EXERCISE: When The Cold Winds of Mortality Blow

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 22:09:00 -0400

(from watching an ad about life insurance, no less!)

Here's the plot.

First, pick a likely gaggle of characters.  Feel free to use the ones you're working with on something else.

Second, pick one of them.  For their own reasons (what are they?), they have recently:

1. Drawn up a last will and testament
2. Bought additional life insurance
3. Gone out to check graveyard plots
4. Drawn up a "living will"
5. Checked out the local mortuary
6. Bought a coffin

Now, let's assume that this recent activity becomes known to the other characters (feel free to invent ways for them to learn about this).

What do they do?  What questions do they ask our pallbearer?  What kind of response do they get from the person who is looking at the trappings of mortality?

Write up that scene.  Let them argue about the appropriateness of buying your own coffin, while sitting in the local pizza parlor.  Or perhaps the airport is the background for a chit-chat about investing in a grassy spot in the cemetery?

Anyway, let the cold wind blow a little shiver up your characters' lives, and tell us about how they react.