Story Inspiration: Researching Death

I have already told you how I set the guidelines for my script A Good One in order to combat the issues I had in creating a story that complies with the ten minute rule and still works as a believable piece of fiction. Today, I will tell you how I conceived of the actual story behind it.

Since I was six years old, I was repeatedly harrowed by death. It started when I lost my great-uncle whom I admired so much to the point that I never really dared to speak with him. For he lived an incredibly adventurous life that intimidated me tremendously:

He was stationed as a soldier in Dresden when the first bombardments hit in 1944/45, got lost in the chaos, deserted to the French Foreign Legions and served all around French in Asia and Africa. Until, one day, his combat vehicle hit a land mine...

He was the only survivor out of 17 soldiers, losing 'only' a lobe of the lung in the process and being hospitalised in Marseille for years before he was finally able to reconnect with my family and be transferred back to Germany for the remainder of his years.

So when he suddenly died, I was struck to the core. Devastated. How could such an impressive person leave without leaving behind any trace at all? How could someone just go and never return? It was back then that I understood, with full clarity of my senses, how final death is.

This was when my anxiety started to kick in and kept returning in intervals during my childhood and most of my adolescence. During these times, I was so afraid of dying that I, sometimes for weeks, did not eat properly for the fear of choking, nor sleep properly for fear of never waking up again. I would stop playing outside for the fear of being hit. By a car, by a man, by anything really.

Until I read Terry Pratchett's Mort. My brother was always an avid reader of Pratchett, and when I turned 17, having had yet another phase of dying so intense that I barely left the house, I stumbled across this title in his extensive library of Discworld novels and read it from cover to cover in less than a week. I then took Pratchett's Reaper Man and read that one from cover to cover, too. Then I proceeded onto Hogfather and did the same. After reading these three books, I was never afraid of death again.

I was so fascinated to encounter a version of Death that was so lovable, clumsy, and nice; an entity who did not just come to fetch you, but who came to ensure that your transition into your next life went smooth. For in Pratchett's world, death only is permanent nothingness if you sincerely believe it to be so.

So to make a long introduction into a story a bit shorter, I was so intrigued by the idea of death not being the hopeless end of it all, but rather being a nice encounter with a new beginning, that I wanted to write my own stories and scripts about it.

And this is when my script idea for A Good One was born. Like Pratchett did for me, I wanted to create a vision and philosophy of life and death that gives hope (and possibly even closure) to those who either need or sorely seek it. I wanted to create a story that takes the sting out of death and offers an answer to the mystery that veils the afterlife.

So my premise for the story was to create Death as being a lovable, bubbly, funny character. Someone you immediately want to become friends with. And I wanted to twist my story even more.

For if you conduct a bit of research on stories of Death (as, in my case, mostly with German folklore), you instantly see a pattern emerging: Death, the Grim Reaper, depicted as a skeleton with a robe and scythe, is fetching a person whose time has come. Mostly, this person is a beautiful girl, in the height and bloom of her youth, either tragically killed in an accident, by lust, or out of lovesickness.

This story of Der Tod und das Mädchen ('Death and the Maiden') is iterated in so many facets that the original story has since long been lost and often only been preserved in songs of unknown origin. But to the core, it was the same: Death was a tragic occurrence and the maiden, upon meeting Death personified, is devastated.

Not so much in my story. In A Good One, I immediately decided from the start that the deceased would be pretty happy about the prospect of dying. So much so that it would even baffle Death itself.

Which is why I fashioned my main character Hayden Parry, who died of old age, having lived an unfulfilling life and thus not wanting it all anymore. I imagined him as the counter-part of what my great-uncle was in real life and thus resulted in Hayden.

Now to another element of my story. When Hayden dies, he is allowed one request and needs to prepare for one encounter: The meeting with the best version of himself.

This idea is deeply rooted in a sort of meme I discovered years ago in the depths of the internet. It's nothing much, just a stereotypical melancholic landscape with a hackneyed saying on it. Just that the saying was not hackneyed to me at all. For all it read was:

I was stricken by that thought that I decided to live my life to the fullest. That, if I were to meet myself in the afterlife, I would not have to be ashamed at all. And that this meeting would not be something to be afraid of.

So I combined all the ideas above into my own story:

Hayden, who finally died, is meeting Death and learns that he has one request and one encounter before he can pass on. Disinterested in the request, he proceeds to the encounter just to learn that he has wasted his life compared to his alter ego who has it all. Devastated, he does not yet understand what awaits him until Death is revealing it to him. Realising that he has not yet used up his last wish, he uses it for his second attempt at life. Death fulfils the job he was literally designed for and guides Hayden to his new life.

Let's see whether we will enter production with this script! If not, I will definitely take it up at a later time. For my heart really hangs onto it.

References:

Pratchett, T. (1987) Mort London: Corgi.

Pratchett, T. (1991) Reaper Man London: Corgi.

Pratchett, T. (1996) Hogfather London: Corgi.

Jean, V. (2006) Terry Pratchett's Hogfather [viewed on DVD] London: British Sky Broadcasting.

Baldung, H. Der Tod und das Mädchen (1517) [online image] Available from: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Hans_Baldung_006.jpg [Accessed on 8 November 2017]

Inspirational Quotes: Quote of the Day (2017) The Definition of Hell [online] http://uberhumor.com/inspirational-quotes-quote-of-the-day-453 [Accessed on 8 November 2017]