Dear Suin:
I was afraid you had abandoned the site! I tried to upload this review and your works were blocked because (the message said) you haven’t renewed your membership.
Okay, hands on:
1. First of all: you have a story to tell. Moreover, you have great characters who drive their own stories. If you ask me, you’re a better character-driven writer than a plot-driven writer. It means that you write better stories when your protagonists shape the events rather than the other way around.
Take “Being Fifteen” as an example. Alicia drives the story. She is always in control and everything taking places happens because of her, because she set the events in motion. In “The Best Laid Plans”, Sarah is not in control. She marries Hugh because Hugh and her mother press her to do so. She can’t prevent Hugh from kidnapping her. She can’t escape afterwards. She has no opportunity to decide whether to get pregnant or not (even though she did decide not to have an abortion—the only time she was in control). In a nutshell: events drive her.
The second part of “Being Fifteen” you were writing was also character driven, for Alicia was, once again, in control of whatever was taking place around her: her actions, the reactions of those around her (even many grown-ups’ reactions), etc.
Conclusion: if I were you, I’d concentrate on character-driven stories rather than on plot-driven stories.
2. Let’s focus on The Best Laid Plans. At first, I found Sarah annoying because she allowed others to decide for herself (Hugh, Claire, her mom, etc). This is because I prefer strong female characters, the same reason why I found Dafne do Maurier’s second Mrs. De Winters annoying. Don’t pay attention to me. Sarah is a perfect character and it fits your story perfectly well.
3. Now, let’s go to the part where Gacela suggests some changes. Your story runs amazingly well until Sarah is kidnapped. Before that point, the story is strongly character driven. Not necessarily main-character-driven for other people are shaping Sarah’s life (Hugh manipulating her; her mother, fascinated by Hugh and eager to see her married rather than a single mother; Alicia, causing Jack and Claire to break looking forward to Jack approaching Sarah, etc.).
That Sarah is not driving her life, but that other characters are, is totally okay and in line with a character-driven story. That said, there are chapters where Sarah is in control of her own life (the part where Sarah struggles deciding whether to travel to the UK to have an abortion and finally misses the ferry, is superb!).
The weak part of your story (in my humble opinion) is after Hugh kidnaps her. After that point, the story is plot driven. Hugh’s personality is no longer important, but the fact he’s some kind of drug lord or mafia bloke (it doesn’t maters which), keeping her locked up. Sarah only suffers and suffers and is incapable of doing anything. Her parents hire a PI, a character who enters, and leaves, the stage without changing the plot a bit (you can well write him off and nobody will miss him, not even Sarah’s parents). When Sarah finally escapes, it’s because she’s aided by a thug who has no reason to do so, because she has one of those rare moments of inspiration when she decides for herself, because Hugh chickens out like he had never done before, and because Jack decides to walk in front of her building (in search of her, let’s grant you that point) in the right moment, and event with a probability lower than the moon falling from sky.
After that point, like a falling house of cards, a number of events take place and you ask your reviewers whether the last chapter is easy or not. My opinion: of course it’s easy, because it lacks is background. Everything is solved only because you wanted a happy ending. You concentrated only in Sarah missing for years and forgot that Alicia’s and Claire’s lives cannot change only because many years have passed. Clues of what the future would be should have been hinted before, way before.
4. I bet you’re thinking I haven’t given you any suggestion yet. Well, here it goes: rewrite everything after Sarah is kidnapped. Moreover, forget about the kidnapping and about Hugh and concentrate on the other characters. Make them evolve from that day when Jack was with Sarah and she little by little started to “return”, and on, and show the reader that you can, masterfully, make your characters drive your plot.
5. I’ve been largely thinking about the title: “The Best Laid Plans”. At first, I thought you were referring to Sarah’s plans about being a ballerina, but then I decided you meant much more. Like in Les Mis, the title refers to more than one character (Jean Val Jean is not the only miserable one in Les Mis, but every character is a miserable one in their own way). The best laid plans were not only Sarah’s: each character had perfectly well laid plans that went wrong—and please don’t think I’m meaning their stories didn’t have a happy ending, but that nothing ended up as originally planned. Sarah quit ballet. Claire never married Jack. In fact, Claire discovered she was lesbian when it seemed she was the straightest girl in the world and would end up a housewife. Alicia, the rebel, the rock star, was the one who ended up enjoying being a housewife. Alicia married Declan and not Matt. Et cetera.
Certainly, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Your title refers to all your characters, not only to Sarah.
6. Remember I told I had this feeling you should narrate Alicia’s story along with Sarah’s? Now I’m sure you should narrate Sarah’s, Alicia’s, Claire’s, and Jack’s stories. You’re wonderful for that. You’re gifted! You can write each one’s story, showing how each of them shapes each one’s future, until the best laid plans go awry. If I were you, I’d change Sarah’s story. Dump Hugh after he runs away the first time. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a drug lord or anything else. By the time he abandons Sarah the first time, his literary function has been fulfilled (if you wish, by the end of the story, Sarah may read on the newspaper Hugh was found dead, possibly killed by thugs belonging to a rival drug cartel—it’s not important). After that point, you can write about Jack and Sarah threading their lives until (if you like the damsel-in-distress story) Jack finally helps Sarah to overcome her situation. In parallel, you can write about Alicia and her discovering that, in the end, being a rock star does not satisfy her. Also, about Claire’s journey towards discovering her own sexuality.
Alternatively, if you don’t wanna make this story soooo very long, write separate stories featuring Sarah and Claire, but don’t just dump the ending of such stories in Sarah’s final chapter as you did. It doesn’t work. What you need to do, even if you don’t want to incorporate Claire’s and Alicia’s stories into this one, is to hint, through every-day life events and details, what is gonna happen in the future. You have a golden opportunity to hint Claire is lesbian after Jack and she break. Also, you have to introduce Grainne into Claire’s life, not just drop her like you did in the last chapter. Why Grainne? Why not some other girl/woman in the world? I would answer because Alicia, a mutual friend, introduced them, maybe right after Claire and Jack broke because, Alicia, perceptive as she has always been, read between lines and guessed Claire and Grainne would, in the end, match (even if, at first, Claire marries a bloke).
Elaborate on Sarah, on her discovering her own children, on Jack helping her to come back and overcome the trauma of Hugh’s disappearance, until they discover they are a match. Pepper it with news on Alicia and Claire, and how their lives are progressing. Mention Declan. Mention Claire’s marriage dissolving. Mention Grainne. Write about lives that match what you previously hinted, and then give the reader the happily ever after ending that is a plausible outcome of the previous events.
7. If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about the word count. If your story is a good one, any agent/publisher will take it, despite an abnormal word count. On the contrary, if you squeeze a good story into a particular word count only for the sake of it, you may end up with a good story turned into a bad one that no agent will take, despite it fitting the usual word count for this literary genre. Unless you wanna write very commercial stuff, the kind people read while commuting in the underground and discard in a rubbish bin once finished.
8. Once again, you have wonderful characters and you’ve mastered character-driven stories like few people in this site have. My advice is that you stick to that and rewrite this story changing the plot-driven (and thus weak, IMO) parts to stronger character-driven parts. I’d also recommend you to write Claire’s and Alicia’s stories—maybe separate books but all of them part of the trilogy “The Best Laid Plans”.
Kiss,
Gacela
