I thought of a plot and started getting excited about it until I got stuck. I am not sure in what direction I want the plot to follow, all that I thought felt cliche. A guy goes on to study at a pretty good university, after he gets a job at a prospering company he marries his girlfriend, also working. They buy a large house in the suburbs with vaulted ceiling in their bedroom (his dream feature in a house) and have a child. Basically he is following his steady plan in life to get everything he wanted emerging from his lower small-town background into a successful person. But his success is about having a plan, knowing exactly what he wants and for instance having found a woman that matches that kind of thinking (still under development); not really about how much money he makes, although he earns well. The pandemic arrives and his family is forced to stay home. By this time they have been married fifteen years and the child is around five. At first there is lots of confusion from work, so he spends most of his home-time enjoying his family, spending time together, helping his wife and playing with his child. As time passes and his work settles, he turns one of the guest bedrooms upstairs into a studio and begins concentrating on his work. Slowly every noise or interruption becomes unwelcome as he is working or having an online meeting. Because he begins to feel restless, he moves down into the basement to isolate him from noises and interruptions. Often when his wife comes to get him for lunch or dinner, he declines because his company is behind with work, etc. She stops asking. Eventually one day, he realizes there are no noises and he hasn't seen his wife and child for what feels at least a few days. He looks for them, but they are not there. What happened? You can see why this is a familiar story, told already so many times. I want to focus on his idea of how things should be, how he has a plan that involves matching his feelings to his actions (that is how he finds a wife that matches his ideals, they understand each other, makes him feel good, but eventually I wonder what happens when their feelings change; they might no longer understand each other that well). He feels secure in his plan, but something is wrong and he cannot see what (I can't either). I want to understand his feelings, not assume that the problem is that he is too brainy about his plan neglecting his true feelings. I think his feelings are genuinely in line with his beliefs of working towards a good life. He was groomed into it by his family and by society. He realizes love is about finding a woman who shares the same ideals (that is where attraction to her comes from). He did, but how these two people lose sight of each other? How would you tell this story? What plot ideas does it inspire you?
Sadly this doesn't inspire anything in me because it's just not my type of thing and, so far, it would be a difficult story for me to tell because there's very little to it. It could serve as a short-story like King's The Mist but there isn't enough material here for me to make a full novel. So all I can tell you is to stick with it and work out the problems. It just requires some creativity from you.
I think I get what you are trying to write but I also have to admit that this is not my cup of the tea. This story makes me feel trapped and frustrated. What I see in this story is this guy who moves through life as if there was a checklist. Good job? Check. Partner? Check. Child(ren)? Check. However the moment he has left to reflect on his life (pandemic), he struggles. He tries to find anything to keep him busy, not realizing that none of what he has makes him truly happy. That‘s because he became what he thought he had to be rather than becoming who he wants to be. I think this story would do well if the MC struggles and then finds a passion, something he genuinely enjoys, something that no-one could‘ve predicted. He starts traveling all over the world or he quits his job and becomes a painter, I dunno. You could show how his relationship either break or make it through his development. He later reflects on that. This is my first instinct. Hope it answers your question.
While this kind of thing isn't my personal cup of tea, I think it's relatable and broad enough to make something of. However, it sounds to me like what you have is a premise, not a plot. In other words, you have described the set-up: Guy does everything by the book, gets everything he's supposed to want, then one day he wakes up and his family is gone. That's your opening scene or chapter. Now the plot becomes, what does he do next? What does he want the outcome to be? Maybe he thinks he knows the answer on day one (i.e. that he wants everything to go back to the way it was) but then realises through the course of the plot that in fact he doesn't, because it was stifling him and making him miserable, etc. One pitfall to be mindful of here is not making the wife and kid into props. Nothing frustrates me more than a story (of any genre) where the MC's family is treated like a monolith object that the MC reacts to. For a story like this to work, the wife and need to be fully fleshed out characters in their own right. The wife needs to have wants/needs/goals ambitions of her own, which don't necessarily relate to MC or the marriage. She needs to have a past, a childhood, things she's gained or given up, etc. Similarly, though the kid is very young, they need to be a person in their own right, with character traits, likes, dislikes, as well as feelings and reactions to what is happening with the parents. Also, be aware that stories of this kind of 'apparent domestic harmony imploding because issues haven't been addressed in a healthy way' gets done a lot. It can be really compelling, but execution is absolutely key. The plot will inevitably be fairly straightforward and not in and of itself that dramatic (relationships fall apart, it happens to everyone sooner or later and we all know that almost everyone gets over it eventually one way or another, so there's no real tension to be found in the bare question of 'what happens next' as there would be in a fantasy story, for example). That means everything hinges on characterisation, nuance, presentation, etc. It could be a fun project, good luck!
Go for it. I would definitely read a novel based on this plot. The thing that would make it outstanding would be the way you depict the relationship with the man and his wife. I'm not interested in the scenario of his perfect family setup but the story of how it breaks down would be interesting. It has a Gone Girl/S. King vibe. Lots of psychological tension needed.
You just described the quintessential arc of modern first world life. College, job, marriage, house, kids, career obsession, existential boredom, midlife crisis, separation. That's the kind of real life story many readers are trying to escape from when they pick up a book. Doesn't mean you can't feature it in a story, but you better have something interesting to say about it, because a lot of your audience is probably living it already. You ask: To which, I would say, is the rule rather than the exception. It essentially happens to every couple that doesn't successfully execute a complete commitment until death does them part. Which is most relationships. In other words, very typical and boring. Not sure how you could improve any of this as a plot device without picking a different device. There's just nothing out of the ordinary happening.
Is the point where the wife moves out the midpoint crisis? I'm assuming it is and her leaving is not the ending. I mean, it could be an ending, but I'm not seeing anything else that looks like a central turning point, so I'm assuming. I think you have the seed of a story. You have an MC with the start of an arc. The main problem is that you're ending at the middle and there's no conflict leading to that point. (You can guess pretty easily where you're going to run out of gas writing this.) It sounds like you're trying to define that conflict. The obvious place for conflict is within the family. It's a clash of needs. It would probably be with the wife, but it could even be with the child. Even better would be a combination of the two. For all that's going on internally with the MC, there still has to be some sort of physical story that the readers can see. What I would do is look at that midpoint disaster. The wife leaves. That's the MC's moment of reflection. He should see who he is as a person, namely someone who pursues status and tranquil ease while neglecting reality. The continuation would be him abandoning everything he's built to go after the family he had. In this type of book, I probably wouldn't let him succeed. He'd find a new happiness, somehow . . . (and end in a place far away from where he started) . . . while still regretting the mistakes of his past. That would be his complete arc. So looking at that midpoint, you take your understanding of what he becomes, and you mirror it in reverse to set the early scenes. The problem is, he can't just win for half the book. There needs to be an outside influence fighting him. You have his professional life to fall back on, which is of course outside of the family and helps distract him. The wife needs an arc that conflicts with the husbands. That's probably one of your subplots. The kid needs a subplot too. That makes him a presence in the story. Being a 5-year-old, there's not going to be much character growth. (EDIT: I probably shouldn't say that. A kid can definitely have an arc, but not in the way it would be shown for an adult.) Then there's outside influences, probably the job and the boss. What are the wife's outside influences? When you have a marriage crumbling, I can think of an obvious one. (It would be cliché to make it the boss, but maybe the husband suspects this? Imagine the throw-down at work and then at home.) Of course, you don't want her to be the villain because the husband's in pursuit of her. It's important that you get all plots moving because you need stakes in the beginning of the story and you need storylines converging at the end. Then there's the whole last half of the book. I'd assume the husband is out of the house. That's symbolic (almost be design). Where do those subplots lead him? For example, the wife joins some sort communal holistic medicine group on a farm in Idaho, and the environment has cured the kid. The husband sees this at the end, and then HE walks away. He knows he was the source of grief. And then you end nebulously with him trying to create a new life and writing letters to the farm. Something like that. You shape the subplots and arcs to lead here. (Not exactly here, but you know what I mean. To your ending.) Anyway, the tldr: Look at the midpoint crisis, develop the supporting characters with arcs, define subplots between the family, consider outside influences, commit the second half with the subplots.
This is not a lost cause, It has potential. Try to decide the mood and the ending. Is it a happy ending or is it a sad one? Now I don't really know what type of genre you are planning to write in so I will come with a couple of different suggestions. 1. They have moved out. She has tried till discuss their problems, but he have kind of missed it. Their problems are based on the fact that he focus everything on his job and she has to carry more of the burden than she had bargained for. She has evolved and prioritises other things out of experience and need. He has not. Maybe the kid has ADHD or Aspbergers syndrome (doesn't need to be rain man here just a little AS to make it hard to read people is enough) and it has starting to show. 2. They are dead. Murdered or died from the pandemic. Is their corpses upstairs or somewhere else? 3. They are missing. Dead, kidnapped or worse. It never gets clear but something supernatural is involved (caught in the mirror, pulled into a parallel dimension, still there but can't be seen or heard so they knocks in the walls and tamper with the electronics to get his attention). 4. He has died. The reason he can't find them is that he is in purgatory or the place where the dead end up when they have something unsolved. He never figures out this, but tries in vain again and again to figure whats going on, the reader however figures it out in the last pages.
You are trying to write a story which you have never lived nor experienced in even the smallest way. This is evident by your lack of what really motivates your character. Pick something in life that scared the shit out you, a time when you felt so happy you could burst. I time when you were so worried you could not sleep nor eat, something that changed the way 'you' felt or acted. If you have never felt any of those experiences to some degree, step away from the key board and go do something in life worth writing about. There is no shortage of drivel made up by writers who are only guessing at how things happen and feel. The world craves those writers who bring those emotions to the page, because they were there, because they felt it, they saw it and it is burned into their brain. While there are some good suggestions for different paths here for the story, they have all been done before and each would require you to come up with some outlandish bullshit that you would just be guessing at. Write what you know!
The problem is you haven't thought of a plot. What you have is a character. What you're asking is how to develop a plot with a character in mind. Well, you learn to plot. Here's how I would go about it after deciding on the contemporary genre. First, give him a GOAL according to his personality. This goal can be as cliche as possible. Let's say his goal is getting his wife back. Secondly, figure out how is he going to accomplish that goal in an interesting way. By becoming an actor in his wife's favorite opera? By destroying his wife's new lover's business? By getting into an appointment with the most successful marriage counselor in the country who happens to be a robot? This is where you can go wild with your creativity. Basically, you're inventing things for him to do. When done right, this step should provide you the Hook of the story. Next, after you've figured out the character's goal and the hook of the story, you start to stir things up. Let him make some progress but also introduce some setbacks now and then. The important thing to notice here is that goal and hook can be separated. He can make some progress with his goal(a kiss on the cheek from his wife) while at the same time can fail with the hook(the robotic marriage counselor is suspended for beating a client). For demonstration purposes, I use Save The Cat beat sheet for the rest: In Midpoint, you drop the first bomb. His wife file for a divorce. Bad Guy Closing In, marriage counselor wins the lawsuit because the client lied about getting beaten. Then, the second bomb, which is All Is Lost, wife and kid vanish for good because of something awful he did(perhaps DUI with the kid). Later, he reflects on his actions. Dark Night of The Soul. Break Into 3 and Final. Instead of cutting corners or playing games to win his family, he applies for a job to become the robot counselor's assident; and with the robot's help, he truly begins to sort out his life. Okay, this is a very premature act three. I would probably spend more time to flesh it out. The key here is to tie all the conflicts together in a natural way. Lastly, in Final Image, maybe the wife calls and finally forgives him. He may or may not accomplish his goal in this case, but goal is not always the point in stories. So that's the main plot. It might be too short for a novel, but you can always add more subplots and characters to it. This is a contemporary example mostly because that's my thing. But also, the way you described his situation kinda has a rite of passage feel. I don't know if that was your intention, but if it was, just remember that contemporary fiction seems harder to write than other genres simply because we need to find the hook in our day-to-day life. But once you figure that out, it will become way less intimidating.
The story can lead to anything. But the moral of the story is the same no matter which way you go: in a way, your MC deserves what happened to him. To get his wife back, he must change.
Well, maybe he was fine but his wife just upped and left to "find herself". That's what my husband's 1st wife did: dumped her 4-year-old daughter on the mother-in-law and disappeared off. Called a week later saying she had a job in a city miles away and wasn't coming back. I bought up the daughter and sucks to the bitch who left. Her loss
