The outline I wrote for minminXP for the Let's Write to This Modest Proposal writing challenge.

Premise:
Austronesian peoples are a group of related (linguistically, culturally, and genetically) peoples that live in southeast Asia and all of the inhabitable islands of the Pacific as far west as Madagascar. They probably originated from a homeland in mainland China and started migrating throughout Asia in the millennia BCE.
The reason for their migration was probably population pressures, because most of them lived on small islands that could only support a limited number of people. Once the island could no longer sustain more people, a certain group of people would leave the island in search of a new place to settle. Often, they had to convince people of the original island to leave their homes for an uncertain future, and they spent a long time at sea searching for a suitable island. Though they sometimes had contact with other Austronesian peoples, they were isolated from the rest of the world (Asia, Europe, and the Americas).
This was until Europeans began searching for a northwest passage to Asia and started exploring the Pacific, landing on islands inhabited by Austronesians (notably Hawaii). They brought inventions the islanders had never seen before, like large ships (Austronesians used small boats), guns, printing, etc.

So being that the Pacific is the world’s largest ocean, and the islanders are striking off into its unknown waters, I thought you could incorporate the space theme in there, but it’s up to you. I was thinking about maybe using the dichotomy of having no space on the islands but having too much space in the ocean so they couldn’t contact each other.

Characters:
The main character should be someone who’s quieter, not as in they don’t speak, but as in they’re not always trying to get the camera on them. Someone who has a quality that makes everyone like them, even if they’re not trying. Not a leader, necessarily, but someone who will get the job done if need be. But this person is doing the work to get the job done, not to gain any glory. I don’t really have anyone specific in mind, but I can toss out a few names:

1. Sungjong from Infinite--he doesn’t seek screentime, he usually doesn’t speak during interviews, he’s more comfortable on variety shows with just the members, recently he’s been more reserved like he’s thinking about something
2. Tiffany from SNSD--she doesn’t get as much screentime, she’s a little bit more of an outsider because she was born in the States, she has a general appeal
3. Lay from EXO-M--the members all insist he’s hilarious but he doesn’t seem to think so, he has a reputation for working hard, he does multiple things (dancing, singing, rapping), he’s not an attention seeker during interviews

1. Set up the characters, setting, etc. as described above. (The time period should be around the 1700’s but it doesn’t matter because the islands are so isolated).
   1. The main character is just another citizen of the island--he has friends and a happy life but no ambitions really.
   2. He begins to notice problems with the island--maybe it’s getting too small for him, maybe he doesn’t like the people, maybe he thinks he could improve it.
   3. A concrete problem appears--food starts to run out. People wonder what they can do as the prospect of starvation begins to face them. (This should be a gradual process, months or years.)
2. The main character decides he can help by leading a group of people to a new island. Make sure to emphasize how this isn’t of his own volition; he sees a need so he tries to fulfill it. Also make sure to show how dangerous it is to sail off all alone--the waters are uncharted and they’ll only have supplies for so long. It takes a lot of courage for the main character to come to this decision and he only does because he believes it’s the right thing to do. He gathers up his friends and they sail off with the blessing of everybody else on the island.
3. You don’t have to describe the journey in detail, but it should be long and they should get lost so they can’t find their way home. Maybe you can play with them finding islands that turn out not to be inhabitable--giving false hope and taking it away. The point is, the journey is really hard but the main character forces himself to make it through because it’s for the best of his friends.
4. They find an already established settlement on a large island after many hardships, and the villagers there quickly accept them into their community. The main character rises through the ranks of the government and eventually becomes the leader or maybe just some really important official.
5. After a few years maybe, some European explorers land on the island. They appear to look down on the islanders and their meager possessions, which makes the main character doubt the whole reason he set sail at all if his life now isn’t that much better than before, when compared to the Europeans. Maybe here you can explore the idea of space again with the world being so big as to encompass the different groups of people.
6. When the Europeans leave they need a guide to take them to the next series of islands. The main character is given a choice--does he leave in search of adventure or does he stay with what he’s spent so long creating? The issue here is whether the main character wants to do something for himself for a change by sailing away or he decides that his responsibility is greater and he should stay on the island. Spend some time going over the pros and cons of each choice, and I guess I’ll leave the actual decision up to you.