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[Canned Turkey]

I'm making a platformer/adventure game as a side project, and I thought it would be fun to take suggestions for story ideas and try to fit them together. I asked around, and a few friends of mine thought up this: A circus owner in the wild west is visited by pirates that ask him to accompany them to London. Although this sounds fun, and feasible with my skillset as a programmer and artist, I am not a writer. Do you guys have any ideas/tips that could help me flesh this out a bit more?

[rj]

put it in space and add a talking dog

[Canned Turkey]

put it in space and add a talking dog

I'll try.

[Rarykos]

The best tip:
Just ask why!

You have a pretty interesting tagline there ,the moment I saw this topic I wondered why would that happen, why London, is the Queen involved ,what is the timeline,  what is the particular set of skills that a cowboy/circus owner has but pirates don't ?
So just asking "why" for every part of your tagline works! And you can go as silly as you want - why London?- because pirates want to steal the Queen's talking dog and launch it into space back to its home planet !

[dragonslumber]

I always feel like the gameplay and the story should work together to some extent. If you have a circus owner, maybe he can use animals in some capacity within levels? What is the motivation of the pirates, why go to this guy and bring him to London of all places? What can your character do which others can't? Speak to animals perhaps, so maybe London has been overtaken by beasts and it just so happens that there's treasure buried somewhere in the city which explains why the pirates are involved in it.

It's easy to write a story with any elements, but ultimately you have to ask yourself how it will work with the game you're making. Also, setting is good, but I think people really relate to strong characters so you could write that 1 pirate character which reflects what the pirate organisation represents as a whole. Same for your London characters. You could even look up british figures from that era and integrate them in your game.