Last week’s vote on plot resulted in a tie between coming of age story and mystery, so we’ll combine the two. After spending the month voting on the elements of a YA story, we now have the characters, settings, and plot needed to inspire a story. Now it’s up to us writers to run with these basic elements. I’ll list below my take on them. Please put your inspiration in the comments.
- Protagonist: Laurel Dixon is 16 and about to start her junior year in high school. She lives with her grandfather on the poor side of a small town in the Midwest. She would like to go to music conservatory after high school but is settling for community college because she doesn’t think she can afford college or succeed there.
- Antagonist: Ethan Hall is 17, a senior in high school, and a member of the wealthiest family in the county.
- Setting: Midwest city of 20,000.
- Plot: Coming of age mystery. Laurel has to learn to assert herself when her grandfather is seriously injured in an attack and left for dead. She’s pretty sure Ethan is behind it because the local police are getting nowhere. As Laurel conducts her own investigation, she discovers there’s more behind the attack than just a bad boy acting bad.
To read all the posts for this month dealing YA fiction, click here.