Young Writers Society

I'm writing a story. The plot is thus:

Lulu Clatchey breaks her neck and dies. She then decides to apply to be a guardian angel, and ends up getting assigned to guard Hattie Harton, the eccentric old lady next door. She embarks on a quest to help Hattie prepare for her estranged lover's return from a trip to America. However, complications arise-i.e., it turns out that Hattie's estranged lover's already married.

This leads Lulu to an epiphany about failure and success, whether she has failed Hattie, whether her life was a failure or a success, etc. She also has to find a way to salvage her work with Hattie Harton.

So, would anyone actually be interested in reading something like this? Please be brutally honest.

Reminds me a bit of The Wish List, Eoin Colfer. Purely for the concept of a teenager - is she a teenager? - helping out a "senior citizen", but that's pretty much where the similarities end. Anyway, I'd be interested in reading this, as long as you don't preach. It's sounds like it could get preachy come the end of this. If you can avoid that, I'd be interested, yes.

The thing with plots when romance is the predominant theme, putting twists like "her lover's already married" is an old, rather predictable trick. Just the fact that there is a twist in the story makes it predictable; even if you turned it around so that he's gay or something, okay that's slightly better but readers would still be expecting a twist.

I also agree that it could get preachy at the end, should you not keep your plot first. That's the trick when dealing with messages: put your characters' current situation first so you're not bashing a message into your reader's heads.

PM me with questions!

~Rosey

I quite like the idea. I do see the slight resemblance to Eoin Colfer's The Wish List but it wouldn't necessarily be anything like it. An idea that you should have is to make the characters death more of a main point in the story that ties back at the very end, if you understand me. I mean, just randomly getting assigned to someone is a bit, well, strange. Maybe it seems like that at first, but then she remembers this lady somehow, some random event that happened previously, like she saved her life or something. I'm not sure, and remember it's your story so you can disregard everything I just said if you like.