Forum: Author Hangout

this is a story I started ages ago and lost about 1/3 of due to a drive corruption, even the chain of backups was corrupt. But them's the breaks.

The working title of the story is a Tomboy named Sue. homage to the Johnny Cash song. It also fits into a larger unconnected universe.

Anyway without further a due here's the Prologue. I'd love some general feedback on the style etc. At the moment there's half a dozen in progress chapters with plans for maybe two more and an epilogue

 

It all begins somewhere

 

Hi, let me tell you the story of how I raised a girl who was a son, a tomboy if you will. It all starts with me and my then girlfriend. We were in high school and as teens do we started having sex. It was decent and by that I mean hot and frequent, but I knocked her up before I even turned sixteen. My girlfriend was a couple of years older than me and decided to keep it as she was about to leave school anyway. What resulted was a rather hasty shotgun wedding and a few years of hard graft till we could stand on our own. It wasn't the best start but it was what it was and we made do. Till I got out of school, and then University and had a proper job. Then things began to settle down, for a while at least.

 

We lived together in a small city that could really be called more of a large town, there are lots of undeveloped areas and reserves for kids to play in and explore. There are some farms, logging areas and large nature reserves surrounding the urban sprawl. It's a really nice laid back place to bring up a kid. I'd always wanted a son; I guess that's where the problem started. My friends had told me before to be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. And that brings me to my 'daughter', Sue.

 

I wasn't around a lot for the first few years but I did make the most of my time with Sue. I would read to her in bed. I would take her out to the park and do other things. We bonded well and soon Sue looked forward to 'Dad time' whenever she could get it. It was just the two of us doing whatever she wanted, it was physical, practical and at times hard. I taught her to ride a bike. I taught her to play soccer and many other 'male' activities. We roughed it and rough housed, Sue was never shy to try something if it looked hard or dangerous. I didn't really know how to teach her to be a girl and Sue spent a lot of time with me while her mother ran the house after work.

 

All fathers know they are the apple of their little girl's eye, well so it was with me and Sue. This was the cause of much tension between me and the wife, she always felt envy that our child had such a close, strong bond to me, so strong she tried to make my dream for a son true. From about the age of four or five there was no way to keep her in a dress without it being ruined all she wanted to do was play rough, she hated the idea of dolls and playing house, she hated pink and any and all of the little things that a girl was meant to do.

 

Sue, either consciously or not did everything in a male manner that she could, she dressed spoke and carried on just like a guy, all her friends were boys, I'd even found a small collection of soft-core porn in her room. The final straw for my wife was when one of her friends, the mother of some little shit came around and had a 'talk' to us about our child, refusing to call Sue a 'girl', who had apparently broken the arm of her poor defenceless and innocent boy.

 

A huge fight erupted about how I had encouraged this behaviour and was totally to blame for all that was going on with Sue and that she would not stick around to be the laughing stock of the town for a daughter breaking some boy's arm. The pretext was meaningless, this had been coming a long time. The next morning she packed her bags and went to stay with her sister leaving the two of us on our own. It was not unheard of for parents to split, but it was a little strange for the father to be left with a daughter of twelve and a half.

 

That suited Sue just fine, but I was at a loss for what to do. I could not punish my child for being who she believed she was, no more than I could change her into a dainty little lady, and short of sending her to a finishing school I had no inclination of how to do such a thing. So this was how I found myself in the sole care of a girl who was determined to be a son no matter what. And what comes is a lot as our lives are turned upside down in what seemed just a few short years.

 

.../

The premise sounds interesting. I'd definitely give it a look.

I will say that, while all of this "tell" is fine for a prologue, I hope the actual story has a lot more "show".

When it comes to your POV I'll say this. There isn't ANYTHING wrong with first person point of view. In fact, it can be very interesting to read if done correctly. The reason for this is that we, as readers, don't know everything that is going on behind the scenes. We don't know anything other than what the main character (usually the narrator in a first person POV but not always) tell us. That can make for some REALLY great storytelling arcs because lets face it, main characters don't always know everything. They perceive something as being one way but often times it's not what they think. As readers we can get solidly behind the main character and then BAM we get struck with the truth.

However, that does come with some precautions. Often times when writing in the first person perspective we get a really well developed main character but many of the minor and supporting characters are lacking. That simply because we don't have this omniscient third person narrator telling us what's going on behind the scenes. It's still entirely possible to have very well developed secondary characters, you just have to put in a bit more effort.

Regarding your prologue, me personally I think it's not enough to get a really good understanding of your concept. You may have a very good story I just can't tell enough about it.

Don't let English not being your strongest language be a setback to you. If you have a good concept there will always be someone who can edit and proofread your stuff to help solve any sort of grammatical and/or syntax errors.

thanks for the replies everybody. The tiles actually came about by accident. it was originally just my daughter is a tomboy but I was listening to some Cash and the song came up in the play list when I was trying to name the characters. It actually sits in a group called "Help my teenage ..." Its not a universe so much as a prompt to think of plots that might be interesting.

When I piece together some more of the recovered fragments into something resembling a first draft as opposed to the current outline then I'll likely ask for a proof read. I've asked for an editor on that part of the site but not heard back