Hope I'm posting this in the right place....? My first post-intro post, yay!

My first ever novel is forming very rapidly both in my mind and in the form of hastily drafted notes that look like they are written in obscure other-wordly code, as they try to keep up with the ideas pouring out of my brain.
However, I have hit a slight speed bump. I am happy to wait for inspiration to strike, but in the meantime, I thought I would see if any of you have any fresh insight or directions to point me in.

My MC is actually accompanying another character on a journey/quest. I guess that makes the other character a 2nd character? An example could be FOTR, told from Sam's perspective.
Anyway, one aspect of the culture in my world is that a son of noble birth goes on a coming-of-age type quest. The point is that when he returns, he has become a man. A rite of passage if you will, but only required by the sons of Lords; those that have responsibility over the land.
My 2ndC is actually a girl. Her ONLY (edited b/c I put older! oops) brother died when they were young. She is 2 years older than him.
I have hesitantly decided that the required age for this task be 14. I know that 18 is usually the path to adulthood, but I am drawing on my re-enactment experience of the Tudor period and setting it in a historical/medieval-type land, when these things happened younger. I also heard an interesting sermon by Paul Washer on the "youth of today" (!), suggesting that because we have such a thing as 'teenagers' today, unlike in Jesus' time, there is less responsibility taken by 13-18 year olds, and lower expectations, therefore more issues. I find that interesting....
ANYWAY, around what would have been his 14th birthday (she is 16), she feels driven to defy custom and undertake the task in his place. I imagine you get the picture...?
My questions are; do these ages make sense? Would she have enough drive and determination to follow through with this despite barely knowing her brother? I have never suffered the loss of a family member and I don't feel qualified to write about it, but I know that if she had only 'recently' lost him, the drive to do such a thing would be far greater, and make more sense plot-wise.

This is very interesting, Firieth.
I have a question: Is the girl the older sister of the main character? If not, how does she know him?
Another question is what drives her to take up the quest in his place? Is that allowed? Would he still receive his manhood if she completed the quest for him? What are his feelings about all this?

*cough* That was more questions than I thought I had. I hope you can answer them all; I'm quite curious.

Main character is also a girl. She is a village girl who volunteers/is chosen to accompany the character I was talking about. gosh this is getting quite confusing!



Well, to be honest, this main part of the plot is all very new to me. It just appeared last night. I am not entirely sure yet what drives her so much to want to do this. I know she wants to honour her brother, to prove that she can be more than what is expected of her, and that she has always had a desire and a thirst for adventure and the world beyond her village walls. As does the MC - this they have in common, and it is what drives the MC to volunteer to be her companion.
(the brother, whose manhood and feelings would be in question, is the one who died. Thus making her an only child)

Does that answer your questions?? I'm a little worried now that this is not making any sense. What do you think? Would it be easier if I shared more plot details, such as names, short passages I have written etc? I am not sure what the general guidelines are here; I know it is a google-able site.
Thanks so much for being interested

Oh and ETA: no, it's not strictly allowed. But she is balking against the cultural norm. A simple example would be; in the Jewish culture, boys have Bar Mitzvah's to celebrate their turning into men. They have tasks to accomplish, such as learning passages from the Torah. Now I know that they have Bat Mitzvah's now too sometimes, for girls, but let's pretend that they didn't. Imagine a family with 2 children - a boy, and a girl. The boy dies. The girl is determined to honour his memory and what could have been by learning the passages from the Torah herself, and having his bar mitzvah in his place, to celebrate the life he could have lived and the man he could have become.
That is obviously not at all the point of the book, but that is the starting point at least, the motivation for undertaking the journey, and the driving force behind the determination to do something unusual, that would attract scrutiny.

That is a very interesting idea...I like it.

Fourteen doesn't seem too young to me. If it is a culture where people are expected to grow up sooner, then they generally will, as you mentioned. Some cultures, fourteen years old was old enough for a girl to marry.

I think that she probably would do it. Sixteen. She is probably more likely to do it at sixteen than she would at an older or a younger age.

* thoughtful * If I were her, I have a feeling that I would actually be more likely to do it the less I knew him. I'm probably the weird one out (wouldn't be the first time), and hardly anybody else would be that way, but it is definitely a possibility for your character if it is for me.

In my story country, Aelati, adulthood is reached at the fifteenth birthday. For their first fourteen years, children are trained in the various manners and disciplines that must be put into practice on their fifteenth birthday. Once a legal adult, one can buy weapons, marry, buy livestock, and sit in on town council meetings (or become part of the royal council if they are lined up for that rank).
If a child does not receive the necessary training before their fifteenth birthday, as in the case of a street urchin, they learn for themselves or become loiterers (basically, bums) or minstrels (a little less than bums), or make a living doing cheap physical labor.