Any plot ideas for a fictional story set in the 400ish? I was thinking to have the main character be a young girl trying to make her family's life better, so that they're not just scum.
Would it be better if I set it later in time?
Any ideas are great, thank you!
In which country is this story set? Especially around this time, that really affects what sort of story you'd be writing
Sorry, I'd like it to be Medieval England.
In 400 the land that is now England was still under the rule of the Roman empire through out the next decades the Britannians would organize peasant rebellions that event drove the Romans out (that and all the political and social problems that would lead to empire dying in 472) Shortly after this would be the start of the dark ages where for about 300+ years nothing really happened, nearly every peasant would live and die farming the same patch of land and very few ever went even so little as ten miles from away from their homes, outside of that there were many feckless wars but your character being a women won't have been called to battle. If you want to take a more fantastical approach to things these were the days of king Arthur in some legends, if you want to go more crazy, accosting to a conspiracy called the phantom time hypothesis the dark ages didn't even happen. One way or another I won't call 400 a particularly interesting for anything large scale but the advantage is that given the context of the culture almost anything your character does would be a big event to the people in her locality. this age can be called Dark ages, Middle ages, or Medieval age, but the whole Knights in shining armor thing is still a few centuries off.