I’m writing a revenge story. This guy or girl comes from a rich family. Their dad is a doctor and their mom is a lawyer. The kid is in their 20s and is a drug addict. Their family cut them off because of it.
The dealer kills them because they couldn’t pay the money they owed. Then a loved one goes after the dealer for revenge.
Is this good? I didn’t want to overcomplicate it by giving it a huge conspiracy, but at the same time, realistically, couldn’t they have gotten the money some other way?
More realistic might be the addict does something stupid out of desperation like try to rob his dealer and is killed in the process.
Yes, they do. I haven’t heard about a human being that would consume drugs and will not gain an addiction to them over time.
That’s a very strong assertion. How would you, personally, describe addiction?
Mental addiction I can describe as an internal reminder that recalls you how good you felt when you consumed drugs. Yes, you can ignore but it acts like Google alerts showing on your phone frequently and annoying you with phrases like “eat it, come on” or “you will feel so good, take them and relax”.
Physical addiction is worse since your body got so adapted to drugs that it refuses to properly function. Metaphorically, not only you have constant Google alerts telling you to consume drugs, your phone literally starts lagging, glitching and etc. So drugs for you are as issential as an inhaler for asthmatic.
Your mental addiction definition is a lot broader than mine. I’d hardly say I’m addicted to roller coasters, but I do occasionally think about booking a vacation that includes an amusement park.
Why wouldn’t they?
I mean…
Exhibit A: Succession…
Literally every episode has drugs…
Its not a show about bussiness… its just parties, drugs, famiky therapy, a board meeting coup-attempt in between, more parties, and DRUGS
Take a look at the Reiner story. Being rich and famous doesn’t stop drugs from ruining families.
The murderer was schizophrenic. He used drugs to cope with the schizophrenia. But it was schizophrenia that caused the murder.
There are plenty of rich addicts. Charlie Sheen and Whitney Houston spring to mind. Anna Nicole Smith was a literal billionaire.
“Tough love” is also a real thing. Families throw addicts out all the time. the idea is that if things get bad enough the addict will “hit bottom” and seek help.
The idea of a dealer killing a customer is the part that makes little sense. The dealer wouldn’t give an addict drugs without cash up front. Dealers know exactly how unreliable addicts are.
How about the addict tries to steal from the dealer and the dealer kills them in self defense?
You might want to look up the case of Carrol O’Connor. Famous actor, his son died after an overdose. O’Connor called the son’s dealer a murderer and the dealer tried to sue him for defamation of character.
I grew up a middle class kid in the rich suburbs. That’s so realistic and common it’s practically cliche.
The only realistic part is the rich parents not making the kid out when it really came down to it. You don’t hear about it more because Rich parents get their kids out of drug issues and DUIs like the rest of us run errands on a Tuesday night.
Rich people absolutely get addicted to drugs. They just have sufficient resources that it doesn’t affect their lives as detrimentally in many cases. Elon is up to his eyeballs in ketamine on a given day.
From what I’ve seen & read, yes.
Doctors are often addicted to drugs, or just to medicating themselves.
I read an article by a woman who worked for a house-cleaning service, which ordered her to stop working too fast/competently.
So, she slowed-down, to keep her job.
& looked in cupboards, medicine-cabinets, etc.
She said that now she doesn’t want to be rich, because they’re consistently addicted to drugs/medications.
Hollow living … people trying to “fill” themselves with chemically-enforced numbness…
I don’t know if you ever encountered r/leaves the subreddit about people who’ve ditched marijuana-addiction…
“I got tired of not feeling anything meaningful” would be a good summary of many testimonies, there…
from what I can see, the story you’re working-on is viable, except the loved-one’s going to need a private-investigator or something, to level the playing-field against the streetsmart dealer.
no, they couldn’t have got the money some other way: born-into-wealth means being brought-up in entitlement: it makes one’s instincts incompetent-for-raw-survival, AND narcissistic.
( Dad was a medical-researcher & doctor: I know what I’m talking about in this context. )
Please read BOTH of John Truby’s books, “The Anatomy of Genre” 1st, then his one on Story 2nd.
Your book will be massively better if you do.
& if you want the best editing book in the world, it is Coyne’s “The Story Grid”.
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All you managed to do with this post is very clearly and on several levels show everyone your unbelievable ignorance and idiocy. I’m sorry but holy hell… Everything you wrote is just so weirdly dumb and like you have been living in a closed room with no Internet access for your whole life until right before you made this post. HOW do you not know that rich people get addicted to drugs? It’s like the leading unnatural death cause for them, and very obviously so. And then the plot hole chaos of completely illogical actions and events in your story, you managed to cram so much of it into three small paragraphs. It’d still be so oddly lacking in basic comprehension even if it turns out that you’re 10 years old.
Yes, 100%. Fancy rehab clinics are there literally for this reason. The Betty Ford Clinic was a punchline for a long time as being a brand-name Hollywood-friendly rehab that specialized in keeping their client list quiet. The kids of wealthy people can and do get addicted to drugs - cocaine in college would be an easy one.
I agree that it’s entirely unrealistic that a dealer would kill a family over money. A dealer would sooner blackmail the family, or threaten to harm the kid via “some associates.” If the dealer kills the family…how would they get money? The point of leveraging fear to get paid is that 1) someone needs to remain alive and afraid of something worse so they have a reason to pay someone to stop things getting worse, and 2) sending a message that other people will see that someone needs to get paid or there will be consequences. Plus, any drug-addicted 20-something will crumple up and be totally useless in this situation, rather than get sober AND get revenge.
Just throwing an idea out there - let’s say 20-something guy has a younger sister So we have 20, Dealer, and Sister for your setup. Maybe Loved One is a family member with skills the parents don’t have. 20 owes a ton of money to Dealer. 20 goes to Dealer’s place trying to score something and is already messed up and Dealer is about to throw them out, but 20’s phone rings. It’s Sister sending a message. Dealer gets interested, steals 20’s phone, and starts to run a scam on Sister. Dealer get Sister into way deeper shit. Parents are useless and have no idea what to do, but cut off money to both of them. 20 goes looking for Sister, who is found dead from an OD. Or ODs and goes to a hospital, but is pregnant with Dealer’s baby, or mangled in a car accident where Dealer was driving and Dealer was fine - whatever you want (please don’t get too misogynistic with it). 20/Loved One goes after Dealer for revenge, but it makes more sense for 20 at minimum because we’re invested in 20. You can only add Loved One if you introduce them as somehow “better” than 20, and more skilled.
Simply getting cut off from money is a pretty trite reason to get revenge because it will seem like it’s only about money, not the emotional connection with the family. When you add the Sister as the catalyst, 20 will feel guilt over being the way that Dealer gets their hooks into a family member, the parents will be helpless, so 20 or someone else will feel the need to act since no one else can. Though, this might be a very done to death plot.
You’d be better off having the family pay and the person is killed anyways.
I would point out the way drug dealers kill their customers is unintentionally via overdose or bad drugs.
Also, if you’re a parent, and you lost your only child to a drug dealer due to an overdose, that’s really all you need to want to hunt down and kill the dealer.
A parent with nothing left to lose could be about as dangerous as it gets.
I’m with this guy. Drug dealers killing valuable clients is incredibly rare. ODs are common. It feels more natural. Even the cartels make people work off debt. Dead man can’t pay either.
I think you’re lacking the depth of experience to be much of an author yet and should focus on living for a while. Try heroin, take another crack at the novel while you’re getting clean
Lol. Don’t suggest heroin tho!
I admittedly thought something similar when I saw this post (not to suggest heroin tho!). I thought, “write what you know!” I’m all for ppl learning to write better, but in a world/economy of hyper-fictionalized junk, I would like yo see more stories about people’s actual experiences and less like unconnected fiction. To me, miscellaneous fiction is like cotton candy – it tastes sweet, but it’s empty.
PS - stay away from opiates. Addiction is a supreme waste of time.
Rich folks despise their drug addict children and cut them off out of shame (the real spoiler is that these parents create the addiction). So the one who gets revenge should be the black sheep of the family who tried their best to keep the addict around.
