Alright so this story idea has been bouncing around my skull for over a year now. I think I should finally put it on paper but it in order to tell it how I want to, it will have to be long and rather complex.
So I have these two characters Adaline and Ingrid, who grow up as childhood friends. Both girls are intelligent and open-minded. Once they enter junior high, however, they go their seperate ways and lose touch.
Ingrid begins to classify herself as an atheist, and developes a desire to never marry, to travel and live independently.
Adaline's family was always been close to another family, in which there is a son, Noah that is the girls' age. Both Adaline's and Noah's families are deeply devoted to their church, (perhaps Noah's dad is a pastor) and the parents are good friends. Their mothers begin to urge Adaline and Noah to date. This eventually works, when they reach high school, and after school they marry. She is sentenced to a bland life of cooking and cleaning and caturing to Noah, even though she is remarkably intellectual and skeptical. She gives birth to a few children, and is surrounded by a considerably large family.
Meanwhile, Ingrid is living as a vagabond. She travels about the world, giving assistance (perhaps through the red cross or peace core). She is educated, willed, and respected. But, she never really grows to love anyone. Never has a family, or even any really close friends. Oh... and, due to her strength, she has had many an arguement with the sexist, opinionated Noah.
The three meet again, after twenty years, at a class reunion. And that's where the story kind of takes off.
Now, I think I can pull this off pretty well. However, I was thinking it may be interesting if I sort of wrote two stories into one. The "is" (where Adaline is stuck in an unequal marriage and Ingrid is roaming life in solitude) and I was thinking about weaving in the "could have been" through out the story. Does that make sense? So like, maybe every other chapter could flip from what their lives are, to what their lives could've been had they chosen differently or had different influences.
I just don't know if that would be too confusing and complicated for the reader.
Please help me out here. I really have got to get this thing going.
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