Written in 1st person POV, present tense. The main character isn't the narrator, but a woman. The narrator is a Ph.D. student in neuro-epistemological research. Basically, he studies how the brain knows things. He's involved with a new technology that can alter a person's habits, knowledge, or memory. The scanner erases the small "marks" on the brain. (If you know anything about the brain, you'll know what I'm talking about.) For example, thought this technology, a person can be cured from smoking, or can have a horrific memory (e.g., rape) erased from their memory.

The main character wants to have her daughter erased from her memory. The daughter committed suicide, and the note they found on her indicated that she blamed her mother for her immense depression. The mother has been in counseling for a few years, but to no avail. Finally, in desperation, she contacts these scientists to erase her daughter from her memory.

The problem is that when they look at her brain, they see that her daughter is part of virtually every thing she knows. Think of is this way: It's hard to think about high school without remembering your high-school sweetheart. The daughter was the mother's all-in-all, the apple of her eye, and consequently her daughter is a deep part of her life. The scientists can't erase the memory of the daughter without almost destroying the woman herself.

For the boring aspect – I wasn’t bored by your idea at all. If you find your story boring, focus in on how you can explore your conflicts. You've got the Mother/Daughter history - something big is going on there with blame/suicide/depression -- which maybe you could illuminate through looking at the therapy sessions, or a journal, and talking to the student. Then you have the dilemma of the PhD student -- is it morally right to destroy this woman's brain even though she asked? Can it even be done? How will he feel about it once its done? What does he do about it? Is there also conflict between the different doctors asked to do the procedure?

Why don't they just erase her memories from the point where her daughter commits suicide and they find the note? After all, it was the fact that her daughter blamed her, not anything else about her memories, that is causing her pain. They could even erase all her memories from the point where she concieved her daughter, right? She can't possibly have any memories of her daughter from before that point, eh?

I read a story, the name of which I do not recall, which used the basic premise here. This guy has a personal tragedy where he loses the woman he loves (etc. etc.) and so he throws his considerable genius into developing a device that erases memories. But he can't bring himself to erase the memory of his beloved, so he opens a high end practice of erasing other people's unbearable memories. Of course, one day an anonymous stranger shows up to have her memory erased (she's in such bad shape she can't bear to have people see her, so she wears a mask--I'm sure that you know where this is going). After her memory is erased, she's cured, takes off the mask, and reveals herself to be his beloved (exactly what happened is not revealed, which is either a nice touch or a cheap trick, depending on your point of view). And of course, she's just had her memories of him erased.

So he finally goes into his own machine in despair and erases his own memory.

See, the tragedy is that he will wake up happy, not knowing her, what it meant for them to lose each other. They have voluntarily passed into that land where "those who died for love pass each other in the streets."

So don't have the woman be regressed back to infancy or whatever. Have it work, have her forget her daughter (perhaps even take her back to a point in her life where she was planning to have a daughter). Better yet, make her actually quite young for a mother with a early teenage daughter (or go with another approach, say the treatment uses a drug that erases some of your memory but also makes you younger in the process). Let her retain most of the skills she's learned, but she's forgotten all about her daughter.

Then you have a moral struggle for the doctor. He is horrified by the sucess of the cure, that he has obliterated the very memory of her daughter (say this woman was a young single mother, alienated from her parents to boot--so there really isn't anyone else to remember the daughter either). Then you have a tragic story.

Why first person? From all I have read it is one of the harder pov's to write correctly, and a smaller group of people that will enjoy reading it. Third person limited is easier to write and is more forgiving. It is still possible to be very close to the main character without being the main character. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it is worth some serious thought.

As for the story, the idea is a good one. But now you just need a few twists. What if the woman, after discovering she would loose most of her memories, decides she wants to loose them. What kind of dilemma would it cause the pov character to know that they will be part of wiping a persons brain almost completely away? What if they are not sure of the full impact of the removal would cause? Could the woman end up dying because of her brain being altered so much?

Another angle would be if the doctors started the process one peice at a time. Slowly destroying the memories until they were gone...along with her identity. Then there is the reverse side effect on the pov character for knowing they were part destoying the woman.

Is the woman loosing her memory the key to the story? Or is it the process? Could the damage to the mental stability of the pov character be at risk watching the woman loose everything she has?

The end result of the woman loosing her identitiy could be a known fact early on. The story could center on the suffereing of the pov character. Since at the end the woman would not know she needed to care, but the pov character would. Playing on the feelings of the person (pov character) that is not directly suffering, and showing how the events does change the outlook of someone not even a friend of the one suffering.

I'm sure there are quite a few more ways it could be twisted into a different story.

First of all, you end the story with things happening exactly the way the narrator is afraid it will end. So that makes the story what? A cautionary tale? Why else would the narrator be telling the story?

Second, this is the kind of story that, if well-written, makes readers say it sounds like the first chapter in a novel. Why? Because you end the story with a situation that is begging to be explored, and the story is actually more like set-up for the situation you really ought to explore.

However, if you were to write the novel that this story sets up--about the woman who can't remember anything and struggles to find out what has been taken away from her--you don't have enough new stuff to make it more interesting than any of the other stories about amnesiacs trying to remember their pasts.

Third, if you look at what you've started with, and ask yourself what kind of story it is (using OSC's MICE categories), it may help you figure out what is missing.

It's not a milieu story, and I vote against an idea story because, as you've said yourself, it just doesn't excite. It could be a character story, but you would need to show what new role either the narrator or the main character now has because of what's happened in the story.

I vote for event story, because by developing a process for erasing memories, the narrator has upset a delicate balance in the world. And for that reason, I think your instincts are good in choosing to have the narrator be the scientist. I just think you need to think more about why you chose that narrator.

Just for the sake of off-the-wall what-ifs, suppose that the daughter really didn't commit suicide, but was killed in connection with something that had to be kept secret (it could be some government agency, some kind of witness protection plan, some kind of criminal enterprise--whatever), and it was made to look like a suicide to cover it up.

The scientist, after the end of the story as you have it, is approached by whomever about doing more of this (it's a perfect technology for people interested in covering things up, after all). He already feels guilty about what he's done to the woman, and he is absolutely not interested in doing this for what he considers unethical reasons.

His refusal puts his life in jeopardy, and not only does he have to escape the bad guys, but he also has to find the woman and figure out how to reverse his process (so she can help him uncover what's happened to her daughter, etc, etc, etc) and set everything else right in the world--because he's the one who's introduced this wrongness.

That's just one way to approach the idea, and there are probably as many other ways as there are people here on Hatrack.

One of the critical tools of telling an interesting story is to make the reader ask a question (or better still, lots of questions) and to not answer them until you get to the end.

So, the question here is what will happen to this woman's memory? To enhance the question, I would add conflict. Have two specialists who disagree about what will happen. Have them argue about it, and then one of them (who believes no harm will come) performs the operation without the other's knowledge. Maybe he discovers this is happening and rushes to try to stop it, only to find that the patient has already lost all of her memories because the operation is finished.

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But I think I am not going to waste my time working on it. I am a neophyte in the world of writing, and I read somewhere that beginners improve more rapidly is they lay aside stories not easily repaired and go on to new creative endeavors.

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I haven't read that, I don't think I believe it either. I can believe in setting aside a story for a period of time and then pick it back up later to revise it again. So if you want to see where the real problems of your story arem you have to distance yourself from it for a while and work on something else.

But if your story has problems and you think of a solution, fix it. If you are not sure what to fix think about it a while. I normally will be working out many story ideas in my head.

But you can use paper if you want.

I think you will find that most of the people here have different ways of how they approach the writing process. The best thing for you to do is figure out what way works for you.

Your story reminded me of a site that actually talks about outlining, but basically takes you through an example of changing a weak story into a strong story - how you find your direction, etc. The story's premise is related to yours - a medical issue, a surgeon in turmoil over something - I REALLY suggest you try it out before giving up. It is not too long to read, but I think it will help.

http://www.massucci.com/Articles/Outlines/outlines.html

I hope it helps. I think your idea could really go places.

That comment is confounding, in that many great stories have been told in first. First vs. third (second is rare) is a key choice to be made when writing any fiction. Really, the first person view is fine.

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I went to the ball, wearing that hideous orange dress. But you know what, sometimes you have to make a point.

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She went to the ball, wearing the hideous orange dress. She knew it was ugly; but sometimes, you have to make a point.

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And 2cond, though 2cond is rare and annoying:

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You go to the ball, wearing that orange dress. It's hideous, you know, but so what? You have your looks and charms. You're better then everyone else--you can get anyone you want.

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