Very new here - this is my first post Hello! I am a 33 year old single parent and have been writing for as long as I can remember. I have always had the following book bursting to get out and I am almost finished. Very excited ... and scared. However, as it deals with quite personal topics, I have never let anyone close to me read it, bar the first chapter. I suppose for fear of critique about my life! But I have come to accept that the only way to learn/improve is to accept critique in all forms. So please, feel free - any comments will be greatly appreciated! Thank you x Out of Sync “I never really wanted to kill myself. I just wanted someone to save me. A ‘cry for help’ is what the nurses at the hospital called it as they comforted my tearful mother. But no real help ever came. I thought if I screamed loud enough, cried long enough, hated hard enough, then they would see how much I was hurting; they would eventually ‘fix’ me. Surely someone had to recognise that my destructive behaviour was born out of pain? I had lost my son, my self-respect, my mind. I didn’t see how much I was hurting those around me. Well, maybe sometimes. When I saw my mother crying. But her tears fell from her eyes and splashed to the floor, not into my heart. I had become detached. Out of sync.” - A story of three generations: Kate – a middle class schoolgirl desperate to heal the scars of sexual abuse at the hands of her step-father, at whatever cost – Alyson, Kate’s mother, who had assumed her days of raising a child were almost through - and Hilda, the stiff upper lipped grandmother. As painful memories continue to haunt a 15 year old Kate, she finds a strange comfort in being pregnant by the first boy she ever kissed. Faced with her daughter's situation, Alyson remembers her own teenage pregnancy and weeps at night for the baby she was forced to gave away. Hilda knows history is repeating itself. And it started with her. Shortly after her son is born, Kate, along with her mother and younger sister, are forced to move away as the abuse becomes a shared burden with neighbours. They move to be near Hilda. One year on, Kate is living in a hostel surrounded by what her grandmother calls "undesirables". Numbing her memories with drugs, she doesn't even realise that she is still being abused. Alyson initially thinks she has done the right thing by letting her teenage daughter “stand on her own feet” and move out of the family home. She has done everything her own mother didn't. But when she discovers her infant grandson being minded by a man living on the streets, Alyson discovers the sad truth about Kate’s new life and is forced to intervene. Hilda thinks events should be allowed to unfold naturally. After all, you can't change history.
A story concept means nothing. I can tell you now, it has all been done before. What matters is how you write it, the characterization, the flow, the imagery, all of it. There's no benefit in asking what other people think of the concept! They'll either say,"Sounds great," or, "it sounds like a ripoff of..." If the idea stirs you, write it. Then ask people what they think of the final story. After they tell you what they don't like about it, revise it, usually several times, until you're happy with it or until you throw up your hands and say the hell with it. Please read What is Plot Creation and Development?
It sounds like it could be really gripping, but be careful not to make it cliche. The storyline of "teenager who meets up with the wrong crowd and gets sucked into drugs" has been done to death, so I personally find it bland and predictable. Why not have her involved with something disturbing but not as commonly used in troubled-teen novels? For example, she could get in a cult, or a disturbingly dominating/abusive relationship, or doing something to hurt her son. I see you're new - welcome.
