A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 7

This is the 15th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Several reasons which I’ll work my through during this series of posts. Here’s another one:

The story idea is how everyone in Hollywood short-hands your script.

From the first moment your script enters into submission process, where it’s covered and at the very top there is a logline, through the marketing of your movie, where posters, newsprint, radio, TV spots, and web content all derive from it, your story idea is the touchstone for everything that happens.

So over time, I think it is fair to say that story ideas have become the lifeblood of Hollywood, what people traffic in all day long. The more you can think like that, play to the way Hollywood people interact with stories, the better your chances of success in the business.

Today’s story idea: “What Deathbed Visions Teach Us About Living.”

Chris Kerr was 12 when he first observed a deathbed vision. His memory of that summer in 1974 is blurred, but not the sense of mystery he felt at the bedside of his dying father. Throughout Kerr’s childhood in Toronto, his father, a surgeon, was too busy to spend much time with his son, except for an annual fishing trip they took, just the two of them, to the Canadian wilderness. Gaunt and weakened by cancer at 42, his father reached for the buttons on Kerr’s shirt, fiddled with them and said something about getting ready to catch the plane to their cabin in the woods. “I knew intuitively, I knew wherever he was, must be a good place because we were going fishing,” Kerr told me.

As he moved to touch his father, Kerr felt a hand on his shoulder. A priest had followed him into the hospital room and was now leading him away, telling him his father was delusional. Kerr’s father died early the next morning. Kerr now calls what he witnessed an end-of-life vision. His father wasn’t delusional, he believes. His mind was taking him to a time and place where he and his son could be together, in the wilds of northern Canada. And the priest, he feels, made a mistake, one that many other caregivers make, of dismissing the moment as a break with reality, as something from which the boy required protection.

It would be more than 40 years before Kerr felt compelled to speak about that evening in the hospital room. He had followed his father, and three generations before him, into medicine and was working at Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo, where he was the chief medical officer and conducted research on end-of-life visions. It wasn’t until he gave a TEDx Talk in 2015 that he shared the story of his father’s death. Pacing the stage in the sport coat he always wears, he told the audience: “My point here is, I didn’t choose this topic of dying. I feel it has chosen or followed me.” He went on: “When I was present at the bedside of the dying, I was confronted by what I had seen and tried so hard to forget from my childhood. I saw dying patients reaching and calling out to mothers, and to fathers, and to children, many of whom hadn’t been seen for many years. But what was remarkable was so many of them looked at peace.”

The talk received millions of views and thousands of comments, many from nurses grateful that someone in the medical field validated what they have long understood. Others, too, posted personal stories of having witnessed loved ones’ visions in their final days. For them, Kerr’s message was a kind of confirmation of something they instinctively knew — that deathbed visions are real, can provide comfort, even heal past trauma. That they can, in some cases, feel transcendent. That our minds are capable of conjuring images that help us, at the end, make sense of our lives.

How about this? Rene is a thirty year-old hospice social worker. She claims she took the position because it was the “best, only job I could get,” but there are underlying reasons which emerge only over time.

That revelation? Her four year-old daughter Samantha had died of a sudden illness two years ago.

Due to financial responsibilities (college loans, send money back home to support her extended family in the Dominican Republic), Rene has consumed herself with work.

Of course, part of that focus is to avoid dealing with her grief. The death of her daughter is too painful. In fact, it led to the breakup of her marriage.

Meet Carolynne, a transfemme fifty-two year-old, who has terminal Stage Four cancer. The characters point of connection: Rene has been assigned to Carolynne’s hospice care.

Here’s the hook of the story: Carolynne has been having profoundly realistic dreams and visions. Each hospice care visit Rene makes, Carolynne shares these dreams. In fact on screen, the audience “sees” highly-stylized enactments of these visions.

What is fascinating is each of the dreams are connected, revealed over time to be recounting the fantastical life-story of a character Carolynne only refers to as F. The dreams are mini-chapters shared in nonlinear fashion.

So, here are two characters dealing with the grim reality of death — Carolynne who has only weeks to live, and Rene struggling with grief over the death of her daughter Samantha. Yet, the dreams and visions Carolynne shares reveal the tapestry of F’s life … and it’s a joyous journey.

As the dreamer, Carolynne experiences the joys of the visions which transforms her attitude toward death into one of embracing it.

And Rene? Well, there’s a Big Twist at the end … I don’t think I’ll share that. I’ll leave that for you to figure out. Who knows? I may write this story …

That’s my 7th story idea of the month. Previous articles in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.