Hi there, I'm coming up with a character and I'm wondering if you could help me with her background. I haven't come up for names yet so I'll call my character Sarah for the moment, Sarah was concieved during a short term romance between a British father and a French mother, her mother gave her the name Sarah whilst she was pregnant, when Sarah is born, her father is back in London & doesn't know of Sarah's existance, Sarah's strict Catholic grandfather does not want her mother to keep her so the grandfather tells Sarah's mother that Sarah died during childbirth when really the grandfather sent Sarah to live with her father in London before the mother woke up, similar to the movie August Rush. Sarah's grandfather told her father that Sarah's mother died in childbirth and it's it's too painful for the grandfather to raise Sarah. The grandfather also told Sarah's father that he haven't given the child a name to further throw Sarahs mother off just incase she makes contact with the father. Sarah was then given a new name by the father, let's say Jane, I'm wondering if that backstory is realistic?, is it plausible? Is there a better/more realistic way to tell this backstory and is there any other tips or adjustments I should make, sorry for the long text but thank you for reading. Kind regards, Writer11402
Is there a particular reason why the grandfather sends her off to her father? If the purpose is to hide the baby, wouldn't it be easier to not let anyone know about her? I would start from there.
I guess it could happen, but I'm not pulled into the drama unless the father's more likable with an impossible predicament to be revealed later. One-sided stories about cruel parents are a 1800s cliché and unlikely to become a hit today. Also don't worry too much about planning in advance. Most will have to be torn down and changed after the first draft has shown what doesn't work in practice. I would keep the background as vague as possible from the start so that it can bend easily to fit with the story and character arcs when needed. Then go back and put in clues when writing the second draft so that the reader feel that you planned for it all along and all pieces come together in a neatly wrapped ending.
I can tell you right now, the grandfather is the main problem here. You may want to give him a better reason for this than just "is very Catholic," considering the effort and personal expense he'd no doubt have to go through in order to pull all of this off. For this to make sense, Sarah would have had to be delivered via Caesarean section with general anesthesia, as with regional anesthesia the mother would have been awake. Notably, regional anesthesia is by far more common. (95% of c-section deliveries are done that way according to Wikipedia.) It's not impossible the grandfather could have pulled this off. But unless he got extremely lucky somehow, I imagine he'd have to bribe at least a few people at the hospital where the delivery was performed in order to ensure this one rare type of delivery, that the child is spirited away in secret, and that the people involved don't talk about it. Then he'd have to forge the death of the baby, probably with a fake funeral and everything. And then he'd have to smuggle this supposedly dead child to England somehow. It may matter which time period this story is set in, but in our modern times this would be very, very difficult to get away with. Basically, this is some serious supervillain-type plotting going on just to get rid of an unwanted grandchild. And on that note, while I'm not quite sure which exact laws are being broken here, this has to be incredibly illegal. I... don't think that would throw either of them off much at all, honestly. Because, first of all, the father is still aware that Sarah/Jane is their mutual daughter. Also, he was told by the grandfather that the mother was dead. They're going to figure out something fishy is going on the moment they make contact, let alone start comparing notes. Here, let me outline how that conversation would go: Mother: Hey. Look, I know we haven't talked in a while... Father: Oh my God! You're alive! Mother: ...What? Father: Your dad told me you were dead! Mother: He what? Father: But this is great, now the three of us can finally be a family! Mother: What do you mean, the three of us? Father: You know? You, me and our daughter? Mother: Sarah is ALIVE? Father: Is... Is that her name? I didn't know that, so I named her Jane. Mother: How can she be with you? Father: Because... your dad sent her here to live with me? Because, ah, he told me you... Oh. Mother: ... Father: ...We should probably contact the French police, or something. Mother: I am going to kill my dad for this.
