I want to write a fictional story about...

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...a little girl growing up in an abusive home, but I can't think of a plot that would make sense.

In the story the child and her mother are being controlled and abused by the child's psychopathic father, and are living a life as prisoners. The mother is unhappy and scared, but the child knows no different and thinks this is normal. They finally escape, and the mother suffers severe depression, while the child is adapting to the real world she is experiencing for the first time.

The most difficult thing about writing this story is the child not going to school without the father getting fined and/or being found out by social services. Can a child get away with not going to school?
Also how can a guy keep an adult and a child locked up in a house without neighbours or passers-bys finding out something odd? I know he would use his abusive behaviour to keep them quiet, but he has to go to work to earn money, so how can he leave them locked up in the house without them trying to escape or yell for help? If he puts bars over the windows, people will sure sense something is wrong.

Writing this story sounds fun, but I just need some tips or ideas on how this man can keep his wife and daughter locked up in a house for 8 years without other people suspecting anything.

Sounds a lot like the real life childhood of the late musician, Gee Gee Allin. Allin's dad in fact had been a religious fanatic who alternately thought his oldest boy was Jesus (his little brother mispronounced Jesus as Gee Gee, and it stuck), and other times threatened to kill him along with his brother and mother. Both Allin boys grew up believing their upbringing was normal, till their mother escaped with them. The damage was done though, and Gee Gee ended up a violent drug addict and misogynist who regularly defecated on stage, then died of an overdose. For some inspiration, my suggestion is to look at real cases of monster fathers holding their families imprisoned.

Finding ideas is easy for me, but putting the plot together to make it seem believable and realistic to the reader is difficult.

If I don't write about a child growing up in an abusive household, I'll still like to write a story about a child being somewhere unpleasant or different, and then being removed from the situation and adapts to the proper way of life. I could write about a child who was born in a concentration camp and somehow managed to escape, or maybe even a child who is being treated like a baby by his or her parents, and thinks that is normal. I don't know.

Google the "Fritzl Case" in Austria.

Reality far crazier than what you made up, but the point is that the guy was a contractor who build a whole secret annex to his house, and was able to get away with ….what he got away with for 24 years .