The Plot Lines

After talking to Ged last Thurday about my quite incomplete first draft of my story involving a little nine year old girl named Emily, a car accident and a coma, I have rewritten my idea several times in order to find out exactly what it is that happens in the middle of my story.

Below is the original story version (1.1) followed by a collection of others from brainstorming ideas for the ever evasive middle bit.

Story Version 1.1

Shortly after her birthday, the little girl is leaving her Grandmother's house with her parents. The drive home is long and the sky is growing darker. Her parents are murmuring softly as the car quietly pulls up to a junction, waiting to turn left.

Bright piercing lights explode through the cabin as the car is slammed forward. Metal crunched and screamed and glass laughed as it flew forward through the air, glittering in the headlights like fairy dust. White mushroom clouds bloomed around her, bloomed and disappeared.

She felt the breath being squeezed out of her lungs, the back of her seat pushing her forward against her jammed seatbelt. She hurt a lot, and she was tired anyway so she closed her eyes. Her mum would put a plaster on it in the morning, she told herself as she fell asleep.

All is black and with noises of paramedics, sirens and emergency resuscitation procedures, fading to the sound of a machine screaming dead line. Then absolute silence descends.

In a place where dusk dwells, over a garden of gravel and paved paths, with low lying hedges and shaped bushes, wild grass and a dry dusty fountain, a little girl is playing hopscotch. The sky glows a perpetual saffron and amber.

At the end of her trail, the little girl looks up at the building nestled in the middle of the garden. It seems to stare back at her dully with its many windows, rows and rows of windows, but no doors. She blinks and moves onto the next part of her game, seemingly involving her moving around the garden and checking behind things, though whether she is the one being chased or the one doing the chasing is unclear.

A wind blows, whipping through her hair. Perhaps she hears some words in the wind, perhaps only murmurs. She scowls and turns away.

Meanwhile, a middle-aged woman is arguing with a younger man. She doesn't like his self-assured attitude or his careless brassiness. She finds it unsettling, and she has things to protect from him.

"Please doctor," She pleads. "Even considering such a thing is preposterous."

He looks at her with bored eyes, smirking. "There has been no change in her condition for a very long time. Please, we cannot keep her as she is. It's a waste of resources and there is nothing up here anymore - " he tapped on his temple, " - for her to be kept around. I understand she is on the donor register, too."

It isn't the first time this conversation has happened. She had been spoken to about this occasionally for many years, but recently this new doctor was really pushing for her consent. Now, she was asked every time she visited, and sometimes twice or more each time.

"My answer is no," she insisted.

"We can't keep this up forever," the doctor said, cocking his head to the side. "It's not fair on her, either."

Anger flashed up, by was quelled immediately by guilt.

The doctor smiled when she looked away. He knew he'd won. Now all he had to do was kill all hope and get consent. There was an operation he was aching to do; the only missing piece was one fresh heart. He'd already checked - it was a match. And if he did the operation - if everything went well - he'd get a pay rise, a promotion, better respect and influence. Maybe he could even be accepted by one of the better private health care services. At least, it would be the beginning toward that.

"I'll give you a week," he informed her. "I'll get the paperwork together. You'll have to sign a few forms and such. Then you'll have to say goodbye."

He turned on his heel. Just before he walked out he tossed the final blow over his shoulder like a barbed grenade.

"Although, really, she is already gone."

The little girl looked around uneasily. She felt nervous and she didn't know why. It annoyed her. She hopped from foot to foot, clenching and unclenching her fists, considering. There was nothing in the garden to scare her. It wasn't too dark, either. She was being silly, she decided.

All the same, she wandered back onto the main garden path with the rows of cone hedges to her right and the fountain to her left. She started walking toward the main building.

[Skip to the end]

Emily ran, searching for the door. The way out. She knew it to be close. But she couldn’t find it.

“We are going to shut the machines down now,” the doctor explained. “Have you said your final good byes?”

She ran along the never ending maze of corridor. The door had to be in here somewhere.

“Yes, doctor,” the woman sniffled. She placed a hand tightly on her husband’s shoulder. He reached up and squeezed her hand. “We’re ready.”

Finally the corridor straightened out after yet another flight of stairs. There was the door at the end.

The doctor reached for the power switch. “Good-bye, Emily.”

Emily’s hand wrapped around the door handle.

The doctor pushed the switch. The machine went dead.

Emily was blinded by a flash of light.

Arm outstretched, reaching for something that was no longer there, Emily realised she was no longer where she thought she was. The arm extended in front, though it responded, was too long to be her own. Her hair slipped forward and she reached to tuck it behind her ear, but it was much longer than it ought to be.

The doctor stared at her baffled. She had sat up just as he had pushed the button. He saw her eyes open before he pushed the button. And now she was examining her hair. What was going on?

“Emily?” The mother breathed, eyes wide in wonder and disbelief.

“Welcome back, kiddo,” the father said gruffly.

So it was happening. She was awake. And he wouldn’t get the organs he needed for his payrise and promotion. He wouldn’t get his prestige and rise to private doctor. Angrily, he turned sharply on his heel and left the room.

Story Version 1.2

• Little girl gets into a car accident and ends up in a coma.
• Emily creates a world of her own where she plays by herself in perpetual twilight.
• Doctors feel that there is no hope for her to recover in a vegetative state and pursue getting permission to turn the machines off.
• Emily plucks up the courage to go into the dark house of voices to find the way out.
• Doctors get the begrudging permission of the parents and the machine gets turned off but Emily wakes up just in time.

Story Version 1.3

• Car accident, coma, garden world where Emily is playing.
• Nurse comes in and talks about various things that become distorted as they filter through into her dream and becomes something else i.e. character plants, quirky objects etc.
• Doctor comes in and his words filter through also, making her dream world sky dark and creates a monster.
• She seeks shelter in the house from the monster.
• Her mother’s words create a door in the house and Emily wakes up.

Story Version 1.4

• Car accident, coma, garden world where Emily is playing.
• Emily keeps her distance from the house with many windows.
• Doctor’s words create a storm in her world making Emily move toward the house to go inside.
• She sees scenes from the crash through the windows as well as the audio of her hospital room.
• Emily smashes a window and climbs through, waking up.

Story Version 1.5

• Car accident, coma, garden world where Emily is playing.
• In the middle of the garden there is a greenhouse with only a small sapling in the centre.
• The tree grows larger and more warped the more the doctors push for permission.
• The sky breaks into a storm with permission granted.
• A hollow in the tree trunk provides Emily’s escape.

Story Version 1.6

• Car accident, coma, garden world where Emily is playing.
• Various fantastical characters appear from the garden and give her various tasks to complete.
• Once complete a door appears in the building.
• Doctors finally get permission to turn off the machines.
• Emily waves good bye to the characters and jumps through the portal waking up.

Story Version 1.7

• Car accident, coma, garden world where Emily is playing.
• Doctors push for permission to turn the machines off.
• The garden constantly shifts, paths changing with increasing frequency leading Emily closer to the house in the woods.
• Doctors finally get permission to turn off the machine.
• Emily faces the house in the woods and opens the door and jumps through the mirror in the middle of the room, waking up.

Story Version 1.8

• Car accident, coma, garden world where Emily is playing.
• Doctors are pushing for permission to turn of the machines.
• The doctors’ words cause the plants to shrivel with acid rain and dry destroying her world.
• Doctors finally get permission to turn off the machine.
• Emily takes shelter in the house, finding the way out at the same time as the world outside falls apart.

Story Version 1.9

• Car accident, coma, garden world where Emily is playing.
• Doctors are pushing for permission to turn off the machines.
• Despite the sun being hidden by clouds continuously the shadows are sharp and grow larger swallowing up the whole garden.
• Emily takes shelter in the house where the only light is now coming from.
• The Doctors get permission.
• Emily finds the source of the light as coming through a keyhole of a door which she opens, waking up.

Inspiration for Graduation Film

Below is the painting I bought in Salzburg, Austria, which lead to the idea for my graduation film.

While staring vacantly at my recently acquired art piece sitting in it's frame on my desk - wondering what story I was going to tell in my final film - looking at the place I had been but weeks before suddenly devoid of the throngs of people I began to wonder several things. The first, is what would it take for that place to be deserted at that time of day; what would it be like to be there by yourself; and what if you didn't really notice that the people were gone.

Deciding that you'd have to build some kind of imaginary world to occupy yourself, I released that it could only be a child lost in a never ending story in their head, constantly changing and evolving; shifting like the reality in dreams. But if a child is wondering around there by themsleves, were are all the adults - the child's parents in particular? And why does the child not notice?

Thus, these questions and their answers are how I came up with the story.

Overall plot (roughly):

A little girl gets into an accident when she is nine years old that leaves her in a vegetative state for nearly a decade. While she is asleep, she plays and occupies her time in a world inspired by the picture above, denying all other possibility for existence, just her in her world where it is never day nor night. But because it has been so long, she is beginning to question the world she has encased herself in. With the doctors on the outside trying to shut down her machines, will she manage to find the way out before it's to late?

Yes, probably.