Young Writers Society

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.

Combing the "is" with "could have been" sounds very like the film "Sliding Doors", which handles a similar idea very well. Try watching that and see if it helps. ^_^

I would query the necessity of having the "bad" family and husband be religious. What does this add except a level of hypocrisy that has been done multiple times before?

Doable: Definitely. Easy: No.

I would love to read this though, and would be willing to committ time to reviewing sequential portions of a large piece of it.

The biggest danger, in my view, is to come to an easy or transparently judgemental narrative conclusion of "this lifestyle is better than this one", but that's avoidable.

Let me know if/when you post, though I'll be busy for the next week.

I don't think that it's too complicated, but it will be hard to put into text. You will have to be sure to differ between characters to limit confusion. I think that this could be a really cool piece though, depending how it is put together. Go at it!

I think that you should write the first few chapters, and read them through.
Then you can get the perspective of both the reader as well as the writer.
And if you're still not sure, you can post it here or get a friend to read it through for a second opinion.
Hope this helps!

w&w

It doesn't seem too complicated! It's more about how you execute your idea in order to prevent confusion for readers if you're worried about confusion.

Perhaps the people themselves in one world are called another. Perhaps it's just a random characters day dreaming. It's entirely up to you but distinguishing the two different lives is extremely important. The two lives will have to both have some conflict and be extremely different so that in your readers' minds, they don't mix the two different stories together.

Personally, I love it! As long as the "is" and the "could have been" is clearly separated (or maybe not, depending on how you want to tell the story), I think that could be really, really awesome.

I think combining the 'is' with the 'could have been' is a really interesting idea but if you're unsure about how you want to structure this then perhaps try writing ONE and then the OTHER before making up your mind. Have you considered how you are going to structure this novel? I.e is it third person narrative or first person? If it's first person then is it from Ingrid, Adaline or Noah? My first thought was that you could get a good story going if you perhaps wrote chapters from the perspective of each of those characters; perhaps a good way of allowing the reader to fully understand the character. However, I don't see how you would work that with the 'could have been'. Another suggestion would be to occasionally have your character's IMAGINE what their life would have been like i.e 'If only I'd done this...' and perhaps go on a stream of consciousness that would allow you to depict that to the reader. I think it's been mentioned before about having the 'my life is better than yours' direct comparison issue. My suggestion to avoid this is to try and remove the obvious black and white sections and provide more grey areas for your characters. Perhaps Adaline does like some parts of her life after all, she does have children and she DID marry Noah so there must be something there. Perhaps Ingrid does secretly want some of Adaline's lifestyle too. I don't know how much impact the religion will have on your story, it is a good way to lead Adaline into being with Noah but in modern society (that is, if your setting it in modern society) it doesn't have to be as big an impact though perhaps Noah is more religious than Adaline, perhaps less?
It sounds like an interesting idea, I look forward to reading whatever you've got to offer when it's done!