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It is about a girl who immigrates from Italy with her family to "the new country."
Her father finds work, becomes successful, but one day her daughter accidentally ruins his uniform.
After that he works in poorer paying jobs, and eventually gets frustrated and lashes all this out at the daughter.
He physically abuses her and says "this is all your fault." This breaks her emotional state and believes all the lies that her father tells her, that she will never amount to anything, that she this is all she's good for.
This breaks her so much that she performs poorly academically and becomes sexually promiscuous.
She's in and out of relationships because of this.
As a young adult, she becomes a stripper but a man who is in love with her and was friends with her since grade school encourages her not to and tells her she is worth more. She gets defensive about it and says he doesn't know what he is talking about. She tells him to back off.
But, not quick to despair or get discouraged, he follows her to the strip clubs to protect her in case something bad happens.
In one event, a group of patrons at the strip club put roofies in her drink, and the male friend catches on and knows what car the person one of the patrons who put the drug in the drink drove in.
So then, he pretends to be an announcer and says that the car has to be removed because it is in a tow away zone. As soon as they hear this, they all leave thinking the car is going to get towed.
The male friend then catches her stripper friend who is half asleep and drives her back to her apartment.
They end up in a romantic relationship with each other. However she's only in it because she is desperate and lonely.
She later on cheats on him and hooks up with one of her exes. The boyfriend attempts suicide because of this but before this the girlfriend goes to his apartment and looks at all the beautiful drawings he had of her and one was with her as a stripper, one as a lunchlady, the other as a warrior, etc. and in the middle it says "Patricia, I will always love you no matter what."
She then chases for his boyfriend who she cheated on. Her gut instinct said he would be at the bridge and when he finds his boyfriend attempting to risk his life, she comes to him and tells him he doesn't have to do this and they makeout a bit. And that the only reason she cheated on him and wasn't committed was because being in and out of abusive relationships was what she was used to what if she felt was only worth.
In two years, they end up married.
She finds work as a lunchlady but is then forced to cook inedible food items. She works in a lower income school that is mostly white. The principal is very draconian and only cares about her own interests.
It isn't finished yet as I am making changes.
However I wanted to hear the opinions from any writers. Any feedback is appreciated.
There's enough lurid purple prose there in your synopsis that I think the lunch lady scenario is a good way to end the book.
It leaves you with your choice of a happy ending or a sad one. The rest of the plot is all so melodramatic it would make a great paperback romance.
I'm not real familiar with that genre, except I know almost all of the biggest ones have happy endings.
You have a lot of work ahead of you in the turmoil between fresh romance and the marriage of your lead characters.
If you can pull of their motivations well enough to see them to the altar, I think the lunch lady ending could be a better start of a 2nd book on your characters than to continue it in the 1st.
There's enough lurid purple prose there in your synopsis that I think the lunch lady scenario is a good way to end the book.
It leaves you with your choice of a happy ending or a sad one. The rest of the plot is all so melodramatic it would make a great paperback romance.
I'm not real familiar with that genre, except I know almost all of the biggest ones have happy endings.
You have a lot of work ahead of you in the turmoil between fresh romance and the marriage of your lead characters.
If you can pull of their motivations well enough to see them to the altar, I think the lunch lady ending could be a better start of a 2nd book on your characters than to continue it in the 1st.
Thanks!
I was also thinking of the elementary school being an all girl school where the principal really hates the children.
The principal constantly insults the children and their parents when she speaks to them and says things like “your parents are stupid that’s why they’re stuck here in Jawnee (haven’t thought of the name of the town really but let’s go with that)
Then she says “the fact that you are their (as she holds her hands and makes her face in an endearing yet sarcastic way) “most precious little gifts they have” is pathetic really!”
She makes the students knit clothes (some of them are as young as five) and students who don’t know partake in this after school program fail for the year.
It’s basically a sweatshop where the students don’t get paid and the teacher principal received all the profit.
All the chairs in the classrooms have nails in the backside so students won’t get too “comfortable” when they are trying to concentrate in class and work.
I’m thinking the school should be K to 6, as well.
Also I forgot to mention about the lunchlady she would date strong alpha males bc after her dad abusing her she want a “strong tough guy” to “protect her” but would end up taking advantage of her since she’s so vulnerable until she met her future husband.
I admire your impressive ability to create big scenarios!
They're a very good framework for building a novel onto.
But in extended writing, such as a novel, the devil is in the details. The frame's construction at some point, and the rest of the work has to fill it in.
You have such a rich imagination I think you could possibly handle this story like Margaret Mitchell did when she wrote 'Gone With The Wind'. She wrote her novel beginning at the end and worked backwards to the beginning.
It's really hard to come up with a good ending to a long story. It's easier to just choose a beginning and then string it along. It's the ending that always counts the most, though, because the ending is the payoff for the entire book.
Mitchell knew where she wanted to end; Scarlett O'Hara was a strong, willful woman who couldn't ever be subservient to any man, even though she loved him intensely. So in the end, she had to be alone to live her life because of who she was. She couldn't change her basic nature. She did what she had to do because she was who she was.
Once Mitchell understood the nature of her protagonist, it allowed her the freedom to start and the logical ending of her character's most important period of her life. Scarlett never changed, but everyone and everything around her did.
Scarlett's the iron center of Mitchell's framework.
This allowed Mitchell to tell an extremely complicated and detailed story about everything surrounding Scarlett. All Mitchell had to do was put Scarlett into the middle of every scene, and Scarlett's unchanging nature gave her plenty of room to develop all the rest.
Since Mitchell already knew how her character's ending was, Mitchell never had to answer any questions that you will have about your own character and where your character will go next.
It seems to me you've created a similar belle of the ball to Scarlett.
How is life likely to be when the young belle of the ball is a full-grown woman who has accomplished what she's wanted all her life? What did she have to lose to gain that? Did she actually get what she wanted? Or did she lose everything?
Answer those questions, and I think you may have your book.
Margaret Mitchell may have only intended to write a romantic tale of one woman's only great love of her life, and how that love was won and lost, but in that story, she told the tale of the entire Civil War south by filling in all the details of all the other characters in her novel.
But a strong romance can happen in any time period. Choosing a colorful time to place the romance into makes it easy for the story to expand outwards.
Shakespeare knew he wanted to write a tragedy, so he could have written Romeo and Juliet backwards. Every person's beginning is always pretty certain, but every person's ending is always unsure unless you know the ending before you begin.
Last edited by banjomike; 06-21-2019 at 01:16 PM..
I got hung up on an immigrant fellow "becoming successful" and having his uniform ruined. What?
That. And I can't figure the time period. Details seem to time jump. We have roofies in one scene, and children of elementary age being forced to knit clothes which is from pre WWI and really sounds like something out of Dickens.
I got hung up on an immigrant fellow "becoming successful" and having his uniform ruined. What?
The girl draws an Italian flag and the boss is very anti cultural pluralist so he gets offended by it and takes it as a sign of disrespect and fires him.
That. And I can't figure the time period. Details seem to time jump. We have roofies in one scene, and children of elementary age being forced to knit clothes which is from pre WWI and really sounds like something out of Dickens.
Well it’s labeled as an “after school activity that helps the cognitive skills as well as emotional development of our schools youth”
It’s basically child slavery but with a nice ring to it.
The principal adopts little kids from other countries and one disabled kid from the United States.
She makes them their slaves but the foreign kids could not learn English and the disabled kid couldn’t perform any tasks
So instead, she chops them up, gives the bodies to the former lunchlady, as “mystery meat” and the kids eat them.
Five years later, one of the kids comes in her dreams and talks to her and says “I was supposed to be a doctor and create a powerful vaccine and then she breaks into tears and says “but you will never know you will never know” she then sobs and leaves
In a panic, the principal then rushes to the bathroom and the girl again haunts her and says “you will never know”, and screams as the little girl pulls on her arms, and raises her voice “YOU WILL NEVER KNOW!”
The principal screams and leaves.
She sees an image of the disabled kid making an everlasting friendship, and the other kid feeding him and clothing.
The little girl continues “YOU WILL NEVER KNOW! Your wrath, injustice, and selfishness will have to be taken into account one day!”
The principal gravels on the floor and puts her hands over her ears “Make this stop! MAKE THIS STOP!”
I suggest you try actually putting some of these ideas onto paper and attempt to make them readable before you carry some more into your novel.
What you have written so far is nothing but a synopsis. It's far, far, from being a book. And as a synopsis, you've taken it into several haywire directions I think are beyond my ability to make sense of to a reader.
Now, your gifts as a writer are probably greater than mine, but I would certainly like to see some evidence they are. Your first thoughts in your synopsis were the most realistic, in my view, but I thought I would have a hard time constructing the motivations that are driving your bad-girl protagonist. Without motivation, she's just a paper cut-out, an awkward puppet the reader can't connect with as a human being.
Work on a couple of chapters now, and see how good you are at making her a human. Once she's human to your readers, she can be as extreme as you wish. But if she's not human, your readers will call it quits after the first chapter.
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