what do you think of this story? better as a book or a movie?

[sofie]

this story tells of a teenage girl (mia) who has gone through too much too fast. it starts in her adolescent years where she was an outcast in school. she would skip lunch everyday and sit at the outside benches by herself for fear of having no one to eat with. she's antisocial and only considers one other her friend yet they hold a competitive relationship. in the summer before high school, she begins to eat normally but notices weight gain. this marks the start of her troubles with eating disorders, sliding from bulimia to binge eating and back. she keeps this a secret, the first of many.
she also deals with image problems and low self esteem but in her transition to high school, her facial features have matured womanly and model-like. in all, she turns into an attractive female at age 14. mia catches her young math teacher amazed by her but she ignores him. although gaining a few more friends, she remains in her mute stage, now spending her lunch time in the school library. she puts her focus in her classes and becomes a 4.0 student. she continues this into her sophomore year, being the high achieving student she is, the weight-obsessed freak she is, and the beauty (in the eyes of everyone else) she is. she becomes suicidal when pressed by the pressures of the above. she suddenly finds herself doing worse in her classes, struggling with weight gain and loss, and deeply ugly. she has episodes of mental breakdowns. then she manages to find some positivity by the end of the school year. she ends it with a 4.2 GPA and eases off about her looks. the summer before junior year, she begins talking to older men online out of boredom. she realizes she has never been in a relationship before so she attempts to see how she affects men. the precocious 16 year old charms men in their 20s in chats and later on, her webcam. this begins her numerous cybering sessions, many of them lasting into the early am. the men loved her and she the loved the attention. she was a genius in that her parents never detected any foul play from her. the summer ended on a sweet note for her. her junior year of high school was tough and she knew it. she does well in her classes, including 4 APs, but as time went on, her work ethic falters. her low self esteem came back as well when she begins binge eating at buffets. she finds herself loving food but hates gaining weight so she binges and starves and binges and starves. she keeps her thin body frame but struggles mentally. in a chatroom, 16 year old mia meets 24 year old john. not only were they involved online but this time, mia has find herself a boyfriend. living 30 minutes away, he oftentimes picks her up and the two engage in sex. her parents were clueless that their daughter was sneaking out at 2am and not really studying at the library on sundays. mia and john lost touch after 3 months. she then meets 28 year old ryan. sex ensues. all the while she still chats with older men online.


mia sees how her life has changed. she no longer walks to the local dollar tree to buy school supplies but finds herself picking up multiple pregnancy tests instead. she sees no worth in life, between fcking aimlessly with older men and lying to her parents.
she's never ugly but she thinks herself to be. she is self conscious and has low self esteem. she thinks that by eating, she gets fat and ugly. but she's genuinely pretty.

 

[---]

woah, thats realli deep. i think that regardless whether you'd write a book or produce a movie for it, it'll be realli hard, never mind finding the actors and actresses. i think this would be best as a book since it would be more detailed and gives a deeper insight on how her life's changed dramatically. once you publish it, (also pretty hard to find a publisher), you never know, it might be turned into a movie years later.

 

[Masterblaster]

This would do well as a book or movie. But it has all the trappings of a Lifetime after-school special type movie.

Allow me to offer a critique, even though you didn't ask for one. (I was tired when I answered this question, so I thought that's what you were looking for. I only realized you asked a simple question after I wrote this whole long thing!)

I kinda like the angles you're going for, but the story goes back and forth too much. I know that's sometimes how life is, but a story needs to be distilled for the reader. I would suggest something like this.

1) Mia gets to high school. Over the summer she has gone from a gawky loner, to a full-fledged beauty. She immediately feels the pressure of all the new attention caused by her beauty. Her math teacher, a young guy about 24 years old is obviously attracted to her, but she ignores him at first.

2) As the school year begins, she takes on a lot of responsibility, new friends, extracurriculars, advanced classes.

3) She finds that it is impossible to please everyone--her new friends, her coach, her parents. She develops depression and an eating disorder. Maybe she takes pills, too.

4) She gets worse and worse. Even though she is near suicidal, no one knows. Her self-esteem is so shot that when the math teacher hits on her after class, she breaks down and lets him have sex with her. She knows its wrong, but she hates herself, so she lets him do it.

5) The math teacher becomes obsessive. He demands more and more of her time. She puts up with it because she thinks she has no self worth.

6) She meets a boy her own age who is interested in who she is on the inside and doesn't want anything from her other than for her to be herself. Meanwhile, she continues the affair with the math teacher.

7) When the math teacher sees Mia kiss the boy after a school dance, he gets in a fight with her at his house. And in a drunken rage, he hits her and accuses her of sleeping around.

8) Mia goes home. She now has to make a choice between staying with the abusive math teacher, or telling someone about what she has done and face the shame of it.

9) She breaks down and tells the boy all about it. He goes with her to the police, or the school principal, to support her when she tells.

10) The story ends with Mia, beginning to eat healthy, waiting for her new boyfriend to visit her at a new school.

11) Alternatively, Mia could run away from everything---not tell the police, not tell the boy. This would be a darker ending.

This plot line seems to have all the same angles as the one you proposed, but it leaves out some unnecessary back story of her middle school years. And it includes the main points I think you were trying to get at----a girl with an eating disorder caused by the pressures of youth, the self destructive sex with older guys, and the eventual triumph over the pressures of high school.

Hope that helps some.

 

[Em Em]

It would make a better movie, cut out the part about John and ryan though, it should have a happy ending so try making her meet a guy online that tries to see her for who she really is or something ya know??? like, have a good ending and ppl would actually like to see it, otherwise it's just depressing and won't help anybody out, ppl want to see movies/read books that make them feel better, as if they've learned something. Also it's kinda repetitive so if she could deal w/ dif problems at dif times of her life it would be more interesting such as binge eating when she's 14, getting better and then becoming anorexic when she's 18. I like the part about her getting gorgeous but don't make her ugly unless she's pretty again in the end. It's got a sad ending, I would have her marry a 20 something year old guy that actually loves her and end it that way instead of putting all that strife in her life.
Other than those criticisms, I liked the story plot and think you should submit it to a movie maker like disney or something, it made me think about the harsher side of life.