Christmas is coming and all your family is delighted. There is one character at odds with a family tradition.  

Write a story where your character is at odds with a family tradition.

I did this a little with my current WIP.

The premise for my story is a woman who can”t stand her stepfather because he refuses to acknowledge that he has a family.

The woman, Madeline, is a psychiatrist who knows that the young girl in the pictures on his walls is the result of a one – night stand.

The girl is his daughter.

For her part, Madeline knows her stepfather would try to control her if she found out about his daughter.

The father, however, thinks that she would be a bad influence.

Madeline believes the girl would do well in her life, but she is too proud to tell her stepfather that she is his daughter.

Here”s a little snippet of the story.

I wrote it to play on reader curiosity.

It”s my first time writing a story like this, so it”s going to be a learning experience.

Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments.

I”m having fun with it!

Madeline wiped the tears from her cheeks and turned her back on her stepfather.

She wrapped her arms around her waist and stared out the window, watching the traffic pass by on the freeway.

Her breath came out in ragged pants.

How could she have been so stupid?

How could she have been so blind?

I”m nothing but a mistake.

She was never meant to be anything but a mistake.

The engine of her car sputtered, and she turned to face the dash.

The car still had a full tank, but she had to fill it with gas, so she pulled into a gas station.

Madeline glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror.

The mascara streaks on her face were dark, and she knew her eyes were red, her skin flushed.

She pushed the strands of hair out of her face and sighed.

Maybe she would get a haircut, get rid of the frizzy look she was sporting.

She had a book due in the next few weeks, and she had some serious revisions to make before then.

Her editor and agent had already told her that it was obvious she had not worked on her story.

Madeline was embarrassed by the last chapters.

They were awful.

She didn”t know how to write to a deadline.

She was lazy and wanted to write anything but a horror story.

She wanted to write a romantic story about a man and a woman falling in love, and it was clear to her that the best way to do that would be to rework the ending.

But what was she going to do about the rest of her book?

She didn”t have a clue.

She had been working on this book for months, and it was the only thing she was working on.

The last thing she wanted was for her agent or editor to see her terrible work.

She was always overworked, always stressed out, and she always procrastinated.

No matter how hard she tried to ignore it, her obsessive behavior just kept coming back to bite her in the ass.

She was sure her agent and her agent”s boss would have a stroke if they saw her writing, and it would be all her fault.

She stepped out of her car and took a deep breath.

It was time to face the music.

She would never be a writer.

Not if she stayed like this.

Christmas is coming and all your family is delighted. There is one character at odds with a family tradition.
My brother who is a devout Catholic, has given us children some very strict rules on Christmas.

To begin with he said he would not be celebrating Christmas with us this year.

I don”t think he wants to, but he said he wouldn”t even be buying or giving presents.

I was absolutely horrified!

I was expecting presents from Santa, and as a matter of course, he always did.

I do know that he is not religious in any way but I still wanted to make the most of it.

I was expecting that he was going to be seeing his family and would celebrate with them.

I was expecting him to take part in the Christmas meals and we would be able to take part in the family traditions that we had always had.

As it happened, I was not disappointed.

His gift from Santa was a new rug for his dog”s kennel.

We had a lot of arguments over the years about whether the dog had a kennel, or just a box and whether it was necessary to spend any money on it at all.

I have to say that I am now used to my brother”s stand on these things and I would argue with him about them to the end of time.