Thread: Plot Issues, Help Appreciated!

Hey, I'm working on a Sci-Fi novel and here is my plot:

A single father working with a team of terracutters on a distant planet struggles to return to earth when crew members begin acting strangely.

In plot-speak, my protagonist's compelling need (or motivation, as some refer to it) is to return home to his daughter. The conflict arises when multiple twists make it difficult for him to do so.

The problem I'm having with this is the question of space-travel.. currently, it would be unlikely for a father to leave his only child for a contract-job in space, given that he wouldn't return until a decade later or so. I'm even having issues explaining his reason for leaving her at all, though money is likely the best one.

His daughter, however, is his primary motivation for surviving and getting off the new planet, she also provides a back-story that relates to the discovered twist. So I need her in there.

Dear writingforums.com author, I need some help from your brilliant mind, help me navigate this plot debacle!

Here's a few ideas I had... don't know if any of them are applicable because I don't know the specifics of what you've in mind for the plot, but hopefully one of these will help:

-- Could it be possible that he is forced to take the job (maybe as some sort of atonement for a crime... like some sort of "community service")?

-- Or, maybe the daughter could've had some sort of physical condition when she was a baby. The father had to rely on the financial assistance of some sort of benefactor, but the benefactor requires the father to come work for him on a job in space that will take the next ten years..? Or the father has to take the job because it's the only way he would be able to pay the benefactor back without it taking the rest of his life to do so?

-- Or maybe the father doesn't even know he has a daughter until a certain point, then he finds out somehow, but is forced by legal contract to stay and finish the work? It sounds like the story takes place in the far future, so maybe you could have him build up a relationship with her by having virtual reality meetings with her.

Parents used to sell their children to the mines, or girls to what we call red light centres (and still occurs in non-Western nations). A majority of fathers will abandon the home if a child has any type of disability.
So many ways to write this.

I think it depends on how old the daughter is and exactly why he wants to get back to her now.Things could be different for him if his daughter was three versus twenty three. Maybe she has gotten into trouble and he needs to help her (think the movie: Taken) and only he can because of something in his past.Also, don't fret over space travel as a hinderance. If you need someone to travel quickly back and forth there are well established plot devices for this which you can adapt to you story. No need for him to necessarily be out of pocket for a long time. Think Stargate-esque wormhole technology or space folding transport as just two that come to mind.

Maybe he's a ne'er-do-well who fathered a child while with someone who's now deceased. Following a short period of time under intense pressure / conflict, he bonded with the child while both of them were living with someone he dearly trusts. He leaves the child with this person because he is forced by economics to take the contract job. He finds out that (1) the person he trusted with his daughter has died, (2) was killed, (3) or in a major plot twist, has sold or somehow 'misappropriated' the child (youth prison, enemy forces, work camp, being prepared to participate in a space program in another galaxy) …

Or maybe the daughter is with him, and he needs to get her away from what ever danger that is about to happen? Just thinking that the motivation to return to someone far away wouldn't be quite as compelling as trying to protect someone right there.

Why not have the daughter as a figment of his imagination? He could be motivated to return to her due to some kind of biological input that messes with his memory.