I’m actually working on a film dealing with this Terminal Insomnia…I found the topic the same way actually.

Let me know if you would like to collaborate. I can tell you what I have…

Saman K.

@Bob: Oh wow! I didn’t know about that. Thanks for the tip!

I’m putting it on my to-view list even though the NY Times review is not very favorable.

There’s a movie called Fade that came out last year with about exactly the same plotline.

Thanks for the suggesting The Machinist – it looks good. It’s been put on my to watch list. :)

@Andrew Um… Was this supposed to be a comment for another post maybe? I’m not sure what you are referring to here.

Wow. I really don’t like it when people are all skeptical about Wiki.
Kind of funny how all the open-source stuff is better.

Oh oops, someone above mentioned the same movie…

But I like the idea a lot! If you can pull of dripping in some paranoia and hallucination in such a way that the reader will get slightly paranoid about what’s real and what not (at some point) that would really make a good story.
No need for big drama / action scenes there, you just want to drag the reader into that mind and question everything :)

You may (or may not) want to see El Maquinista / The Machinist ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361862/ ). It deals with the same subject of insomnia and paranoia and such. I have not seen it yet, but a friend highly recommended it (and he never really recommends anything ordinary, he likes Weird, so I suspect it’s pretty good)

But perhaps you want to *not* see it so your story doesn’t get ruined for you…

I like the idea of make the audience unclear on what is real – it seems like a powerful tool. I guess it’d be first person then right? 3rd person would be hard to do and preserve the guy’s delusions.

Going inward could be very good. Have you seen Driving Belle & The Butterfly? It is a french movie, but it is really great. It is a real story about a guy who is totally paralyzed except for one eyelid, but his brain is totally intact. He “dicatated” an entire book by eyelid actually. Something like Metamorphosis might be more on par, where the guy can’t communicate effectively anymore. Of course that’d only be end stage familia insomnia.

As for insomnia, have you seen the machinist? Not a great movie, but worth watching – it is about a guy with insomnia kind of going crazy.

Cool stuff though, best of luck, and if I can help let me know ;)

Wow. Nice. Cool suggestions from both of you. I sort of agree that keeping it grounded and every-day quality could make it more powerful. Perhaps the mystery hook is not needed at all here and you just need good characters to drive the plot forward.

The hallucinations could be done a bit like in A Beautiful Mind – they would be grounded in reality, and the readers/viewers would not always know what is real and what is false.

I’d sort of like this story to turn inward. Rather than show MC deteriorating, I would actually have him grow, and sort of reach some sort of heightened level of introspective consciousness. As the illness would progress he would become more and more detached from reality, and consumed by his inward reflections and revelations about life, truth and everything.

I like the idea too. Personally I like stories with less dramatic content. Like something more normal than murder, adoption, and other wild tales of intrigue. I think it is much harder to make a compelling story about everyday activities, but if you can manage, they’re absolutely the best. The dramatic stuff often makes me think I’m reading Dean Koontz, the number 23, or some crap like that. Not to say great stories can’t involve fantastic circumstances, but, paradoxically, it seems harder to write good literature involving unusual events.

I really like your ideas about exploring the deteriorating relationships with people who don’t understand the diseas, those who can’t cope with loss, and those driven away by the aberrant behavior caused by the disease. I think you could make an excellent story right there. If you need a ticking clock to drive the plot, you could always make him a scientist trying to cure his own disease. But the narrative (if 1st person) or the main characters actions (if 3rd person) would kind of break down as the story went on. Kind of like flowers for algernon.

Best way I’ve found to get inspiration to write is to stay up way to late, listen to something like radiohead, and just start writing.