Well, there's certainly a lot there. My first inclination is to say you've potentially over-plotted. That could be wrong, but I think being forced to distill your story down into just a couple of sentences might help. It was difficult to make it through the whole explanation, and I finished not having a clear idea of what was going down. I've got a pre-med student who decides to join a singing competition as a way out - why? That seems a strange course correction. Who is paying for his med school? Why is he willing to drop all of that money and time investment for something as unstable as a singing career? Is he sacrificing his schooling by joining the competition, or was it just a spur of the moment thing? And then the murder, or attempted murder. Why did it occur in the bar itself? That seems a strange place - why not at least outside? The introduction of the "fake people" made me question what kind of a setting this is. I was reading grungy 80's sci-fi, but I could be totally off-base. Before I pick too much, in general what I'm getting at is there are a lot of details, but I don't know what the point of the story is. One of my projects, for example, I could boil down to is: Girl's village and family are destroyed. On her way to find the king to seek justice, she is taken in by a noble family, who help her reach court. There, she discovers the raid that killed her family wasn't random, and her mother was much more than just a wife and mother - she was also the former head of a rebellion. It sounds a little cliche (what fantasy plot, when boiled down, doesn't to some extent?), but it gives a sense of direction for me as the author so I don't lose track of where I'm headed. So I would challenge you to distill the entirety of your plot into just a few sentences. If you can't - if you don't know what your MC's motivations are, why? Your main question at the end was concerning bringing down the boss, but she doesn't enter the picture until almost the very end of a long explanation. If she's a main factor, figure out how to balance the components of your story. Give her equal space in your five sentence explanation, or at least a hint of what the opposition is. If your story is MC finds out about fake people, and then tries to stop his boss from killing them, a lot of the explanation you've given doesn't quite fit. I hope this helps, and if any of it is unclear, let me know! I'll try to clarify.
I made it through, but it was difficult. Is the focus on singing career, or on fake people? Hard to tell. A pre-med student MC who is stressed out by ??? in his day to day life goes to an open-mic singing competition knowing he has little chance to win and competes miserably against more talented singers. But when he loses the competition and later finds the winner injured, who turns out to be a fake person (is this an android, artificially modified person, ???), he has to decide whether to ignore what he discovered or seek out more information about fake people, becoming a whistle-blower/detective/???. If discovering that fake people /manufactured people exist is your story catalyst or "inciting incident", then that should drive your MC's actions. Depending on whether your story is action or mystery or thriller, he is either pursuing answers or being pursued. And then you know you have an Antagonist, someone /something bent on preventing the MC from finding/revealing. The fake person he treated knows the MC knows he/it is fake. What impact will that have on the story and MC? Will the fake person stay in hiding and not tell anyone, or will it tell the Manufacturers? And that's the key, what is your MC trying to do in the story, and what is the antagonist trying to do or prevent?
I don't know how cussing is viewed on these forums, but I'm going to include an apology with it so maybe that will soften the blow. My story is a clusterfuck. This I understand at at least a basic level. Alright, let me answer in order. 1. Student is stressed out by school. He doesn't think he can fit into the mold of a doctor even though he likes to help people, so he pursues his hobby of singing more seriously because he thinks he will reap more benefits from that. This relates to how he ends up feeling (at first) about 'fake people' - he tries his best to sing authentically and with emotion, and he believes that 'fake people' can never measure up to that, yet steal coveted spots from 'actual, feeling humans'. 2. If I had to choose between the choices you presented, I would say "artificially modified person". They are created in a lab to serve certain purposes. To clarify, they only create celebrities at the moment because creating other types of people has its difficulties. 3. He is a whistle-blower indeed, but his new friend (FMG), a fake person himself, tries to keep him from spreading the truth, at least initially, because FMG is rather liberal with his views on how these new type of people should be treated - with equality and respect. The question you raised I had thought about, although not very deeply honestly. I think the 'fake person' would try to hide the fact it had been discovered from its manufacturer because then it would show that it had acted in a defective way, and the person wouldn't want to be retired and thus terminated. Though that might be a cop-out... I'm sorry it was difficult to get through. I tried to summarize it as best I could - however to be true, making things simple and to the point is not a strength of mine. Thank you for responding. Yes, there is quite a bit of information there. As I said in my reply to the previous person, I can be quite long-winded. Answers: He is at school on a scholarship. Yes, he is willing to drop everything because he feels that lost, and is quite confident that he can make it. In my mind, he had been practicing for a month before the competition and thought he'd perfected his performance. To be honest, I hadn't considered if he'd been sacrificing his schooling to do so, but thinking about it now, I'd say no, because he's the careful sort that would want to keep up his grades on the off chance that he misses the mark. I think I confused you here. No murder. Just a malfunction with how the 'fake person' works. The 'muscles' in their throat need lubrication to work, and they overextended themselves with the performance, so they start having trouble. As for the setting, I imagine it's modern day, just a different take on it. This story is quite similar to one episode of the cartoon Gravity Falls, "Boyz Crazy", though I didn't get the idea from that. I think you're right. I have two oppositions in my story that I was thinking of: two different manufacturers that are trying to destroy the current line of 'fake people' to bring in a new era that consists of their improved product line. However now that I think about it, I don't see how this fits. This is the first serious story I've tried to write, and I've read all manner of articles saying how you need to show cause and effect in your plot and make the events tightly sequenced. So I tried to come up with a good chain of happenings that would lead to the part with the boss, but I guess that didn't work. I don't know how to fix it though. Thank you for the response. I appreciate it.
My feedback wasn't meant to be dig, I apologize if it came off that way. At its basic level, a story is about a person who wants to get something or evade something, the obstacles they go through along the way, and the resulting change in who they are when they succeed or fail. Your MC and your Antagonist are in conflict about a particular goal, and only one of them can get what they want, the other loses. I can give you my thoughts and ideas, and questions you may not have considered yet, but ultimately it's YOUR story. He starts out as a pre-med student on scholarship, not really sure he's cut out to be a doctor. That's good. So one of his character flaws is being unsure of himself. Does he have any other flaws pertinent to your story? If that's his main flaw, being unsure of himself, then by the end of your story he should become confident in himself, maybe even in his ability to be a doctor. Your MC's start and end should be "bookends". In section 1, your catalyst is finding out about "fake people". That catalyst puts your MC in a position where he either has to do something or not do something, and that choice to go ahead is what kicks you into the middle. Everything in the beginning sets up the problem the middle and ending are trying to solve. So that's why I was asking if the focus is on singing or on fake people. Your MC needs a goal (eg find out who is building fake people and stop them), life and death stakes (whether truly life and death, or he could lose his scholarship and end up waiting tables, or...), and conflict (who is trying to help him with his goal, and more importantly who is trying to prevent him from achieving it because of their own goal.)
It's okay. I am just sorry for confusing you. I'm glad that you even responded at all. Don't worry about your tone. I agree on that definition of a story. It seems that despite how simple it is to define it, it's very hard to actually make it work in practice. (At least for me.) I don't know if the questions you're asking me are rhetorical questions, but I'll respond for my own records in either case. 1. Flaws = he is unsure of himself, but tries to hide it. He is the weird kid and tries to hide how people's criticisms of him affect him. Years of them have stripped away at his resolve. However in the ideal situation, he is very confident, honest, and loyal to a fault. And although he should understand and accept people who are looked down upon for their differences, he doesn't accept the 'fake people'. I wanted my story to end with his new friend dying. So he gains the ability to see through the 'fake people's' eyes, and he gets revenge on the people that tricked him into killing his special person. I'm thinking about what you've said about the focus. I think I made the beginning too... plot-convenient? He has to sing because that's where he's able to meet FMG. I'm not sure how to fix that yet. But I think I have a tentative middle and an end: Beginning: ?? Middle: In his pursuit of trying to stop 'fake people', MC gets hired as a part-time lab tech at the company that manufactured FMG. He offers to help them take down their competition, because he knows if he does this it will lead to his own employer stopping their production if he plays it right. He's aiming for exposure. However, he gets tricked into making a drug that will really and truly end 'fake people', not just slow them down like he was promised... End: FMG dies as a result of MC's actions. MC changes his views on 'fake people' and destroys the woman responsible for FMG's death. I'm mad at myself because the more I think about this, the more difficult it gets to make something coherent. I'll keep trying, though.
We all struggle with it, no worries. Especially when we have a snippet of a great idea, but turning it into a real story gets complicated. Lots of moving pieces.
I'm digging this thread out from the grave. Is my story better if I make it so the MC is just interested in singing, ends up at the competition out of interest, and has a grudge against those people because of his interest? Would that eliminate the overabundance of plots? Does anyone else have opinions on this story? Thank you if you respond.
