is this a plausible motivation?

[Britva415]

I can't tell if I'm misunderstanding you or we're running into a huge philosophical disagreement. I think exactly the opposite: the circumstances have to make sense for the feelings to be plausible.

I guess it's two sides of the same coin - I don't disagree with you. The point I was trying to make was that circumstances don't predict feelings (motivation is a feeling). If that were true, no story would ever have to name a feeling at all. Naming the feelings can make unlikely choices in uncommon circumstances plausible.

I was basically trying to say that a good author can make weird circumstances relatable, and that a bad author can make what a character does in the most sensible circumstances incomprehensible. It was kind of a way of trying to encourage you to just write it - because I didn't get that you were asking whether the circumstances were plausible, separately from the feelings.

I'm still convinced that you could make them plausible if you showed that the FMC felt strongly enough about the choices you want her to make. If you ignored all the feelings and just narrated events happening without any expression of motivation, then yeah, readers might not understand "why" and think she made an unbelievable choice. Like I was saying, even plausible circumstances can be the setting for implausible choices if the motivations aren't "sold." But I don't think you ever were going to do that kind of weak, insightless writing.

I didn't see any impossible or unforgivably incorrect details in the plot. I thought, "this totally can work, but the writing of the FMC is what will have to sell it."

 

[Britva415]

The real draw back is fluency in either dialect or is it language (I don't know any Asian language). To really become fluent you must be exposed to it.

I'm not an expert in the US college system, but how likely is someone majoring in Chinese to actually become fluent in the language, and wouldn't it require a semester (or more) actually at a partner college in China/Singapore/Taiwan/Malaysia?

Right.

I'm a college student studying Chinese now, so I'm not pulling this out my ass - or "speculating," as one person said.

However, @joy_of_cooking didn't present FMC as fluent. She presented MMC as fluent, and as being happy to have someone to not have to speak a foreign (to him) language with.

Hell, after talking to him regularly for some months, her fluency will skyrocket. Also, having a degree in Chinese for the sake of using the language on a literary level is a great foundation for verbal skills. It's not going to be fluent but it's not going to be square-one either. She's already exposed to Chinese language through her work. OP didn't make clear whether verbal is part of her job or whether she went overseas to study - maybe she did. Even if all her work is only in print and not verbal, she's still got way more experience and familiarity and vocabulary than your garden variety newly minted bachelor-of-arts.

To me, it's not implausible at all that these two people could converse regularly, that he'd be motivated to do it, or that the connection could develop under these circumstances.

 

[VallesMarineris]

I'm not an expert in the US college system, but how likely is someone majoring in Chinese to actually become fluent in the language, and wouldn't it require a semester (or more) actually at a partner college in China/Singapore/Taiwan/Malaysia?

Not knowing how to get back once she has the child, could be plausible.

I knew a guy once who was a genius at language. He learned Chinese in one college year-- but it was his third or fourth language and just spoken Chinese. Written is a whole other level. Chinese elementary students, who already are fluent in the language, of course, spend more than half of every school day studying characters.

Singapore has a government program that welcomes Westerners with her skills. That would be easy. Taiwan also would be simple. Malaysia probably not easy. The only way to get into China would be if she already had a job with a global company and they sent her there. Even then the government would want to do a deep dive into what she was working on.

 

[Paul_Chance]

Thanks for workshopping with me, everyone! Thinking about the questions here led me to move the conflict in this story from within the relationship (stay or go) to outside the relationship (how to get out, together).

Here's what I have:

FMC is white, born and raised in a different tiny Minnesota town. She has no connection with China, but has always loved the pottery, the calligraphy, the little parasols. If it were Japan instead of China, you'd call her a weeb. She majors in Chinese, goes into international contract law, and dreams of living in China for a while before settling down.

All that changes in one horrific night. She's left with a Glasgow smile. The scars flatten out but remain discolored, easily visible on her fair skin. Only with heavy makeup can she conceal them.

She goes through a hypersexual period as a trauma response, conceives a child during a one-night stand, and realizes she's never going to make it to China. Instead, she moves to a town like her hometown, hoping to give her kid the idyllic small-town childhood she remembers.

Now, three years later, she understands that the small-town experience is different for unwed mothers who come in from "the city" wearing lots of makeup and not smiling at people. There's nothing holding her here, but also nothing drawing her anywhere else. She's adrift.

The MMC came from China for college at UM Twin Cities. He was in his last year of a prestigious interventional radiology fellowship in New York when he unexpectedly became a widower and a single father. He finishes by the skin of his teeth, then downgrades to a work-from-home gig reading films and moves to the cheapest place he can find, sight unseen.

It's an ill-judged decision, as much a product of stress and sleep deprivation as rational thought. He doesn't understand the difference between Minneapolis and here. He's never been anywhere so rural or so uniformly white, where so many services are provided informally by friends and family he doesn't have and a church he doesn't attend.

When the MCs meet, they fill an emotional and logistical void in each others' lives. They can keep each other company and swap childcare and someday share expenses. It would be enough for her, if he would stay.

But he doesn't want to. It takes hours to drive to the "ethnic" supermarket and weeks to request Chinese picture books via inter-library loan. He has to threaten litigation to get the incompetent bigot at the urgent care to give his kid a proper exam. The locals very politely freeze him out. The daycare misunderstands his kid's broken English and suspects him of neglect. Etc.

They decide to leave. But where? She hopes for a small Midwestern city, bigger than this place but still cozy and familiar. He wants her to give New York a try---Flushing isn't China, but it the closest she's likely to get in this lifetime. She visits a few times and comes around.

Does this seem more reasonable?

Yes, it seems reasonable to me.