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Hi,Amar,

Thanks for posting and for trusting me with your plan/outline/characters/worries.

The trouble with your plan is that you seem to want to write off the cuff, and plan it as a surprise to yourself as you go along. It doesn’t happen that way, at least not for me.

You need to have a place for Gracie, who is a high school kid who simply can’t live on her own. The reality is that no one that age can. If you place her in a boarding school, the other kids can come from there, and their backgrounds can vary between fancy girl spending the old man’s money to a family in straitened circumstances who are spending everything they have so that their youngest and brightest can go to a great school. And aside from the “brother,” there is going to be a guy in there somewhere, a boyfriend/confidante/hero. But where she lives (with the family of her best friend, maybe?) will have everything to do with who she meets and trust, and mistrusts.

Characters: the half-brother thing is intriguing, except that it can be tested very easily by sneaking his toothbrush or drinking glass down to a lab. Plus now you have two close friends and a new one, and you have to admit that most people don’t deal with their serious problems in committee. I can see one more person, but Gracie wouldn’t be spreading her problems all over the school. (See? I put her in boarding school. Very high-handed of me. Sorry. But it IS reasonable, as she had only a guardian, and he’s dead.)

As you can pretty well see, you’re on your own. No one who isn’t actually sharing the writing with you can really add or subtract material in this story. I’ve probably added more problems than you had before, and for that I apologize. But I think I’ve taught you one rule: writing is a lonely business, usually done alone, shared with one very close person who can be relied upon to tell you it’s great/awful/so-so..

Good luck, Amar. I hope to be writing you a fan letter one day!                         —–Gordon Korman—–