The Adventure

The Adventure is about 4 siblings who have been placed in foster care after an incident where their father gets arrested. The oldest one, Thomas finds out that he will be separated from the others.

Here is the plot in more detail.....
Thomas, Skyler, Justin, and Emily live in the country with their abusive drunk father who is the sole guardian. Their mother died in a car accident which caused their father to act the way he is now. Thomas tries his best to keep his siblings safe, but one night Skyler gets into a fight with their father, which the neighbor hears and calls for police. In the end., the police arrest the father and the children get put into foster care. Upon being in foster care, Thomas learns that he maybe split up from his siblings. So he gathers up his siblings and they run away but to where? Thomas remembers that his mother had a sister who lives in VIctoria BC. So they hit the road trying to figure out where and how to get to Victoria. All the while the police are looking for them.



As I said this is just my plot I will be making the chapters soon
Thanks for reading this

Author's Note

Please let me know if you think this would be interesting

Reviews

[CLCurrie]

I write out the plot and outline for all my stories which helps me to know where I want to go with my stories, but the characters can change the plot and events of the stories as I write it. The best way I heard this said is, "Plot is what drives the story forward and the story is how the characters react to the plot." I would keep the plot, build off of it, but you are not bound to it. If it needs to change while you are writing it, then let it change. It might be easier for writers who only work on one story at a time not to have a plot but I like to work on a couple different stories at a time. So, I need the plot and outline in case I need to set a story to the side for a bit.

[Rini]

Thank you for your input I appreciate it 😃 and yes I am totally going to continue to write the story next, soon once I’m not so busy. Would love to hear what you think of the story once I have started to write it

[JayG]

You're thinking in terms of the plot being interesting. But people don't read for plot details, because story can only be appreciated in retrospect. And if we don't make the reader WANT to finish the story they won't.

Your reader wants to be entertained, beginning on page one. And if that doesn't happen, why would they turn to page two? After all, there are lots of stories that will make them WANT to turn the pages.

So in the end, what matters is writing well enough to hook the reader early. Because if you don't, they'll never know what a great plot you had, right?

And though it might be nice if reading fiction made us know how to hook the reader, but reading fiction no more teaches to write it than eating teaches us to cook. So unless your schooldays training has made you familiar with such terms as scene-and-sequel, short-term scene-goal, and motivation/response units, it would pay to spend a bit of time digging into the tricks of the trade, because no matter your talent, unless that talent is given the tools to work with, and the knowledge of what those tools can do, you're in the position Mark Twain defined with, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

So keep writing? Of course. But do so with knowledge, rather then just a desire and good intentions, because our schoolday training in writing technique was centered on the needs of our future employers. That's why we were assigned so many reports and essays and so few stories. In other words, we wrote mostly nonfiction—whose goal is to inform, where the goal of fiction is to entertain.

The library's fiction-writing section contains the views of successful writers, publishing pros, and noteworthy teachers, and can be a huge resource.

Since this is your first fiction, though, I'd suggest you dig up a copy of Debra Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It's a warm, easy read, like sitting down with Deb to talk about writing. Just read it slowly, with plenty of time spent thinking over what each new point means in terms of your own writing. Spend time practicing the point, too,so you don't just nod understanding, and then, two days later, forget you read it.

You might want to poke around in my writing blog, a bit, to get a feel for how much different the art of writing fiction is from the skills you learned for nonfiction. The articles aren't meant to substitute for actual research and study, but they can give you a feel for the areas you need to focus on.

But whatever you do: hang in there, and keep-on-writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[Rini]

Thanks for the review and for your advice, I was just doing the plot just to see if I had something or not but I appreciate your thoughts and for helping me🙂

[JayG]

Forget plot. Give the best plot ever devised to a new author and the result will be rejected in a paragraph—not because of talent, but because they lack the professional knowledge the pros take for granted.

Give a lousy plot to a pro, though, and you might get, "The plot was just so-so, but I love her writing.

But no one ever said, "The writing was lousy, but the blot was great, because, as Sol Stein observed: “Readers don’t notice point-of-view errors. They simply sense that the writing is bad.”

And when the writing is bad, who keeps turning pages?

So there's nothing wrong with the plot. Tell it well—give your words wings—and the reader will adore you.

[Rini]

So should I get rid of the plot and just go for the first chapter or keep the plot? I’m sorry I’m just trying to understand what you mean

[JayG]

My point is that plot is necessary, but of secondary importance. It's the road map. When you write a story, how detailed that map must be depends on the writer, and how they work. We need the starting point, the ending point, and some number of places to pass through on the way if the story is to have coherence for the reader.

But plot is of importance to the writer because it's their guide, and keeps you progressing in coherent fashion, so that one scene leads to the other, raising tension and narrowing choices as we progress toward the black moment and the climax.

The reader? What matters to them is the writing, page-by-page. Bore the reader for a paragraph and they're gone—especially if you do it in the first few pages. Confuse them and they're gone, too. And that's a matter of writing, not plot.

Think of yourself halfway through any book. You probably don't know where the plot is going, or how the story will end. But still, you've been made to WANT to know what will happen NEXT so you're still reading.

Think about someone in a bookstore with a book in their hands. They turn to page one and read a few pages. If the author did it right, mild curiosity has been turned to active interest within a few pages. "Let's see what this is like, has been turned to, "Tell me more...please." And that commitment is brought, not by the plot; not by the events, but by the way the writing made the reader care. And that's an emotional goal, not an informational one. Facts can't do that. Writing that pulls us into the story, emotionally, does.

My point is that no way in hell can the report-writing skills we all learn in school make a reader feel that way. So no matter how good your plot is, you need to develop skill in entertaining your reader. It's not all that hard to learn, though becoming proficient does take practice. It's just a different approach: emotion rather then fact-based, and character-centric instead of being author-centric

So is your plot okay? Sure...if it's presented in a way that makes the reader care about, and even worry about, the protagonist.

You can learn to do that as easily as you learned to write nonfiction (or with as much frustration, I suppose). And the good news is that learning a few professional tricks can make the act of writing a lot more fun. Instead of dictating the protagonist's behavior based on what you WANT them to do, you'll be forced to become the protagonist to know their viewpoint, and what they think is best for THEM.

You need to know how to best place the reader into a scene, how to introduce and raise tension (and why you need to do that). You need to know how to present your protagonist's viewpoint, and what that can do to make your story seem real.

(This article will show you what I mean, and what such tricks can do for you:
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-grumpy-writing-coach-8/ )

A scene on the page is very different from one on stage or film because of the huge differences between film and our medium. But I'm betting that your teachers never mentioned that, because, unless they trained for the profession of fiction-writer, no one ever told them. But, how can we write a scene that will please a reader if we don't truly know what a scene is? If we aren't aware of the three three issues a reader needs addressed on entering a scene, will we address them?

I sure didn't when I turned to writing my stories. In fact, I mad all the new writer mistakes because you can't use the tool you don't know exists. Nor can you fix the problem you don't see as one.

And that's why I suggested you spend some time digging into the tricks of the trade. And here's the thing: If you're truly meant to be a writer, you'll spend a lot of time saying, "Oh my...but, it's so obvious. Why didn't I see it for myself?"

Want a quick example? Ask ten friends what's different about the first paragraph of of a chapter, in half the fiction, and even nonfiction in the library.

The difference is simple, obvious, and you've been seeing it all your life. But will you know without looking? Most people never consciously note it till it's pointed out—just like so many of the tricks of fiction.

So have at it, and dig into the art and craft of creating stories. It will give your plot wings. Then, who knows where you'll fly to?