Trying to start a new fic.

Er, what?

Well, what is your story centered around? Is there a theme or idea you'd like to explore? Do you you want to leave your reader thinking about that idea, or do you want it as a simple love story?

There are many ways to lay down an exposition or prologue, or present your story's beginning.

Let's say you have a war story:

In one instance, we can present the very beginning--when the war begins, or before when the characters/factions are plotting for the war. I think this is effective in world building.

In another, you can have the main character or protagonist in the middle of a battle to emphasize the experience and help develop his character. It could be the catalyst for who he is or give the reader insight into how they will react to situations or give them depth to their reasoning.

 

FO:E set the bar for grimdark stories extraordinarily high and to have it as a first venture will take a lot of work to reach many readers' expectations for such a story. Unfortunately, I don't deal with HiE stories because they're not my savvy or interest, and I haven't read much of FO:E myself so I can't give you any tips for the plot.

I recommend organizing your thoughts into a chapter-by-chapter format. How long do you want your chapters to be? Do you want to leave cliffhangers on any of them? Also, try to make your characters as accurate as possible. Ask yourself, "Would they do this exactly like this in this specific situation?" You'll have to make the situations your character winds up in believable.

You'll have to be the judge of what you want in each chapter as just about every writer differs in how much detailing they will do. (Ex: My early works mostly did 3000-3600 word chapters, where now I write 5700-11000 word chapters with most falling in the 7k+ range.)