posted
Working Title of the Series is One Shining Moment.
This is a Young Adult series that is geared twards LDS Teens.
The MC is Juliette Riordan. She's just turned 16 and is a very talented gymnast who has caught the eye of a Nationally known coach. The man that she believs to be her father, is encouraging towards her, but her mother and her real father, are very leary.
She tries out for the team and makes it. A short time later her 'brother' returns from his Mission. Things are fine for a time and then Juliette starts turning her back on her faith. Her roomate at the Training Center has an eating disorder and later dies from it. Juliette feels like everyone and everything has abandoned her at that point.
A short time after that, right before a major meet, she is seriously hurt in practice and her 'brother' confronts her about her inactivity and blames the injury on the boy she is intersted in.
Eventually she finds her way back to the Church and a dream is fulfilled.
The suggestion that was made to me was to have something happen like she needs an organ transplant and no one matches but her biological father.
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posted
Cali, I know you briefly mentioned a few things over in the NaNo thread, but people who don't read that thread will open this one up and not understand what you're hoping to gain by posting this. I would suggest adding information regarding what the problem with your story is or where you need help. In other words, give it some context.
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posted
A blood transfusion, if she's a rare blood group, would accomplish much the same thing. Or, if she's O type and both her perceived father is AB. Or if she's B and one is O and the other A. Or . . . You get the drift.
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I don't want it to turn out to be a soap. I'd like it to be realistic.
I am still trying to find out how and why the adoption would have happened and why her biological father is involved there, because one of the things usually done in adoptions is that the biological parents are shut out and cut off.
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posted
"The suggestion that was made to me was to have something happen like she needs an organ transplant and no one matches but her biological father."
And then we find out the the father was a former gymnast and she'll have to beat him in gymnastics to win the organ...
Edit: wow that took me a really long time to write. I started this right after quid's first post.
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posted
It could be anything from real father and mother had an affair, but adoptive father loved his wife and forgave her. It could be that real father and mother were married, mother got pregnant, but they were really bad for each other and divorced amicably and remained good friends, and mother later remarried. It could be any number of things like that.
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Actually.... both her biolagical father and the one she calls dad were gymnasts.
Her real dad owns the gym she started training at, while her father figure left the sport and married a trauma specialist.
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posted
OOOH! Or the adoptive father shoots blanks, and got the biological father involved as a sperm donor. Biological parents wouldn't even have had to have sex for that to work. A turkey baster will do the trick (it worked for a woman in Calgary back a few years ago after she gave up on conventional fertility treatments.)
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posted
" Her roomate at the Training Center has an eating disorder and later dies from it. Juliette feels like everyone and everything has abandoned her at that point."
A question: what else happens to her besides her roomate dying that makes her feel as if everyone has abandoned her? Maybe she should feel that way after she gets injured and have her coach kick her off the team or not care about her anymore or something.
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posted
Why not have everyone abandon her because she has temporarily turned her back on the church? It'd make for a considerably deeper book in terms of realistic motive.
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quote:The suggestion that was made to me was to have something happen like she needs an organ transplant and no one matches but her biological father.
I disagree with the suggestion. I don't care if she finds her father. Her other parents seem fine. And mostly, I don't care whose blood is in her veins.
Focus on this:
quote: Eventually she finds her way back to the Church and a dream is fulfilled.
If you make that interesting, I'll buy the book. By the way, have you read "A Prayer for Owen Meany"? There was a paternity issue in there, also, but it really paled in comparison in interest with the religious issues.
I can see the paternity issue being compelling if her fake father was a gymnast, and they both thought that she had inherited the dexterity and balance from him.
posted
It could still be favorable! People would have the opportunity to reconsider their motives and priorities, and there'd be group hugs and stronger faith all around once everyone looked more closely at themselves.
IMO, it would be particularly interesting if she were the child of an affair, as she'd be able to point to that perceived hypocrisy and/or moment of weakness as justification for her own immature rebellion.
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posted
The affair bit was also suggested by the same person that suggested the transplant issue, but I had issures with the fact that the series is pro LDS and the family she was raised in was as well.
I can see her feeling abandoned if her coach kicks her out of the gym for awhile, especially seeing he is one of those that think girl/boy friends are a distraction gymnasts of Olympic caliber don't need.
Her brother is going to be the one member of her family she will interact with the most throught the series, because Young Adult books keep adult interaction to a minimum.
I'd like to see the series deal with different principles stressed by the Church, and dealt with in a manner befitting the age group and be realistic too.
quote: By the way, have you read "A Prayer for Owen Meany"?
No I haven't. When I started working on this project the Church was out of sight out of mind, but one night I just stated writing and the Church fit perfectly into what I wrote so I reworked the plot.
Edit: The theme for this story is Forgiveness.
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posted
If the theme for the story is forgiveness, I strongly suggest using an affair -- or at least some form of actual betrayal -- as your driving conflict. Otherwise, as you've described the plot so far, there's not actually anything to forgive -- and your characters will come off as small-minded if you have them suggest that there is.
Lots of LDS families have had affairs and have recovered; her mother and father could in fact still be enormously devout and repentant. And then you wouldn't need the false drama of a transplant. If you're uncomfortable with the affair bit, I suggest you consider something a bit closer to home than "X is your real father."
I suppose you could set it up so that her parents were married but not sealed, then divorced and each remarried. There would still be a sense of betrayal there if they had never seen fit to share that information with her.
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posted
The problem is that from your synopsis, I can't see a big crime.
Edit: What Tom said.
Since it's about characters. I'd be curious about how one learns the dignity in forgiveness, or at least have six or seven acts-- all in different degrees-- of forgiveness or percieved forgiveness. I'm grasping here.
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posted
Did Touched by an Angel touch you? Because if it didn't touch you personally, I wouldn't touch it.
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posted
Oh and someone asked what else happens to make Juliette feel out in the cold?
Well in the original version of the story, Juliette and her mom are very distant. Juliette is convinced that her mom has it in for her.
Anytime that her adopted dad is behind Juliette in doing something, her mother seems to be against it.
Mom has yet to attend a meet that Juliette is competing in.
And Juliette was left behind with her biological dad when the adopted family moved out west because of mom's job. Juliette is told later that she was left behind because they didn't think it was fair to uproot her from the coach she's had since she was 7. (This is before she moves away to train.)
I have yet to figure out the underlying issue here. it's not tied to her real dad, because the mother/daughter war is something that is in book one.
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quote:I have yet to figure out the underlying issue here.
As Tom and Irami have pointed out, that's the driving thing. What makes the characters do what they do?
Would finding out who the character calls "dad" isn't her biological father be devastating to everyone if it's a regular adoption? or from a fertility treatment? if it is, he's still her father, he's the man that raised her. In that case, if they're devastated, then something's off. They knew, all except Juliette. Perhaps it might knock her for a spin to find that out, but devastate? Not unless she was, as someone said, "small minded."
But what if it was an affair? What if her biological father left the church because of it, thinking he couldn't be forgiven? What if her mother feels awful guilt over juliette's biological father leaving the church and she stayed in it, but kept her secret?
What if the reader knows about the secret along with Juliette's mother, but no one else knows? (I believe that's called dramatic irony).
But there's got to be something significant that makes them choose to do things.
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quote: But what if it was an affair? What if her biological father left the church because of it, thinking he couldn't be forgiven? What if her mother feels awful guilt over juliette's biological father leaving the church and she stayed in it, but kept her secret?
The theme of forgiveness would work on all levels then because, the mother and current husband would have to deal with the issue and then Juliette would have to deal with it as well.
It was suggested that Julette's mom and step dad may have been married but never Sealed, and I think that would be what brings it out, because I think her mom's conscious would be bothered enough and she'd bring it up.
quote:What if the reader knows about the secret along with Juliette's mother, but no one else knows?
Hmmmm. That's an idea. Maybe there's a scene where her mom is looking for something in an old journal of hers.
I am going to end up going with the idea of the affair, simply because it mirrors some things close to home.
This is one of the latter books, but hints are given in the first one.
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posted
That would also allow the forgivness theme to work with the father as well, perhaps...
Not that he should return to the faith, that would be too easy and probably wouldn't ring true, but in the earlier part of the book/series he might be bitter towards the church, thinking it wasn't enough to keep him and his wife together.
By the end of the book/series he could have eased up on the negitivity towards the church, perhaps, and forgiven himself a bit. I wouldn't go for an alll out reconsiliation with his previous religion, but you could hint at the possibility of it and have it be really effective.
You don't have to tied up ALL the loose ends, at least not all the ones that aren't completely central to the main plot, and often hinting at things that will occur AFTER the book is complete works very well...
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posted
If Juliette's father is against the Church then it might explain why he is also one of the Nay sayers in reguards to her moving away to train.
It could be that he began to see things differently too when he moved away from home and that is where his slide began.
It would be too easy for him to go back, you're right, but that doesn't mean that he can't try to help her not make the same mistake.
As for the issues between mom and daughter, it could be as simple as her involvement in gymnastics as well as her looking like her biological dad, two things that are a constant reminder to the mother, that brings a wall between them.
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posted
Do you have something against adoption? The only reason I ask is you imply that her adoptive father is not her real father, and you put quotes around the word brother. Unless the brother is really a friend of the family, he is her real brother.
I am sorry, but I am sensitive about this because I just adopted a little boy, and he IS my son. By the way, most adoptions today have varying degrees of openness. For example, we talk with my son's first family every week, we plan to visit with them more in the future. He will know his mothers, both of them, his entire life. We are both his "real" mother.
I admit that in the past adoptions were not that open. You could have the parents agree to an open adoption with the stipulation she does not know that the family friend is her biological father.
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posted
I didn't take the adoption road for a few reasons:
1) There is a secondary character that is adopted.
2) I was adopted as a child and and lost my only child to the system. I don't think I could really write about it and not have issues come up that I am not ready to deal with.
3) Adoption has been used alot in stories to explain family differences. I have two Young Adult series sitting on my bookshelf and both have characters that deal with the adoption issue. (And the publication dates ate a year apart)
I wanted something that would make for a very emotrional episode and I don't think I can do the adoption route justice. Not every adoption tale is a happy one.
This doesn't mean that it won't be delt with in the series, because it may be, but just not right now.
I was adopted as a child. I was one of the kids that you don't hear about, adopted by abusive parents and failed by the system. The fact that I was in the system was used against me when my child was taken from me along with the fact that I have a disablity.
It is a sore subject with me which is why at this time I can't write about it.
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