Young Writers Society

Ok, I don't know if this sounds stupid or not. Some of you may have noticed that I have trouble sticking to one story idea (I doubt that I will ever make a story going further than Chapter 5). But anywho, this is my next one. And this time, I already have the whole 'basic' plot down beforehand lol. I know its missing a lot but suggestions, comments, and whatnot are strongly welcomed!

~ All around the world, men and women—especially teenagers—are disappearing one by one. No one knows for sure why and there is no “cure”.
~ Jesse Freeman’s, the main character, father is one of the victims of the “Disappearing Epidemic”.
~ For financial situations, Jesse has to move from Frederick town (haha..haven't figured out setting) to the city, leaving her adventurous childhood friend Austin Laager behind.
~ At her new high school, a few students have disappeared as well.
~ Nevertheless, Jesse chooses which classes she is going to take for the next semester.
~ The school counselor says that Jesse would not be able to graduate from freshman year if she doesn’t take an elective. The school counselor suggests music.
~ Meanwhile, Austin Laager calls Jesse telling her that he has devoted himself to try to find out why teens and adults are missing back at Frederick.
~ In Jesse’s first day of music class, she gets paired up with Michael Randall, a loner, for a project on music composition.
~ The next week of school, the music teacher requires Jesse and Michael to work at one of their houses on the composition project due to the lack of work done at school.
~ When they meet at Jesse’s house, Jesse finds out that Michael has a gift for music. They begin to work on a song titled “Opposite Poles”.
~ The next two weeks, they meet at Michael’s house but Jesse finds out that he has an abusive father
~ To make him feel better, they go to an ice cream shop. Michael pretends to be Jesse’s friend so he can come over to her house more instead of his house.
~ Jesse calls Austin. Though, when she calls him, a woman picks up to say that his family hasn’t been living there for years.
~ It has now been a month and a half, and on their last day of working on Opposite Poles, Michael doesn’t show up.
~ Jesse decides to walk to his house. The door is open. She finds him knocked out on his bed with a bottle in his hand.

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Jesse wakes up in an asylum. Austin asks her what was in the bottle and Jesse doesn’t answer. The reader finds out that the people weren’t disappearing at all—they committed suicide (there were pills in the bottle). Jesse eventually went crazy after another one of the people closest to her (father and Michael) committed suicide. Now in college and a leading spokesperson for suicide prevention, Austin continues to visit his childhood friend in the local asylum.

I really like it! Just one thing that I question - so everyone around the world is committing suicide? It'd be kind of hard to spin that though =/ Maybe something *caused* them to commit suicide, I dunno.

The ending would be a little weak. It's a cop-out kind of; like the "and then I woke up" or whatever. But of course, as an authour, you'll tweak and change things as you write. It sounds awesome; if you write it, I can't wait to read

**MOVED** to Writers Corner.

Teague
x

I had to come check this out after you mentioned it! Ahaha. And I have to say, I think it seems very interesting. I would definitely read this! But I agree with JosephDean, the whole suicide thing seems a tiny bit unrealistic. Try to find a reason for it. Like maybe some bad guy is sending sublinimal messages through a popular TV show? I don't know, play with ideas. Deffinitely try it, though!

And also,

Some of you may have noticed that I have trouble sticking to one story idea (I doubt that I will ever make a story going further than Chapter 5).

I know it won't be until almost a year from now, and you might not want to wait that long, but in November, there's National Novel Writing Month, and basically what it is (if you haven't heard of it) is a contest to write 50,000 words in a month. The dealine really helped me actually finish a novel (well, I'm almost there!!) and you might want to try it. (:

i'll agree with what others have said: this sounds very intriguing, though, at this point, the focus/theme seems rather split. my main problem is with the disappearing epidemic. As others have said, it'll take some effort to really make it work. I guess my main concern is that the story seems to start as a sort of mystery/thriller with the epidemic, then turns into more of a LitFic type thing about friendship.

Basically, I'm wondering, how exactly does suicide as a mysterious global epidemic really fit into this story? At moments, thinking about it, I can almost see it working, but I can't really grasp how. I guess, my advice would be - if you're going to make it weird, make it _weird_ - maybe, I dunno, she sees suicide as a disease, so maybe play that up a bit? Make it so that there are symptoms - and make it so that she sees them physically? Basically, if she's going to be insane, make it so that her narration comes into question, maybe put in a few things in there where the reader wonders if they really happened or not.

Of course, now that I read that over, it's a lot to ask from an outline It's more thoughts on what might work in the actual writing. So basically, my input: Think about the disappearing epidemic and how you want to represent it. As it stands now, the twist/reveal doesn't seem very strong, but it might seem stronger with more attention on the above mentioned aspect. Otherwise, seems like a really interesting piece - I wonder if you have any personal experience with the topic? I know that writing's often very cathartic, and can be a good way to deal with such things.

Anyways, my two (er, six, seven?) cents.

~Annie

I really like it, but why does the boy have to be abused?

Abuse has become way too common a theme in my opinion.

I really like it! As everything else anyone writes, it could use some work. But it could be really good!