How is this for a story concept?

Trblmkr1311

New member
I read alot and I've noticed that in all the romance/action books and all the crime fiction not once is the lead character(s) corrections officers. They may have a C/O in the book, but its a secondary character and usually dirty. So I have 2 stories I'm currently working on and in both the lead characters are corrections officers.

The first book takes place primarily in a prison. Don't have a working title yet for that one and I'm still working on the main character's name. Her name is Alessandra Sloane McDaniels. She has an identical twin sister named Antonia Aerryn McDaniel. Antonia goes by Toni and works as an ER nurse and is very much preggers with her first baby. I can't come up with a good nickname for Alessandra. I've kicked around calling her Alex (Alessandra is the Italian form of Alexandra), Sloane, Mickey and Sissy. Her numerous nieces and nephews (the twins have 2 older brothers named Ryland and Conner) refer to her as Sissy and several fellow officers call her Mickey as a nn for her last name. Alessandra is Italian and Sloane is Irish (the family background is Irish/Italian) the two names are strong, leader names. Sloane means tip of the spear. Whereas Toni's names are more mellow and caretaker-ish. The twins are telepathic and Alessandra can "scan" minds. Alessandra has very strong psychic abilities. She's on the Critical Response Team in her prison. Most of the members on her team have a psychic ability and she's able to create a "bridge" for telepathy for the ones that don't. Most of what occurs in the prison are a collections of incidents I've been in on myself over the years. There is of course a fun little love triangle between Alessandra and 2 of her fellow officers.

Second one:
Called Homewrecker. My lead character is Rhylee Hannum. She gets divorced from her abusive husband shortly after starting a carreer in corrections. Haven't come up with a good maiden name for her yet, but she will switch back to her original name. Shortly after her divorce she sleeps with her married captain. And feels guilty for not feeling guilty. That starts her on a path that she often questions but doesn't do much to change. Shortly after that incident her granfather has a serious heart attack which prompts her to transfer her position so she can move home to Idaho and be closer to her grandparents. Shortly after that her sister dies in a car accident, leaving behind 3 small children and an ex husband. Rhylee winds up the adoptive parent of the children following a holiday visit from the kids; the father basically drops them off and doesn't come back. During all of this Rhylee is having affairs with married men (totalling maybe three), always wondering why she doesn't feel any guilt. Once the kids come to live with her she settles down. Then a fellow officer is kicked out of his apartment and Rhylee offers him her spare bedroom. Rhylee and Devin (also known as Prank) bicker like "two second graders with a crush." Devin has an on-again/off-again girlfriend and it's mostly off-again after he moves in with Rhylee. They start sleeping together and Rhylee (who was told she couldn't have kids) winds up pregnant. Devin's ex-girlfriend causes nothing but problems for the two after that. The story starts with Rhylee sitting in her Jeep with all the tires slashed, re-evaluating her choices and wondering if she was truely horrible.

So anyway, how do those sound for story concepts. I've been working on both for awhile now (and am desperatly praying my friend can extract the orginals from my fried hard drive) and I think they're great, but if you read the bios on them, would you be interested?
 

Baxtereee

New member
They sound alright, I like the first one better, I checked cause I'm writing a novel too and need some ideas, and I was hoping yours might give me an idea or two, but our stories are totally different...
 
For the first one, I wouldn't make all of the officers telepathic. It doesn't make sense. As a reader I couldn't accept that all of the officers happened to be telepathic unless there was some circumstance that made it be so. Maybe the warden is telepathic or Allesandra attracts telepathics and influences the warded to hire them. Or maybe the warden believes heavily in the supernatural and has targeted telepathics to hire as a program. It would be fun to see what kind of screening process the warden uses to determine who is telepathic, like a kind of test or something. It would be believable if you showed how telepathics excel in correction work. I'm not big on love triangles. Better to create tension between the three and possible an affair or two, but don't devote a lot of time to romance drama. Also, for a nickname I think it would be fun for her to have a nickname given from some sort of event that occurred. It would help with her character development early on. Or you could just call her Sandra.

The second one I find nothing wrong with. Its not my particular style of topic but it sounds fine. Reminds me of the plot to the movie "The Good Girl" with Jennifer Aniston.

Altogether, I like both of your ideas. I like how you create characters with fault and how you give thought to symbolism. I hope that you include symbolism in the finished work. I especially like to see symbolism integrated with foreshadowing. Like, a nickname becoming uncannily descriptive of a later conflict, especially in a story about telepathics.

I hope you will post these online at some point. Perhaps even post parts of them in rough draft for peer review. If so, please mention where you will post this. Good luck.
 
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