Feedback on neopet backstory

[turduckenail]

Sup, I forgot I had an account here for like. Two weeks. Maybe three. Whoops.
Anyway I'm coming back to ask for feedback on a backstory I'm writing for one of my neopets. I haven't actually written anything yet so I'm just looking for a second opinion on the premise. Basically someone to tell me if it's a bad idea, or if there's some things I could do/not do to make it better.

So basically, my pet, Luna, is going through a rough time financially and is having trouble keeping her younger siblings fed. (They're all late teens to young adult-ish age tho) At the same time, she meets the girl of her dreams, Rylee, who's got a couple get-rich-quick schemes in the works, all of questionable legality. Luna's kinda desperate, so she criminal-elopes with Rylee to get some money to feed her family with. After a few months their schemes go from selling snakeoil to increasingly illegal activities until Rylee has started regularly offing dudes as a gun for hire. Luna isn't too thrilled about this, and tries to leave, but Rylee doesn't want to risk letting her identity getting out and landing her in prison, so she stabs Luna in the back (literally) and leaves her for dead. After that I'm kinda vague besides Luna somehow survives and goes home. 

And that's what I've got so far. Any thoughts?

[Moni]

It's hard to give feedback on this just because I don't know what the purpose of the story is. I don't mean this in a pejorative sense; you might have this narrative as a set-up for an ongoing future story or because you have an OC and just want to give them a story to go along with it, and those are two slightly different things, so I'm going to go though this bit-by-bit.

The concept itself is decent. You have a motivation (character needs money/infatuation with Rylee), a conflict (Luna doesn't like Rylee being an assassin) and a resolution (Luna gets #rekt, goes back to her family). This might seem like a "duh" sort of observation but a lot of people forget to add these things. That's all you really need at a conceptual level and it's hard to find fault with it. So if that's all you wanted to know, you can stop reading here. The devil's always in the details, after all.

So let's talk about the details a little bit, and what you might want to work through. How do a few get-quick-rich schemes escalate to literal assassination within the span of a few months? That won't typically happen with "normal" folks--Rylee had to have some history with crime. (I mean, within the span of a few months, I'd imagine the straw breaking the camel's back would be stealing from, I dunno, a charity for children with cancer that doesn't have good cybersecurity or something.) I mean, if Luna is a regular working-class-whatever, then how would she meet someone like Rylee and become infatuated with her? Did Rylee try to rope her into working for her? Is she a psychopath? Did Luna become infatuated with Rylee because she was irreverent and different? Was she blinded by "the girl of her dreams" during a trip to the bar or something? Is Luna just particularly dimwitted, or not good at reading cues from other people?

And how does Luna's crime-spree affect her relationships with her family? Is she away most of the time so they don't notice? Or does she end up having more free time to spend with them? There has to be an advantage to crime over her job, so maybe that was it. Her family's a pretty big part of her motivation, so you'll have to think this through as you get the solid details down. Also: why does Luna attempt to "leave" rather than stick it to Rylee and informing the cops? Does she still like Rylee? Does she not want to incriminate herself, so it's in her best interest to keep her mouth shut? etc etc.

Also, one last thing about the resolution: if this is a "backstory" to some ongoing conflict, then make sure the consequences of this story carry out to Luna's present-day interactions. So, like, does Rylee know she's still out there? Does Luna want revenge? How do her family dynamics change after realizing that their sister literally worked with a hitman to get money? etc. Either way, make sure she learns something or has some character development along the way. Character development is the one "big thing" that's absent from your plot description, not saying you don't have it or have it planned--as you come up with resolution, it should come clearer to you if it hasn't already.

This sounds kind of nitpicky but those kinds of questions are the bulk of where your story will eventually lie, so hopefully these questions help in addition to being a bit annoying. x)

[turduckenail]

Oh wow I didn't expect such an in depth response!!! Thank you!!!!

You bring up a lot of good points actually. So yes, it is supposed to be a set-up for an ongoing story. Rylee is a bit of a psychopath yes, and I'm thinking their schemes go something like con artists>smugglers>Rylee makes Connections and figures getting payed to kill people could be a good way to make money and drags Luna into it>full time assassins. I'm not 100% sure on the timeline, I just pulled "a few months" out of nowhere as a rough guesstimation of a time frame. This could easily span several years.

I'm not sure how they met, but however they did, Luna was attracted to Rylee's ambition and confidence, and she didn't realize until much later that she was dating someone who would be the type to actually go for assassination as a career choice.

Luna actually seperates herself from her family entirely for the duration of this because she doesn't want them to be brought under suspicion as accomplices if Rylee's plans go very bad. The reason she tries to leave Rylee instead of turning her in to the cops is because she still really likes Rylee, she just can't deal with what they're doing anymore. Also not wanting to incriminate herself is a good idea, I think I'll use that.

I've been thinking about tying all this into Luna's present-day. I'm not quite sure what I want to do yet but I think it'll come to me as I'm writing the rest down. And yeah, I can't wait to see how her character changes because of this!

Thank you so much for your super in depth reply!!!! It gave me a lot of good ideas and reminded me of some things I need to keep in mind. Thank you thank you! <3