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I've been submitting a MG fantasy to several agents, and keep on getting a "not for me" response. I've been searching for some reason for why the story hasn't gone down with them, and have been wondering about the reason for it. And I've been thinking over one possible reason.
I've noticed that a lot of MG fantasies start with the protagonist, even before the event that sends him (or her) off on the adventure, experiencing much trouble in his/her life: parents dead, parents divorced or getting divorced, living with an unpleasant foster-family, singled out for bullying at school, etc. But my MC didn't have any turmoil in his life when the story began (though he gets plenty of it after the adventure begins). His father is dead, but that doesn't weigh on him too greatly (it happened when the MC was a baby, so he doesn't remember his father, and his mother took good care of him). Other than his father's death, he has a good life and a quiet one - at least, if you count living in an old house which, rumor claims, is haunted - and those rumors excite the MC more than they scare him.
(The story, I should explain, to show the context, opens on a windy, wild autumn evening when the MC hears an odd noise in the lower part of the house - apparently coming from the cellar - investigates, and discovers an odd creature linked to the stories about the house's haunting, who had come to the house to retrieve something - and the MC helping the creature retrieve that object from his room leads to them both going back in time to the early Middle Ages, unable to get back, with the MC facing a lot of perils there.)
Now, I've wondered whether the MC's peaceful home life (the opening chapters have much external action as he searches for the source of the noise in the old house, encounters the creature visiting, and goes back in time with it) might be one reason why the agents keep turning the story down - that it's an unwritten rule that the MC has to have some serious trouble going on in his life before the "inciting incident" (the odd creature's arrival, in this case), and that the absence of such turmoil is a major reason for their saying "Sorry, not for me". (Though this also has the problem that the MC needs a happy home life. A major part of the story is his desperately trying to return to his own time, while he's faced not only with external obstacles but also hints - which he constantly tries to ignore - that he's supposed to be in the past to accomplish something important. And if his home life wasn't so happy, the reader might find his wanting to go home unconvincing.)
Is my MC having a happy and contented life at the start of the story (it obviously changes once he meets the creature and goes back in time - does it ever) a handicap to my book being published?
I've noticed that a lot of MG fantasies start with the protagonist, even before the event that sends him (or her) off on the adventure, experiencing much trouble in his/her life: parents dead, parents divorced or getting divorced, living with an unpleasant foster-family, singled out for bullying at school, etc. But my MC didn't have any turmoil in his life when the story began (though he gets plenty of it after the adventure begins). His father is dead, but that doesn't weigh on him too greatly (it happened when the MC was a baby, so he doesn't remember his father, and his mother took good care of him). Other than his father's death, he has a good life and a quiet one - at least, if you count living in an old house which, rumor claims, is haunted - and those rumors excite the MC more than they scare him.
(The story, I should explain, to show the context, opens on a windy, wild autumn evening when the MC hears an odd noise in the lower part of the house - apparently coming from the cellar - investigates, and discovers an odd creature linked to the stories about the house's haunting, who had come to the house to retrieve something - and the MC helping the creature retrieve that object from his room leads to them both going back in time to the early Middle Ages, unable to get back, with the MC facing a lot of perils there.)
Now, I've wondered whether the MC's peaceful home life (the opening chapters have much external action as he searches for the source of the noise in the old house, encounters the creature visiting, and goes back in time with it) might be one reason why the agents keep turning the story down - that it's an unwritten rule that the MC has to have some serious trouble going on in his life before the "inciting incident" (the odd creature's arrival, in this case), and that the absence of such turmoil is a major reason for their saying "Sorry, not for me". (Though this also has the problem that the MC needs a happy home life. A major part of the story is his desperately trying to return to his own time, while he's faced not only with external obstacles but also hints - which he constantly tries to ignore - that he's supposed to be in the past to accomplish something important. And if his home life wasn't so happy, the reader might find his wanting to go home unconvincing.)
Is my MC having a happy and contented life at the start of the story (it obviously changes once he meets the creature and goes back in time - does it ever) a handicap to my book being published?