is this a plausible motivation?

[joy_of_cooking]

Suppose you are a reader who cares about female characters making sense and having reasons for their choices. Would the following pass the sniff test, or would you kind of roll your eyes?

We're in a small town in rural Minnesota. FMC and MMC are both single parents, with a toddler each, and recent transplants from "the big city."

FMC moved here from a small Midwestern city (think, Duluth, not Chicago). She makes (locally) fantastic money working from home as a contracts attorney specializing in US-Chinese business deals. She wears makeup all the time and never smiles. Nobody knows this is to conceal a Glasgow smile. They think she's stuck-up and freeze her out.

But one day a new face shows up at the neighborhood park. He's Chinese, a single father working from home as a radiologist, and pathetically grateful to talk to someone in a language he speaks fluently. They find in each other the support and then the companionship they can get nowhere else in this town. Of course, feelings happen.

Then he says he wants move back to New York before school starts in the fall, with or without her. His daughter is miserable here, and so is he.

It's not impossible for her to follow him. She loves him and doesn't have any better prospects, especially where she is now. They're nearly co-parenting already, in an informal way. Her work is fine with it (I picked Minnesota because its bar has reciprocity with New York). She visits New York with him and finds that "white girl who speaks Chinese" gets a much warmer reception in Chinatown than "stuck-up bitch from the city" did in small-town Minnesota.

On the other hand, her kid's just starting to make friends here. She's never been anywhere even a tenth as dense and "big-city" as New York. He wants to move into a heavily-Chinese area, where she'd be the one out of place, to the point of not being able to buy familiar foods at the local shops. And it rankles that she's thinking about moving for him when he won't even consider staying for her.

Of course, this being Romance, she will decide the pros outweigh the cons and she will move with him. But would you find that plausible?

(I'm struggling to convince myself with this one because if the situation were reversed there is absolutely no way I would move to small-town Minnesota. I just can't imagine doing that for anyone.)

 

[lustychimera]

I really like the idea.

The biggest thing: Why did they move to that podunk small town in the first place if they both work from home?

Cheap property seems pretty flimsy since they can both up and move to NYC.

Family nearby? Fell for the brochure?

With her scar, I'd assume safety would be a huge motivation for her, especially with her having a kid.

I could easily suspend my disbelief if them both living there wasn't such a big point of conflict in the story. Seems like they'd both need a pretty good reason for this story to work, though.

Also, is her scar like a delusional body image issue? Like, in reality it's not very noticeable but she thinks it's huge? Because when I hear Glasgow smile, I'm thinking a huge indentation on someone's face, like Tommy Flanagan.

 

[VallesMarineris]

Several questions come to my mind, not in any order:

That Glasgow smile implies she has a traumatic history. If MMC is intimate with her then he knows about it. Has she explained it to him?

How did she learn Chinese?

What happened to her child's father? His child's wife?

If he's finally met someone in this town, why is he still miserable? Ditto the kid. Does she understand his attitude? Does she share it?

If the MMC never considers remaining in the town with her, he comes off as a jerk. Is that what you want?

I don't know the Romance tropes, but it's got to be a let down if she gives in to him and moves.

Maybe MMC needs to have a change of heart at some point. You provide plenty of hooks for something like that to happen. Maybe she hides her scar even from him (which could inspire some kinky scenes, you know, hoods and blindfolds; or only with her clothes on so she can keep her makeup-- hey, it's Lit) and her reveal links somehow to their personal and professional pasts.

The plot is actually still coalescing from the primordial cloud. Many possibilities.

 

[AlinaX]

Yeah, that Glasgow smile really needs explanation.

 

[Bazzle]

Moved back 3-4 years ago to look after aging mom. Mom passes away a year ago leaving her in the remote town wfh? Which may explain the smile?

 

[stonedinstilletos]

I think it might make more sense if the reason she got the Glasgow smile was because of something that happened in a big city. IF she’s doing contracts for international businesses, odds are she likely went to a higher end law school and probably did some time at a firm in a big city. Since she has a NY state admission, it’s likely she was in NYC.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

You're going to have to explain that Glasgow smile - the typical one on TV would have obvious scarring so it would be clear to most, so you'd need to tweak the medical condition if you want lack of smile for no apparent reason (myasthenia gravis?)

Moving to small town because cheap, then regretting it and deciding to move to NYC despite the cost, is plausible enough. Especially with the guy as a lure (and to share costs with!)
Toddlers don't have friends really - friendships wouldn't be much of a consideration until maybe 6, 7 and even then only if they'd struggled to make them. Were the scars from domestic violence which left the kid traumatised? Maybe her family always said NYC was a scary violent place, even worse than wherever they were where she got knocked up by the spermgiver and got the scars?

Tbh, in the circs moving to NYC seems downright sensible.

 

[Britva415]

this being Romance, she will decide the pros outweigh the cons and she will move with him. But would you find that plausible?

Interesting wording. "This being romance," the decision to move isn't what makes it romance, and the story being a romance isn't what makes the decision to move plausible.

All the posters who have replied so far have offered suggestions about how to make it plausible based on added details of circumstance. I feel like this misses the point. What's going to make it plausible are the feelings, not the circumstances.

I think the author's job is to make it plausible by writing why FMC made the decision. Why do her feelings lead her to that? Is her motivation clear early on? It sounds like a story where the decision to move is a subversion of her motivations - can you make it clear what happens in her mind and in her heart which allows that subversion to win?

There's no way to get a "sniff test" from the synopsis. The success will be in the execution.

 

[Cindy027]

I am particularly interested in the ability of the character to speak Chinese. Even though she does US Chinese contract law how and when did she learn Chinese? Also is it Cantonese or Mandarin?

 

[Britva415]

I am particularly interested in the ability of the character to speak Chinese. Even though she does US Chinese contract law how and when did she learn Chinese? Also is it Cantonese or Mandarin?

Mandarin, for sure.

 

[Cindy027]

Mandarin, for sure.

I believe that's called speculation with a hint of arrogance.

 

[Britva415]

@Cindy027 It's not plausible that an American contract lawyer working with Chinese businesses knows Cantonese and not Mandarin.

Maybe both? That's not very likely either but it's completely implausible for her not to know Mandarin.

The headline is about plausibility.

Anyway, why make this about me? Do you have an answer, yourself?

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Oh, sure, you betchya it works. Gosh darnit, just go on do it.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

The real draw back is fluency in either dialect or is it language (I don't know any Asian language). To really become fluent you must be exposed to it. I wouldn't know the languages I know had not been raised a Jew with German speaking parent and grandparents, French speaking parent and grandparents, and friends fluent in Italian. At some point, to go beyond just speaking writing in a language you have to hear it in depth. You have to immersed in art of talking with those who know the language beyond book learning and what you get from a course.

Just my humble observation.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

It's not plausible that an American contract lawyer working with Chinese businesses knows Cantonese and not Mandarin.

Maybe both? That's not very likely either but it's completely implausible for her not to know Mandarin.

The headline is about plausibility.

Presumably the contract negotiations will be mainly in writing? We don't know that she's the final translator or anything. I don't know much about the diversity of Chinese-speaking populations across the USA, but certainly in the UK there's many people from Hong Kong who speak Cantonese and not much if any Mandarin. I believe the same is true for many of the older Chinese communities in the US.

Maybe FMC's parents moved to a small town, maybe one was Chinese-American and the other from the small town? She could have started working for an international firm dealing with HK and other Cantonese-speaking regions, and have picked up some Mandarin in the last 10-15 years since it started being in demand?

If she's half white, half Chinese, she might look white to most people in NYC as well as elsewhere - but speaking Chinese will be the charm.

 

[Paul_Chance]

Yes, it would work in Romance. One of the standard tropes of Romance as a genre is "take a chance on love", which centers around the main character overcoming their "reasons" for not pursuing a romance and "taking a chance", so I think you'll be fine there.

LOL - my only question was how exactly does a radiologist work from home? Doesn't that require specialized equipment and the ability to use that equipment on patients? That's what my brain hung up on. Small town rural America is a wasteland when it comes to medical specialists, often involving long journeys to get specialized care, like radiology.

 

[Carnevil9]

Yes, it would work in Romance. One of the standard tropes of Romance as a genre is "take a chance on love", which centers around the main character overcoming their "reasons" for not pursuing a romance and "taking a chance", so I think you'll be fine there.

LOL - my only question was how exactly does a radiologist work from home? Doesn't that require specialized equipment and the ability to use that equipment on patients? That's what my brain hung up on. Small town rural America is a wasteland when it comes to medical specialists, often involving long journeys to get specialized care, like radiology.

They do. I have a friend who does exactly that. The technicians take the images, and email them to the specialist who interprets them.

 

[Paul_Chance]

They do. I have a friend who does exactly that. The technicians take the images, and email them to the specialist who interprets them.

I stand corrected. Out of curiosity, does your friend live in a small rural town?

 

[AlexBailey]

An extension of your 750? I’m interested.

There are lots of reasons someone could want to leave the city. News stories, health, wanting to raise their kids differently… there could be a special school out in the more rural area…

I live near a rural school that does Mandarin submersion. Some families move from far away so their kids can attend.

 

[intim8]

, this being Romance, she will decide the pros outweigh the cons and she will move with him. But would you find that plausible?

Not a lot, but it depends on how you build up to it and how convincing you make their relationship.

But then my question is, what comes next? Not likely that just moving to NYC is the end of the story.

 

[Carnevil9]

I stand corrected. Out of curiosity, does your friend live in a small rural town?

No, suburban Tampa Bay.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Thanks for workshopping with me, everyone! Thinking about the questions here led me to move the conflict in this story from within the relationship (stay or go) to outside the relationship (how to get out, together).

Here's what I have:

FMC is white, born and raised in a different tiny Minnesota town. She has no connection with China, but has always loved the pottery, the calligraphy, the little parasols. If it were Japan instead of China, you'd call her a weeb. She majors in Chinese, goes into international contract law, and dreams of living in China for a while before settling down.

All that changes in one horrific night. She's left with a Glasgow smile. The scars flatten out but remain discolored, easily visible on her fair skin. Only with heavy makeup can she conceal them.

She goes through a hypersexual period as a trauma response, conceives a child during a one-night stand, and realizes she's never going to make it to China. Instead, she moves to a town like her hometown, hoping to give her kid the idyllic small-town childhood she remembers.

Now, three years later, she understands that the small-town experience is different for unwed mothers who come in from "the city" wearing lots of makeup and not smiling at people. There's nothing holding her here, but also nothing drawing her anywhere else. She's adrift.

The MMC came from China for college at UM Twin Cities. He was in his last year of a prestigious interventional radiology fellowship in New York when he unexpectedly became a widower and a single father. He finishes by the skin of his teeth, then downgrades to a work-from-home gig reading films and moves to the cheapest place he can find, sight unseen.

It's an ill-judged decision, as much a product of stress and sleep deprivation as rational thought. He doesn't understand the difference between Minneapolis and here. He's never been anywhere so rural or so uniformly white, where so many services are provided informally by friends and family he doesn't have and a church he doesn't attend.

When the MCs meet, they fill an emotional and logistical void in each others' lives. They can keep each other company and swap childcare and someday share expenses. It would be enough for her, if he would stay.

But he doesn't want to. It takes hours to drive to the "ethnic" supermarket and weeks to request Chinese picture books via inter-library loan. He has to threaten litigation to get the incompetent bigot at the urgent care to give his kid a proper exam. The locals very politely freeze him out. The daycare misunderstands his kid's broken English and suspects him of neglect. Etc.

They decide to leave. But where? She hopes for a small Midwestern city, bigger than this place but still cozy and familiar. He wants her to give New York a try---Flushing isn't China, but it the closest she's likely to get in this lifetime. She visits a few times and comes around.

Does this seem more reasonable?

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Interesting wording. "This being romance," the decision to move isn't what makes it romance, and the story being a romance isn't what makes the decision to move plausible.

I meant, this being not merely a romantic story but a story in the Romance category. I'm told the readers there expect a certain formula. It wouldn't go over well if I end with them splitting up and going their separate ways.

What's going to make it plausible are the feelings, not the circumstances.

I can't tell if I'm misunderstanding you or we're running into a huge philosophical disagreement. I think exactly the opposite: the circumstances have to make sense for the feelings to be plausible.

E.g., it would be very hard to have the FMC plausibly consider following him back to China, where she doesn't have right of residence or work authorization or license to practice her chosen profession.

Or am I being insufficiently romantic (and insufficiently imaginative)?

 

[tenyari]

Of course, this being Romance, she will decide the pros outweigh the cons and she will move with him. But would you find that plausible?

I mean... other than me being Hispanic rather than White - you sort of described the theme of my 20s. Cept the big city I moved to was in Asia.

Make sure to distinguish that the protagonist believed she could no longer move to China rather than that she actually couldn't. Because nothing would have actually stopped her. But it is pretty common for people to think they no longer have the option of going places.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

FMC is white, born and raised in a different tiny Minnesota town. She has no connection with China, but has always loved the pottery, the calligraphy, the little parasols. If it were Japan instead of China, you'd call her a weeb. She majors in Chinese, goes into international contract law, and dreams of living in China for a while before settling down.
...
Does this seem more reasonable?

I'm not an expert in the US college system, but how likely is someone majoring in Chinese to actually become fluent in the language, and wouldn't it require a semester (or more) actually at a partner college in China/Singapore/Taiwan/Malaysia?

Not knowing how to get back once she has the child, could be plausible.