Mothers & daughters

I am sure you'll get quite a few answers like mine, but: anything is interesting if you write it interestingly! If the main character is easy to relate to, feels three-dimensional and real, then readers will care about what happens to her and what happens to her relationship with her mother. Plus you have the mystery - I think a teen would see that as the real story, not the mother-daughter relationship. That should be something which just infuses the story, you know? And you have to make the relationship to the mother important to the MC - maybe she never had a good one before the sister went missing, maybe mom favored the sister, maybe she feels the mother wishes she had been the one to go and not the sister etc. Create drama, tension and conflict and you have yourself a story!
I'm crap with mysteries so you'll have to figure out why sis goes missing on your own!

Hello and welcome, Princess_13!

I agree with moonfish in that anything can be interesting if written well. I do think teenage girls would be interested in reading a good mother-daughter story. However, one of the conventions of YA, and one of the things that makes it different from middle grade (MG) literature, is that the teen protagonist should be the one solving the problem. In MG books, you often see an adult stepping in to help the young protagonist. In YA, we see the protagonist taking charge of his / her life and problems and being the one to take risks and make decisions.

I'm writing a YA novel right now in which the teen guy protagonist's relationship with his mother is a big part of the story. The mother has some mental and emotional problems, so the protagonist is her caretaker much of the time, and he makes most of the decisions around the house.

As for why the sister in your novel has gone missing... hmm... she could have been kidnapped. She could have run off to live with another member of the family, which perhaps figures in to your "family secrets" idea. She might be scared of her mother for some reason, and ran away to escape her. She could have run off to live with a significant other. She could have run away to join a band / theater troupe / dance troupe / movie cast / circus group, but didn't want to tell her mother because she knew she wouldn't approve.

Have you started writing the story yet? While I try to outline some of my stuff beforehand, I usually find that the answers to some of my questions about plot and character motivation come to me while I'm writing the first draft (or second draft. Or third draft). Anyway, good luck with it!

Perhaps the daughter and mother have a bad relationship -- until the 2nd daughter goes missing. There could be a wide range of emotions to write about in such a scenario. On the other hand, perhaps this has already been done.

You can also make it more compelling for the reader by adding some major emotional challenges to your MC. Sister was crack addict, joined skin-head gang and is living on the streets. Mom has terminal cancer, and wants to bring family together before she dies.

Or you can go to a sci-fi or fantasy route.

Sister was kidnapped by aliens who are major fans of the I Love Lucy Show. (You sister looks a lot like Lucy Ball) And now your MC and her mom are left to search the galaxy to find her. Your MC is surprised to find that her mom is actually a retired space cowgirl and has a spacecraft that she keeps in the shabby barn on their 20 acre farm. Adventures ensue...

I think if you pulled the mother-daughter relationship off right it would work. You can't just have the relationship for the sake of having the relationship, you have to make it real, you have to make it believable, and like any relationship, it can't be perfect all the time. Also, what satori said, I agree with, I think it also a very big point. If you're going to write YA and you have an adult step in and the adult takes the main role of solving the mystery, I think that would almost immediately turn me off, because I want to read about people like me who can do it, because I know, as a teen, that I might not be invincible, but I shouldn't have to hold mommy's hand for everything; I want to go out there and solve it myself. Sometimes they fail in that and then you need the help. Does that make sense?

And maybe, if this relationship was so close, the sister ran away for attention? Because she felt like her mother was neglecting her by spending so much time with the other sister that she wouldn't be missed anyways?

Hmm...I believe in that thread I protested the idea that adults shouldn't be important in YA. I'm actually sick of reading YA's with invisible parents. I don't know a single teenager who doesn't go home every night, who doesn't fight with their parents, who doesn't love their parents deep down.

A teenager's relationship with his parents is very, very important.

This book sounds interesting. Go for it.

Hmmm.... What would make a girl disappear? I'm too whimpy to go negative, so let's say... shame. A pregnancy. After all those long discussions and warnings. She fights with her boyfriend and runs away to a home for pregnant girls.

And what if the girl who's still with the mom finds herself with an unwanted pregancy and the mom (more clingy and snoopy because of the other daughter's disappearance) overhears a phone conversation and discovers the pregnancy. They have tender and angry discussions and debates over how to handle the estremely unwanted pregnancy. The mom wants the child desperately because of the loss of the other daughter.

The pregnancy could end in miscarriage and the mom would still have a newborn when the missing daughter finally decides to come home.

Part of the mystery could be how strange the missing daughter's boyfriend is acting in her absence.

I know, probably not something teens want to read, but it was off the top of my head.

I like reading about adults as well as teenagers...it's not like you turn a certain age and turn boring. Well, maybe some people do.

Maybe she was kidnapped and inducted into some cult?

You can always build a good story in which a parent plays a major role as long as the focus remains very squarely on your YA protagonist, her world and her concerns. You won't run into trouble unless you mess up that balance -- and then you have trouble indeed.

One really great example is the book Bloom by Elizabeth Scott (just read this and loved it, so will be raving about it for a while!) Although the main focus on the story is on Lauren's first love, we get a lot of background on her troubled past and the emotionally distant father who raised her alone. At first it seems that the dad isn't one of the main characters, but it becomes clearer, later in the book, that some of Lauren's inability to commit romantically is an inherited trait. Although she works out her problems on her own -- keeping the focus on her -- there is a very meaningful conversation between her and her father that serves as the final scene of the book. It's a compelling scene between the father and the daughter (and made me choke up a bit), but it works in the greater scheme of the book as well, because we know that the greater understanding Lauren has of her father is part of her greater understanding of herself. That, to me, was a superlative example of using a parental relationship as a key part of a YA and having it work very well.

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

My sister wanted me to mention the Alice books my Phylis Renolds Naylor...okay....

The Book Thief by Markus Zusac

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen

Where the Kissing Never Stops by Ron Koertge

Stoner and Spaz by Ron Koertge

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray?

I'm currently in an extremely antagonistic relationship with my mother, and as a young adult, would drop this book like a hot potato.

The reason why I don't read a lot of YA is because I tend to project a lot of my own problems into YA fiction and then proceed to see the characters handle the problem in profoundly stupid ways. It may not happen in your story, but it may happen in many story before.

I'm not going to say that this is explicitly a bad thing and that you should go on and have transparent parents (which is absolutely ridiculous, they should have some modicrum of intelligence), but that's just a warning about your audience.