Summary of my book

[MiaC]

Sorry, I know I've posted a bit lately...:/

But I'm having a lot of issues with doubt lately and wondering if my story is even good or if I'm capable of writing a good book. It sucks.
But this is a short summary I wrote up about my book, just wondering what people think.
Young adult would be targeted audience, 16-25. I wouldn't say much younger cause I do plan to add romance and other adult content. Language, violence, etc.

Tessa and Alyssa, identical teenage twins, have been lied to about who they are their whole lives. Shortly after their junior year begins, their Aunt is forced to tell them they are witches and she has been keeping it from them their whole lives. Due to vampires suddenly hunting and capturing their kind again after nearly two centuries, they are forced to seek protection from a witch Academy in Oregon. Soon after, the twins realize they are different from others of their kind and have to uncover secrets of the past to find out who they truly are.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

That's a good summary. Surely you can turn it into a good book.

But keep in mind, young adult books target a younger audience. People beyond high school age are usually less interested in books about high schoolers. If your protagonists are 16-year-old high school students, 16 will be the maximum age of your average reader, not the minimum age. You may get a little bit of interest from slightly older readers, but the bulk of them will be in middle school to early high school. That's the actual target audience for YA literature.

That doesn't mean you can't get away with some degree of adult content. The same age groups were the target audience of the Twilight series, which has plenty of, shall we say, mature themes. And the Hunger Games series, which is light on sexual content but has plenty of violence. If those books' authors could get away with it, so can you. Just don't make it more explicit than they do.

 

[MiaC]

What about language? Would that be a problem? I mean teena cuss so lol.

 

[MiaC]

Thanks for your reply.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

What about language? Would that be a problem? I mean teena cuss so lol.

If they talk like real teenagers, why should it be a problem?

That's the common sense answer. The real answer is, it depends on your publisher. Some might want the language cleaned up a lot. Kind of like the movies: back in 1985, The Breakfast Club got slapped with an R rating for no other reason than that its teenage characters cussed like teenagers. Things haven't really changed since then, in that respect.

And in practice, actual speech often doesn't translate very well to the printed page. Even without cussing, real people say "um" and "ah" a lot when they're talking. But written dialog eliminates that, except when you really need a character to be stammering, evading answering a question, uncomfortable answering, or something like that. Apply that to cussing, and if you have a character who constantly punctuates their sentences with cuss words (i.e. "Fucking Mike's going to the fucking store to get some shit"), it doesn't usually work very well to include every cuss word in print. But it might paint up the character, if you describe them as someone who cusses all the time and then show them doing just that.

 

[MiaC]

The language isn't too big of a deal. It's not really needed in the dialog of any character, one of my main characters is more of a rebel, hot head type, I have had a few curse words in her dialog but I could change it, I don't think that's overly important to her character.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

The language isn't too big of a deal. It's not really needed in the dialog of any character, one of my main characters is more of a rebel, hot head type, I have had a few curse words in her dialog but I could change it, I don't think that's overly important to her character.

If the cuss words are appropriate to the character, I recommend leaving them unless you get to the publication stage and find it's a real problem.

 

[MiaC]

Ok thanks

 

[Chasejxyz]

The only way to get better at writing is to write! Also a lot of good stories aren't overly complex ones, they all don't have to be like Inception or House of Leaves. What matters is the finished product and a mix of a bunch of different things. Think of those "knock off" movies that have the same plot as big Hollywood movies but no budget and made as fast as possible. They don't look good, the characters are shallow and have no real motivation, issues with pacing...but a high-level summary of both movies is pretty much the same.

As you write your first draft, you'll figure some of this stuff out. Others you gotta have the finished product and look it all over. Like there's no way to determine the pacing of your novel from one chapter.

 

[MiaC]

I've been thinking ALOT about my book, structure and what not. Right now, I'm stuck on sub plots. Sorry, this is a different question but I can't seem to get an answer. So my book is being written in 3rd person omniscient. I kinda weave in and out of other people's view point. But with three certain characters, that aren't the main characters, I've written their own drama going on aside from the main plot. But I feel it pertains to the story and will effect the story at the end of the book and actually have a big impact on what happens for the second book. (At least from the ideas I've thought up so far) so im just curious if having these separate scenes without the MCs being present is okay?

 

[MiaC]

From what I've heard about 3rd person omniscient you can kinda show whatever you want and whoever you want, which i feel fits best for my story. Im just trying to make sure im doing it right. My MCs are in most scenes but the scenes they are not in right now, have to do with these three side characters and their drama. I don't even know if anyone can give me an answer to this or if it's just up to me to figure out if I should have it in there or not lol.

 

[MiaC]

I started doing this with no knowledge on writing. Like none lol, I wrote a lot, which isn't bad for not knowing how to do it at all but now I've done some actual research on writing and I'm like shit. There's some issues I need to work out. Just kinda overwhelmed. I don't plan on giving up though, regardless, I enjoy to write

 

[Chasejxyz]

You already have some knowledge of writing, as you consume stories. No artist first picks up a marker without ever having seen something with their eyeballs before. You, intentionally or not, already know what makes a story interesting, a character boring, stuff like that. You might just need to sit and think about it to figure it out. It really sucks that (in my experience, at least) when you read books for English class, they don't actually teach you narrative stuff or how to figure things out on your own, just what the mainstream interpretation of themes are. Writing is an art form and its more than just making a grammatically correct sentence, but that's almost never taught in school.

With that said, what about these scenes are important for the story? What will the reader get out of them they can't get in some other way? The Game of Thrones books start with a POV character that you don't see anywhere else and that's to set it. Like in the first one it's some guy past the wall and he gets killed by a whitewalker. We then see the Starks and they find the dead mother direwolf and the puppies. We learn that the Starks are entrenched in "the old ways" culturally, that there's "monsters" that do exist that many believe do not (most people think direwolves are extinct south of the wall), that across the wall is such a radically different world etc etc. Game of Thrones is unique among fantasy because it's 95% real-world stuff and people believe in fantastical things just like they do in our world, but some of them actually exist. From the start, because of this one POV character that dies right away, we know that whitewalkers are real. The stories about a generations-long winter feel real because it aligns with what we (the reader) have already seen.

If things get too overwhelming, break things up into manageable chunks. Make to do lists to keep track of things. You don't gotta write the whole draft from beginning to end, you can jump around, too.

 

[Avery Moore]

Don't worry. Doubt is something that all writers deal with. I ended up taking several years off writing because of doubt. I think it's generally the biggest cause of writer's block that writers have to deal with. Main thing to remember is that every great writer has probably struggled with the same worries that you do, and if they hadn't overcome their worries then they never would've finished all of our favorite novels and all our greatest inspirations wouldn't exist.

As for your story idea, the plot sounds good to me, definitely can make a good story out of that. Still, I'd say that's not particularly important, because a good writer can make a decent story out of any plot. I mean, how do these sound for plots? "A bunch of kids walk through a wardrobe and meet a magical talking Jesus lion." "A group of midgets go on a journey to throw a ring into a volcano." "This orphan kid dresses up as a giant bat and fights an evil clown."

 

[MiaC]

That was just a quick summary, there's actually ALOT to it.

 

[MiaC]

I've wrote up half of it pretty much but stuck now cause I feel I need to go back and revise everything before I can go on.

 

[MiaC]

I don't know about the side scenes, it has to do with their Aunt, Michael (the Academies headmaster) and Rachael (the schools psychologist and Michael's wife of 12 years) something happened 14 years prior that made Jess leave and pretty much want to forget about being a witch. Obviously they end up going back to the school so she's forced to see Michael and Rachael again. But in the end, the drama between them effects my MCs and the setting for the second book. I'm like on the fence though about it for some reason, like when im looking over what I've written their scenes just feel like out of place for some reason. I'm not sure why. But I can't think of how to revise it or remove it because I feel it's important and needs to be put in the book. I don't know lol. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, I hope.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

I've wrote up half of it pretty much but stuck now cause I feel I need to go back and revise everything before I can go on.

Looks like you have two choices here: go on and write what you were going to write, or revise first.

Personally, I tend to do the second when I get stuck like that... and I've never finished anything but short stories, probably for that reason.

 

[Rosemary Tea]

I don't know about the side scenes, it has to do with their Aunt, Michael (the Academies headmaster) and Rachael (the schools psychologist and Michael's wife of 12 years) something happened 14 years prior that made Jess leave and pretty much want to forget about being a witch. Obviously they end up going back to the school so she's forced to see Michael and Rachael again. But in the end, the drama between them effects my MCs and the setting for the second book. I'm like on the fence though about it for some reason, like when im looking over what I've written their scenes just feel like out of place for some reason. I'm not sure why. But I can't think of how to revise it or remove it because I feel it's important and needs to be put in the book. I don't know lol. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, I hope.

Jess left school 14 years ago? Or left the witch world?

In that first chapter you posted, Jess's age in the present day is nearly 50. Fourteen years ago, she would've been in her mid thirties. Was she still in school at that age? How long does witch schooling last?

Or was she a teacher at the school? If she was, that would've made her even more entrenched in it than if she had still been a student.

 

[MiaC]

She was dating Michael, at that time would have been the former headmasters son. Michael is fairly young being around 50 himself to be a headmaster (at least I think) but anyway, that's why she was still associated with the school at that age. The school isn't in "another world" it's in the u.s.a just hidden from mortals and located in the mountains. There is a town though, not far from the school. Students live there while they attend. They have dorms and such. Staff members live their as well. There is also a hunters Academy which students can enroll in after they graduate. Michael at the time had already graduated from the hunters Academy but was still living on campus in the housing units with Jess. This isn't in my book right now it's just the back story.