Episode 209 – Brainstorming Ryan’s Midlife Crisis
This week the Robots sit down with former co-host Ryan Stevenson to brainstorm his supernatural mystery story, as well as discuss what we’ve been up and what Apple’s iBooks software might mean for self-publishers. We hope you enjoy!
This week’s promo – THE MAD SCIENTIST HANDBOOK anthology
Okay, I just finished listening to Episode 209, and I think I have a good idea for Ryan. Picture a young woman who is in a car crash and is traumatically/critically injured. She dies, and goes to mid-life. There she is met by the protagonist. The protagonist expects to help her move on, but she suddenly disappears. He believes that she moves forward on her own. Until, she starts re-appearing. Back in the 1980s world of the living, the young woman is in a hospital, hooked up to a plethora of machines keeping her alive. The machines aren’t keeping her from moving on. Around her, are her parents, siblings, fiance, doctors, etc… One of these people keep pulling her back. Not necromany, or magic, but a heightened emotional, spiritual ability. The protagonist concludes that she is being pulled back, but knows that her body is so damaged that if she were to live it would be in a vegetable state, but the person pulling her back does not understand this. Is it one of the parents not being able to let their child go? Is it the fiance not able to let go of the life he had envisioned? Is it the much younger brother who desperately needs his big sister? Is it the doctor who has been so successful that he/she has developed the God Complex, and keeps pulling her back for that one extra chance to perform the medical miracle? Here is where the mystery lies. Plug in the daughter that is slowly coming to terms with the protagonists death, and the time limit he has to help this last spirit, that needs his help more than any other before. Tie him to his daughter in how much or far he can interact with the real world and how he has to be so careful, because the more he uses his daughter to help this young woman the greater the risk he will move on before helping her.
A suggestion for Ryan…
Your antagonist could be the new ruler or overseer of the Middle Life that the protagonist is stuck in. One the first thing the new ruler does is allow these resurrections to take place for the first time in 20 years.
Checkout the anime “Angel Beats”. It deals with some of the same concepts that was discussed in this episode. Also, how what about calling the process “Relifeing” instead of resurrection or reincarnation.