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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42406
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42406
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I read a lot of YA fiction, a lot of which happens to take place in schools. Recently, an idea jumped into my head for a YA-ish story and told me that it was going to take place in a school.

The idea came to me, and the only way it was working when I thought it out would be in a school setting. The way the story works simply wouldn't work otherwise - I needed a young adult setting, with other teenagers around, deadlines, coming back home every day, an opportunity to set up good and bad authority figures, over a story extended over a period of months. A school checked all the boxes. I chose the US because I _did_ live in the US until I was around 8, and I'm a bit more familiar with US context than, say, Europe. (The story also wouldn't work where I currently live.)

So, listening to the demands of the story, I started to write the story. However, I ran into a problem: I've never _been_ to school.

I've been homeschooled since first grade, meaning I've never been enrolled in school after kindergarten. I don't have first-hand experience with the school system. On top of that, my story is taking place in the US, and I don't _live_ in the US, so my friends in the school system _here_ don't know what the school system in the _US_ is like.

How do I make sure that my story is realistic in a school setting, when I've never been in that school setting?

Original score: 9