Yes. obviously, there would be barracks, in a very military way, I suppose. And the "teams" would get formed by themselves. The leaders, if I assume are "colored" for the job, would naturally stand out, and require the attention of the natural followers. So there would be SMALL barracks, in which would fit roughly the number of people a "family" requires. Some would be full from day one with a functional family, with a natural born leader and natural born followers, and others would be filled with the outcast. But even among the outcasts, there are leaders. I think the most interesting would be to see the process of selecting the leader among the outcasts, and later on, what kind of relations this outcast leader has with the natural born leaders. How they might treat him, good or bad, how they might try to overtake him, or to take him down. This would be pretty much rehashed, in a way, but I think it would be fun anyway.

For a start, I think mostly the oucasts are having a relation to sexuality and family a little different, since in the beginning, there is no hierarchy (remember the rats experiment I mentionned earlier?) You could introduce as many sexuality experiences as you wish, in order to determine who has the strongest sex drive in the group, or which one is the strongest, or the smartest, or the one most able to resolve the crises in that group. And if it turned out that each role is equally shared, that is that they belong to different persons, then this group has a whole new dynamic, unheard of in this wolf-pack society, which is... teamwork? Where the goods balance out the bads? And they would help each others? This could make for a whole new hatred of the outcasts.

But I think in the end, there should always be a leader of the group, and preferently a leader NOT chosen in the wolf-pack society traditional manner. Maybe the physically weakest, but most apt to discuss his way through anything? Always cool headed when things get heated...

Hmm, a leader not chosen in the traditional manner. Yeah, the leader who's the protagonist should definitely be somehow different from other leaders to make him a unique and interesting character. If we're looking at this in terms of evolutionary psychology, your two examples would be instances of him having a 'futuristic' trait that benefits him in the context of a civilized society. An alternative would be having a leader with an 'atavistic' trait, in other words a character who was a throwback, who would have made a great leader in the 'good old days' but is too rough and wild for modern society. In either case, his followers have to have whatever he lacks, so that together they can succeed. So a smart-but-weak leader should have strong-but-dumb followers, while a strong-but-crass leader would have weak-but-sophisticated followers. I like the latter method just because those combinations are more attractive to women (both me and a large part of my intended audience). But there would be a lot of interesting and valid combinations to be made here. Might want to use one combination for the protagonist and a different one for the rival/antagonist and his followers. If the rival was actually a type who had complementary abilities to the protagonist, the rival would make a good reversal villain who ended up becoming one of the protagonist's followers.

New idea:

You are following the progress of the "obvious bad guy", and make it as likeable as any "Good guy". Think of the manga "Berserk".

Or you could possibly follow alternately the progresses, thoughts and discussions of BOTH potential leaders, and analyse their reactions to each other's behavior.

The first way of doing things require HIGH, VERY HIGH writing skills. It begs for ways of describing the situations away from traditional moral landscapes, and explaining why each is following THIS precise way.

Following YOUR exemple: The "Tough-but-crass" leader has quite smart followers, even if he is an evolutionnary throwback, precisely BECAUSE he is an evolutionnary throwback, and the smarter followers DO follow him for political beliefs that "it was better in the old times, let's get back to it...", whereas the "smart-but-weak" leader is an evolutionist at heart, and wants to lead his wolf-pack society towards a new and egalitarian future, in which both the weak and the strong, the smart and the dumb will have a place and a task to accomplish, and all wil be dependant on the others. They both want to make their society evolve to suit their own capacities.

The first needs it to go back to the times where his muscles would have earned him respect, and his followers think on similar terms, although they, on the average tend to be weaker, making those followers particularly dislikeable (think nazis), whereas the second has enough wits to use what is at hand, and is a GREAT orator, and easily convinces whoever he happens to be talking to, but is too weak to fight for himself, and therefore requires muscle (Think Hitler's skills) but have the followers be realistically convincing that they are following the rightful path, since they are tending towards what can be seen as today's society in the Western World.

Both groups have their own Good guys and their own Bad Guys, and should, therefore provide the reader with enough situations where empathy is required. The way empathy leads should be made individual in the interpretation of said situations, in order to please the audience in all ways, and make ALL characters look nice, antipathic and pathetic...

One problem that I have found with writing multiple factions sympathetically is not just that it takes a lot of skill in terms of characterization, which I can manage fairly well, but also that it takes a great deal of plotting skill to weave their stories together, which I am rather lacking in. :(

Also, there's the question of who wins at the end of the story - if both factions are presented sympathetically, the audience will not want to see either one get hurt or lose. An anime such as Fushigi Yuugi is an excellent test case to study this - it has two teams of fighters. One is presented as the 'good guys' and one as the 'bad guys', but even the bad guys were characterized somewhat sympathetically, and some of the audience sided with them. Similarly with the Harry Potter books, you will find a lot of fans who self-identify as Slytherins and read the books rooting for the 'bad guys'. Then there's the whole issue that pitting two teams against each other tends to result in members of both teams getting killed, which a lot of audience members feel hurt and betrayed by...

Well, killing good characters has ALWAYS been a sure way to grab your readership by the "balls" and hook them forever. And by "good", I don't necessarily mean that the character has sided with the "good guys". A good "bad guy" is also VERY hard to replace, since it leaves a gap. Most of the coming guys are rather felt like stand ups. Props. And they usually are used as expendables. But a gap in the "good guys" team is felt as both a treason and a benediction by most of the readership. Once you meet a hole in the team, you feel that maybe YOU can fill that gap, and uses that to pull you in the story.

As for the skills, I find myself more at ease with plotting intricate events, long and complicated storylines, and quite often requiring the horrible deaths of more than one major character. But I seriously lack skills in the emotional part and the dialogues. And since my style relies heavily on puns and in-jokes, I usually end up having fun lines within a scene that is supposed to be terribly sad.

Want to team-up?? looool

Hey, I've been looking for a partner to write plots for me for years, lol. But I don't write violence and I generally dislike killing characters. Think you could write a plot like Jane Austen's _Pride and Prejudice_ x 2 or 3 political factions? Or maybe the anime series _I, My, Me: Strawberry Eggs_? If you did come up with a plot I loved I'd be happy to work on writing it. But, it's unlikely that we'd agree on what would make a good book - my writing is pretty 'girly' in both form and content, the only time I've been able to collaborate successfully was when the other writer was also a fangirl. ;)

you're right about ONE thing: we may NOT be able to collaborate. I tend to keep away from "girly", on the average. Usually, my plots are about factions, groups or individuals experiencing doubts or difficulties in their missions. The more difficulties they have, the more doubts they overcome, and the more happy I am. I also like very much sad endings, where my protagonists find out that all the trials they went through were unimportant, because they did NOT have to, or were tricked or sacrificed, or... whatever... I just love tragedies. Rebellion against a future that can't be avoided is my favourite.

In my vision of things, sex is just another weapon to make the ends meet the means. And love is usually deceived, because sex is just another mean. The orientation of sex is absolutely unimportant. Hell, everything in my stories usually boil down to unresolved conflicts. Maybe I should consult a psy?

Rotfl, yeah that's completely incompatible with me. I hate tragedy and only like happy endings. I like plots about individuals having to adapt to a new environment or having new abilities. I like a team as a network of friendships, lusts, ambitions, rivalries, leader-follower dynamics, and other relationships which combine to make up a society. Yeah sex is one means of manipulation, but manipulation is not a weapon but, like persuasive talking and trading favors, a healthy part of how members of a society try to convince each other to agree on the same goal and work together to achieve it. I like factions as examples of memes and sociological forces in action, and how groups have collective personalities. The only kind of rebellion I like is a rebellion of pacifist liberal open-mindedness against restrictive conservative prejudices.

My writing is made up of about 1/2 romance (equal parts humor and angst), 1/4 people manipulating each other, the net effect of which is narrowly avoiding prejudices and restrictions and leading to non-violent social progress, and 1/4 exploring cool complicated worldbuilding. If your stories boil down to unresolved conflicts, mine probably boil down to cleverly avoiding conflicts. Which is probably why I'm bad at plotting, because plot is all about conflict, and avoiding conflict is kind of like avoiding plot.

So why do you like sad endings? I've never understood why some writers like to write that sort of thing.

Why sad endings? I don't know. I feel that they are more powerful, because they tend to last longer on your mind, trying to find where it all went wrong, how YOU (as a reader) would have handled the actions in a better way than the main character, in order to make it a happy ending.

It probably has to do with the fact that I am a Paladin at heart, and am used to hope against hope. In the darkest hours of despair, in any situation, i usually find a reason to hope, which is also usually deceived in the end. And I keep hoping that there is a way to go out, a way to make things better. I usually believe that there is a way to dream things to perfection. And that a sad ending to a book is just the beginning of a lifelong dream of how to find the way to right the wrongs, to analyse the errors to weed them out...

I also like what is usually dubbed, in french, "sidestep transitions", where you leave one character at one point, leave the scene, and find another character in a similar situation, but a step ahead, or where the first line of the second scene's dialogue indirectly and often oddly answers the last line of the first scene's dialogues. I like it when there is echo. Think of Bernard Werber Ant's trilogy.

And I remember you mentionned somewhere one of my favorite books ever: the Cryptonomicon. It often uses this kind of "sidestep transitions", blends the action between three different epochs, and uses situations of deep despair and personal desires (remember the passage about the "morphium" and the U-boot?) to divert the reader's attention of the main goal of the team, which is utterly important while leaving the men individually doomed if caught. (Impossible Mission style). I simply love this whole thing of self sacrifice to something bigger, and willingly accepted doom. Plus, if doesn't end tragically, the sacrifice is stupid and meaningless, since it didn't serve the higher purpose. And if it does, but did NOT serve the higher purpose, it is even worse, for there is a feeling of loss for the reader...

Well, here's an idea. You could explain how you would go about thinking up a plot for a story like this, and I could explain how I would handle the emotions and dialogue. Our goals are too incompatible for us to try to write together, but if we were doing two different versions of the same project, developing them in parallel, we could probably learn some techniques from each other. What do you think, can you explain how you design a plot clearly enough that I could copy your steps to come up with my own plot?