crew realizes they are looking at an intact artifact of the "Others".
The stars are unfamiliar; someone recognizes enough to pick out where the image might be from - hundreds of light years away, on the other side of human space. A recording of some sort, they think - until the image shimmers and flickers, and some water rushes out from the "painting" and soaks into the sand.
They came, expecting to rescue an alien ship. They thought they had found an example of intact Other technology, immeasurably priceless... and now they realize that what they have is something that would allow instantaneous travel and communication.
Of course, all is not quite what it seems!
Next up: we’ve identified our building materials, and we have a vision. We’ll follow some basic rules of plotting, figure out the major beats in the story, and develop an outline.