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@kayla-skywriter My apologies, I should have tagged you, heh. With that in view, I did leave some comments on your Google Doc, so if you want to look at those, that may help. I do feel the need to address some points that line-item Google Doc criticism really doesn’t cover, so here we go.

First, this is story is really dark, so I’m sorry if it is in any way autobiographical or about someone you knew. One of my friends has been through the foster care system and tells horror stories about it, and this story strikes me as an honest portrayal. That’s almost a theme of its own kind, about how the foster care system isn’t exactly bright and friendly and people can be jerks. The constant shipping around from place to place is war on your sanity. The story needs to be told, and I admire you for venturing into this extreme darkness to tell it.

The reason I’m saying this is that the details of the foster care system you’re telling seem accurate. If it’s not from experience or account, it’s well researched.

Not only that, but this story has two other theme topics already, and that’s not a bad thing, as stories can have multiple themes. But a theme is more than a topic, it’s a statement about that topic. For example: “the foster care system isn’t a friendly place to live” is a theme – “the foster care system” is just a topic.

Identity – First, we have the main character’s lack of identity – she doesn’t know who her parents are, she doesn’t even have a name, she “erases” her identity with the exception of her faith when she gets to a new place.  But even if she retains her “faith” identity, we also have the identities that the world around her wants her to assume, particularly her legion of foster parents. Does Jane’s assumption of different identities help her? Hurt her? Does concealing who she is from everyone around her have negative repercussions and possibly explain why she has “struck out” of 40 foster homes? Does it have negative spiritual impact on others around her? (Usually it does – lying doesn’t end well.)

Emotional Pain – Jane tends to suppress and numb the emotional pain that others give her, and even take it on to help others. This is NOT a good plan and will likely backfire in emotional breakdowns at some point as the suppressed memories and emotions “leak” when other people bring them out. Being unable to process her emotions is bad, and suppressing them to “survive” will only work for so long.

Suppressing your identity and your emotions means that you are lying to yourself about who you are and what you feel, and God doesn’t usually go along with that because he is the God of Truth, not lies. You may think that lying to yourself is not as bad as lying to someone else, but the Bible doesn’t specify who you are lying to when it says that God hates a lying tongue.

It’s also a form of self-injury that leads to failure because you’re purposefully ignoring reality, and reality does include who you are.

Think about it this way: unbelievers don’t believe they are sinners. That’s a lie to themselves about who they are: I’m not a sinner. The consequences are eternal. Ouch. Obviously Jane isn’t lying to herself about that, but she probably has portions of herself that she suppresses herself or are being suppressed by the situation. That’s what I see in here, and if you bring that out, it would be a good theme.

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The other thing I’m going to say may be somewhat controversial, but I think this story’s main weakness is not theme, it’s plot. The themes are already there – I just pointed them out above, I think – and you have a lot of emotionally intense scenes in here with a lot of power to bring them out, but there’s no stakes to make the theme matter to the reader.

I think this story needs a stronger antagonist.

“But, but, this story is already dark, and you’re suggesting introducing MORE CONFLICT?!”

Deep breath, please. More conflict does not mean darker. In fact, the best antagonist for this story would probably be a humorous jokester character or someone otherwise laid back. Now if we do that too much it takes away from the somber tone of this story so far, but we need someone who isn’t surviving emotionally and who enjoys life a little more. That’s the kind of person who will make this protagonist squirm. And probably her foster brother and sisters too. How insensitive!

The reason why is that an antagonist kinda needs a contrast with the protagonist. There are some antagonist candidates in here – the foster care system itself, Jane’s parents, and Corinder – but none quite fits the bill. Let me explain:

The Foster Care System and Jane’s Parents – The problem with this as an antagonist is it’s a comparable to a story with a boat in the middle of a storm on the ocean. Sure, everyone is fighting the storm trying to survive, but why are they out on the ocean in the first place? And how do you fight a storm? (You don’t.)

Now in this case, that reason is Jane’s murderous parents, and this is out of Jane’s control, too. This is also why her parents don’t work as an antagonist. In order for the thing to be an actual antagonist, the protagonist must be able to act against the antagonist to influence the outcome, and as you have established this story so far, she can’t. Now if Jane was at an anti-abortion rally or somewhere to argue about improvements to the foster care system, I’d bite off on it as an antagonist.

I find it ironic that this thread is entitled “Help I’m sinking”. If you’re sinking, get out of the storm and off the boat.  😛 This character is helpless to change her foster care circumstances, but what can she change?

Corinder – (great name!) Now, there is some contrast between these two – whereas Jane’s faith has influenced her reaction to her situation in a positive way, Corinder’s is negative. I did write some notes about Jane’s faith in her situation on the Doc and how I think that could work – God is in control of Jane’s situation, so if it’s in conflict with her faith that is another story – but the problem is Corinder’s conflict with Jane has to do with her faith. Corinder is inside the storm, so to speak and is evil…but Jane just gives in. There’s nothing in Corinder to disturb Jane’s character flaws, and Jane basically just shrugs it off. Evil and darkness is old news to Jane. There’s no fight there.

Admittedly, this backwards upside-down conflict is not how stories typically run. We usually think of our protagonists as good guys fighting the bad guys, and the emotionally light group of happy jokesters takes down the group of dark and brooding villains with hats. But in real life, folks, the good guys frequently live in darkness and gloom while the bad guys are a group of happy jokesters with candy and comic books. Not that the antagonist for this story has to be evil – he or she could just be an ignorant hufflepuff. But you get the idea.

Also, this is just a suggestion, aka a friendly squirrel handing you a paper with “needs more conflict” on it. Annd I probably got carried away. But I hope some of this feedback was helpful. 😀