Fanfic advice?

Hello, most illustrious CDNers!

I've been trying to (and trying is the key word) write a fanfic covering the events of the Reaper War (from Eden Prime to Crucible/N7 SpecOps cleanup) and I have no idea how to do it. So, instead of visiting somewhere reliable, I ask you guys (where guys is gender-neutral)! I mean, you lot know more about the ME universe than most of the other fora combined. Anyone mind giving a few tips? Please?

-Vigilance

It sounds to me that you're looking at this fanfic as a sort of "history text." I'd suggest that the best stories are about characters. Think up some characters first. Who are these people? What are their goals during the Reaper War? I would rather read about characters I care about, than about fictional events I have no attachment to. Maybe you could start with a new recruit or junior officer and follow her/his career (maybe that of the unit as well?) throughout the war.

I'm going to go with Sica here. You more or less have your overarching plot, but it's the characters that draw people in. What I usually do (and this can work for any type of story writing) is sit down and write a paragraph about each of my characters. Figure out their likes, dislikes, how they interact with the other characters, and from there you can map out character development and subplots that will be present throughout the story.

Also, a little research never hurt anyone. I've always found the best fanfics to be the ones where its obvious the author has done a little digging into how things might really work, even in sci-fi.

Yeah having characters is the best bet, especially since the current ME fanfics are mostly retelling of Shep's crew adventures, so it'll be a nice change. You can have them see the events on the war from a slightly different point of view.
I'd read a few of the current fanfics to see what people do right, what they do wrong, and what's overdone or lacking.

Thanks to you all - I fear most of the characters will end up dying, though (the Reaper War being what it is and all). I especially like the idea of following the unit throughout - might be hard to get them likeable, though. I'm playing with the idea of having one of them being (very) subtly indoctrinated throughout the storyline - opinions?

Ho yeah, indoctrination was a big missed opportunity in the trilogy, we never see it happen up close progressively.
What species would your team be? I'd recommend against a human team or a human-lead team, we've seen enough of that, and humans are after all the least exotic race of the ME universe.

So sort of have a starting squad that gradually gets rotated out and replaced by greener and greener rookies? Or dying off to leave the last one standing? Indoctrination has a lot of potential too, especially early on when the sufferer is more eratic... if you shift perspective as you go you could throw a red herring or two as to who it is.

Those are gravy though, how solid is your plan for the core of that story? Hopefully from that you can derive which races you want the team to be comprised of too.

Races - I was thinking maybe turian or asari, occasionally joined by the odd krogan or salarian or Keeper rachni yahg raloi Reaper human (though not as lead - good advice!).

I was planning on having the story shift perspective anyway, so with a bit of vagueness... That being said, sending strike teams to retrieve Reaper artifacts (*cough*ME3MP*cough*) is about as legit as a volus charity.

The story itself isn't nearly planned yet (but I'm working on it!), the main reason being that from 2183 (ME1) to 2186 (start of ME3), no-one actually fights the geth/Collectors/Reapers [delete as appropriate] apart from Shepard/the Normandy crew.

Anderson says something about how they hunt down geth holdouts in Shep's absence in ME2, and that by then its generally routine: civilians spot geth activity, task force investigates/obliterates as neccesary.

Thanks - that just leaves ME1. Occasional geth incursions, but not as much as during the Citadel invasion.