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Originally Posted by randyflycaster
Here's a revised description of my long story. Any thoughts? Thanks, Randy Kadish.
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Hi Randy. Here are some things I'd be interested to know as a potential reader and/or be thinking hard about as a potential author:
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Originally Posted by randyflycaster
When Amanda's mother deserts her to be with a new man, Amanda is hurt and betrayed. She loses faith in the world. To relieve her pain, she retreats into fly fishing, but soon she learns that her loving grandmother has terminal cancer.
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Amanda's mother deserts her? Or leaves her with her grandmother? Does she explain that she needs to spend some time with her new man putting together a home that she can bring Amanda to later? Does she phone/write regularly? Does she promise that she'll be along to fetch Amanda "real soon now" and then make excuses? Does she visit and cause Amanda trauma when it's time to go back to the big city and her man, once again without Amanda?
Amanda retreats into fly-fishing. Why not fishing, and just preferring fly-fishing. It'll give you a slightly larger area to treat the reader to expertise that will draw in the fishermen who will nod wisely, and impress the non-fishermen. How does she get into fishing? Was it her father, who is now dead/disappeared (why?)/living somewhere else after splitting up with Amanda's mother? Was he a loving figure? Quiet? Someone she just sat quietly and watched and learned that way? Has his disappearance out of her life affected her positively or negatively? Or was it the grieving alcoholic, with whom she establishes a rapport based on both of them having things to grieve over? You've got a lot of room for a bit of humour here, if the GA teaches her. It takes time to learn to cast, and she can spend fuming hours patiently loosening her line from some bushes only to try a new cast and have them fasten in the bushes again.
Jesus, you really put Amanda through it! Why terminal cancer for crying out loud? Wouldn't it do with something less fatal but still serious so that she can swing from hope to despair a few times, and have a final tear-filled burst of joy when grandma is finally declared out of danger?
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Originally Posted by randyflycaster
Amanda struggles to find answers, and then one day, on the banks of the Junction River, she searches for her grandmother with Shana, her adopted dog, and Vernon, a grieving alcoholic. Together, they experience an unexpected, terrifying event. Will this event increase Amanda’s hurt, or will it help her come to terms?
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"Amanda struggles to find answers". You got that right! If all this doesn't turn her into an atheist, nothing will! "An unexpected, terrifying event". I don't think you need a UTE to increase Amanda's hurt. She's got enough on her plate without UTEs, but if you're determined, it would be a good idea to at least know the nature of the UTE - possibly via PM - so that one can form a better opinion of its relevance to the story. We need to know that to be able to comment on whether it will increase Amanda's hurt or help her come to terms. To terms with what?
Randy, you gave us what in the film branch is called a log-line, which is a very short teaser, a skeleton with very little meat. I think we would need a synopsis (possibly with spoiler) to give you a really good answer, but at least you've got, maybe, some ideas that you might like to incorporate into your story.
My first thought was that you have given us the material for a very short novel, but there are ways to fill it out and turn it into not exactly a feel-good book (it could be if grandma doesn't die) but one of those books about life at a less hectic pace than, say, New York or London or even Stockholm for that matter. A sort of fictional "A Year in Provence". These seem to be more popular, the more life increases its pace, perhaps because they provide people with a way to get away from it all without the annoyances of flies, mosquitos and stinging nettles.
Just another thought: does Amanda go to school? If so, how does she get on with her schoolmates? Does she have a special friend who comes home with her to grandma for cookies and milk?
Please don't make her a mobbed student. There are enough stresses in being in school without adding to her sense of rejection. And with her background, she could turn into a misanthrope on less. Or is this set in the wilder parts of the Appalachians, where her only duties are chores after which she is free to chase butterflies, suck grass straws or go fly-fishing?
And we need to know a bit more about grandma. She's loving, but is she wise or ignorant, educative or not, over-protective or does she give Amanda room to make her own mistakes?
All this just my two cents, of course. Hope it gives you the kind of answer you were hoping for.