Five Feet Apart

by Rachael Lippincott

We hope the story of Stella and Will helps to bring awareness to this disease and, one day, a cure.

Hi! Mikki here. I’m so excited that Goodreads has asked us to annotate FIVE FEET APART. I could talk about this story for hours; how it was crafted, how the characters were created, how it went from script to film, then to book, and all the steps between that got us there… and now here. It all started with a phone call from Justin Baldoni. Claire Wineland was a good friend of his. Claire was the inspiration for this whole story, based on a conversation she and Justin had about love and how the last person she could ever fall in love with was another CFer, because they would never be able to touch each other - that’s a rough paraphrase of what Justin told us. Cut to: Justin had gotten his hands on a script of mine. The script had a particular feel and tone, and Justin wanted to talk to me and my writing partner, Tobias, about writing a movie set in a hospital about two kids who had Cystic Fibrosis. He wanted this movie to have the same tone and feel that he’d read in my earlier work. Justin would produce and direct the movie, and he was looking for writers who could give him a fully fleshed out, living, breathing story. Ideas instantly raced through my mind; ideas for a doomed Romeo & Juliet romance for modern audiences. I immediately knew how I would write the characters and how they would move through the world. This kind of love story is my favorite kind to write: destined yet impossible. At the time, Tobias and I were finishing up a script we’d been hired to write for New Line Cinema. It was a franchise horror movie. Tobias had taken the lead on that script, as horror is very much in his genre-wheelhouse. But this… this love story… oh, boy, this one was mine. Tobias was only too happy that I took the reins. And that is the quick little origin story for what would become the screenplay, and then the book, FIVE FEET APART. Check out Rachael Lippincott's Kindle Notes and Highlights for FIVE FEET APART here: https://www.goodreads.com/notes/54508711-five-feet-apart/47771376-rachael-lippincott

I wonder, all too often, what it would be like to have lungs this healthy. This alive. I take a deep breath, feeling the air fight its way in and out of my body.

I love that Rachael spoke to this moment. It was so much fun imagining, then describing in the screenplay, then watching them film, the artwork of Abby and Will. Each drawing, each painting, each cartoon reflected the personality of its creator (Abby or Will, respectively) and also reflected a moment or a memory, ie, Will’s Fire-Breathing Stella and I’m Sorry, or Abby’s A Tornado of Stars and Living Lungs. The Living Lungs were my favorite by far. In my mind, this was the very last thing Abby gave to Stella before she left - just as the panda was the first thing Abby gave her - so I was thrilled that Rachael recognized the importance of this drawing to the story and gave Stella that beautiful line of prose. Fun Fact: I almost - almost - left Abby’s Living Lungs drawing incomplete. Like, one bottom corner would be unfinished, and then my idea was to have Will, just before he left forever, finish the drawing for Stella, completing the circle between him and Stella and Abby. But that was a terrible idea. Really bad. I quickly realized how shitty Will would be to do something like that. While it seemed poetic (for a wild, stupid second), it would have made Will disgustingly presumptuous. What a dick, right? So nah, that didn’t happen. Instead, I gave Will and Stella their lights. That would be his parting gift to her, his “I will always love you,” moment. Now, every time a light comes on... a Christmas light, a streetlight, or even a simple desk lamp... Stella thinks of Will. He is her light and she is his.

People are always looking at my cannula, my scars, my G-tube, not at me.

Rachael really nailed how Stella feels about her body here. While writing the script, I wanted to make sure that Stella’s scars, her cannula, her G-Tube, would serve as an anthem of her survival against all odds. I wrote a moment into the script in which Stella is looking at herself in the mirror, and all she sees are her scars and her G- Tube. She couldn’t yet see that these battle scars were the most beautiful thing about her. This mirror scene is important because we need to know that when Stella bravely reveals her body to Will by the pool, we understand that she is accepting her flaws as beautiful, because she finally sees herself through Will’s eyes, through our eyes.

If I’m going to die, I’d like to actually live first.

This is the theme of the whole story, isn’t it? In the screenplay, Will is consistently expressing this sentiment through his rebellious flouting of the rules, his trips to the roof, his refusal to do his treatments. That’s what he’s saying to Stella when he tells her, “It’s just life, Stella. It’ll be over before you know it,” which, funny enough, was the very first line I wrote for Will, then everything else about him fell into place. This was always meant to be a story about trying to live while dying, grabbing every precious moment and holding it dear, because any moment could be the last. Rachael got this line exactly right; it’s one of my favorites from the book.

I know in that moment, even though it could not be more ridiculous, that if I die in there, I won’t die without falling in love.

Now, about that song… “Bushel And A Peck” is a song my grandmother used to sing to us kids, and those kids now sing it to their kids, and so on. When I was writing the pre-surgery scene, where Will comes in to comfort Stella, (and to stand in for Abby), the song kind of… inserted itself into the scene. Then I quickly backtracked to also include the song in the polypectomy video. Right after I wrote it in, I immediately stared at what I’d done. “No,” I said. “Nuh-uh, nope, no way. No one is going to know this song. It’s going to sound lame, everyone’s going to hate it. What in the stupid hell was I thinking?” But... I couldn’t make myself take it out. I kept deleting it, then putting it back in, then deleting it again. Finally, Tobias said, “Just leave it in and see what happens.” So I did. I sent the first draft of the script to Justin and I held my breath. He sent me an email a little later that literally brought tears to my eyes. His family also sings that song to their kids, and their kids, and so on. It was kismet. To think I almost took it out. There’s a lesson in this. My heart wrote that song into the script. My head tried to take it out. Always listen to your heart.

I’m tired of living without really living. I’m tired of wanting things. We can’t have a lot of things. But we could have this.

There’s a line Stella has, later in the movie, where she says “This whole time I’ve been living for my treatments instead of doing my treatments so that I can live.” This came from a conversation between Claire and Haley Lu. Haley really wanted to include the line in the movie, and she got no argument whatsoever. Hell yes, we had to have that line in the movie! It’s brilliant and perfectly sums up Stella’s arc. And it came from Claire herself, so that made it all the more special. Fun Fact: If you’ve ever seen Claire Wineland’s YouTube page, then you’ve seen the similarities between Claire and Stella - right down to their videos. The scene wherein Stella’s hanging upside down on the bed in her AffloVest came directly from Claire. She was so generous about letting us use pieces of her personality and of her life experiences for the movie. Watch her videos. You’ll see.

“Most of us can’t have children, a lot of us never live long enough to try. Only other CFers know what this feels like, but we’re not supposed to fall in love with each other.” She stands up, determined. “So, after all that CF has stolen from me—from us—I’m stealing something back.”

Ohhhh, yes. The moment Stella stands up to CF. Stella has been denied so many parts of life that we take for granted, and she feels the weight of those absences every day. This is a girl who doesn’t allow herself to want things she knows she can’t have. But all those things, all those buried dreams, are embodied in Will. And he’s right there, within reach, but she can’t touch him. So, from the opening pages of the script, I started building to this moment, when we see Stella stay behind as her friends head off for Cabo. And throughout the script, she’s consistently pushed out of her comfort zone until she comes to this moment, the moment wherein she finally chooses to go for it, to be with Will, even if it’s five feet apart. This is the moment Stella finally unlatches the door of the invisible cage she’s built around herself and lets herself dream of a life beyond her illness. Stella is the thief now. This, if it’s not too immodest to say, is one of my favorite scenes. Fun Fact: So, I firmly believe that any coincidence is a sign that I’m on the right track. Call me silly, I don’t care. Here’s why it matters: I’m writing this scene and suddenly I’m writing Stella with a pool cue and I’m like, “what the hell is this pool cue doing here?” Then Stella holds it out, like an extension of her arm and I’m like, “A pool cue? OMG. Yes! Stella, that’s perfect!” And she’s like, “Uh, yeah, I know. That’s why I’m showing it to you.” (Yes, I talk to my characters and they talk to me. Truth.) And then I thought, there’s no way a pool cue is five feet long. No way. That would be too lucky, right? I mean, what are the odds? Turns out the odds are pretty damned good. You can imagine my glee when a quick Google search revealed that the length of the average pool cue is about five feet. Eeeeeeee!! Stella knew! As soon as I saw that, I knew it was no coincidence. And that pool cue turned out to be everything.

I didn’t know it was possible for a person to make old things become new again.

I just want to say that this is my very favorite line that Rachael wrote. It’s so profound in its simplicity. Rachael’s right about viewing the world through the ‘eyes of love.’ Everything shines in a whole new light. Ah, love. I love it.

“It’s just life, Will. It’ll be over before we know it.”

So, this is Stella throwing Will’s own words back at him. When they first meet, he tells her that life will be over before she knows it. It’s kind of his motto. Why bother, right? We’re all going to die anyway. Well, at the beginning, Stella’s only concern was doing her treatments so she could stay alive, but she’s not really living. These two characters were solidly entrenched in their own outlooks on life. What I wanted to do was have them literally switch outlooks. These two people have such an impact on each other that their foundational beliefs undergo a seismic shift. By the time they go to see the lights, Will is arguing for treatments, treatments, stay alive, stay alive, and Stella is recklessly throwing caution to the wind in an attempt to be as free as she can be, which is why at this moment, she flings his own words back at him.

“We need that touch from the one we love, almost as much as we need air to breathe. I never understood the importance of touch, his touch . . . until I couldn’t have it.”

I think we take the ability to touch one another for granted, most of us never even imagining a world in which we can’t touch the person we love. It’s so natural to reach out and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, or lay your head against his shoulder, or lean in to smell their neck, absorbing them into your skin. This is Stella telling you to never, ever take that touch for granted. The monologue for the screenplay works as a kind of wraparound, like a ribbon that ties the beginning and the end of the story together, much like the ribbon Will uses to tie up the box of pop-up flowers he makes for Stella. I really like the way Rachael chose to use this only for the end of the book, as it would have been weird, I think, to write a whole book that was basically told in flashback. Some things work for movies that don’t necessarily work for books.

And then I know. I know he’s there even before I see him. Will.

Both Will and Stella have very seminal lines of dialogue in the pool scene. Not only do they share with each other their external scars, they also share their internal scars: Stella’s deepest wound and Will’s greatest fear. Stella is haunted by Abby’s death. She can’t let go. In this moment, Stella tells Will, “I keep imagining it, over and over, wanting to know what she felt…” She constantly obsesses over the way Abby drowned, helpless and alone. Will then shares his greatest fear when he tells her, “I think about that very last breath. Sucking for air. Pulling and pulling and getting nothing.” This is what haunts Will. The fear of that last breath, the pain of it, knowing that it will mean the end of everything. These are important lines on their own, as they speak to the internal struggles the characters are trying to overcome. But when Will and Stella get to the pond, those lines are brought to life. With Stella’s fall through the ice, those two secret fears that Will and Stella have held onto for so long are made manifest in the most literal way possible. Stella finds out exactly how Abby felt when she drowned, and Will experiences the fear and agony of that last breath. Next, if I may, I’d like to answer the second and third most common questions I get in my DMs. I really can’t answer the first most common question (Will there be a sequel?) because of the real-world implications of B. cepacia and all the CFers who suffer from it. But here are the answers to the other two questions: 1. Why did Poe have to die? I knew from the outset that I didn’t want this story to end with the death of Will or Stella. I wanted Will to learn to love so deeply that he could walk away for love’s sake. And I wanted Stella to learn to have the strength to let go of someone she loves so much. But this story would not have been an honest one if it hadn’t included an illustration of just how devastating CF can be. So… it was Poe’s fate to die. Now, the reason he died when he did, just when it seemed he was about to move into the best part of his life, was because it was important for us to understand the insidious nature of CF, to feel the uncertainty these patients live with from day to day, minute to minute, second to second. They never know if their next breath is going to be their last. 2. What happened to Will? I can tell you that (in my inner story-world) Will walked away from Stella determined to seek out every treatment available, with Meredith beside him all the way. Since Five Feet Apart is so grounded in reality, we need a real-world cure for B. cepacia before Will will ever be healthy. So, until then, I keep him safe in my story-world. In there, he’s still fighting, still hanging on, still breathing, waiting for a cure. Fun fact: We screenwriters, in the course of building a script, oftentimes write many scenes that are useful for character building and backstory, but so many times a lot this work doesn’t make it into the final cut of the movie. There is finite time to tell a story in a feature film and only the most vital aspects of that story generally make it to the screen. No work is ever wasted, but alas, some of it is never seen. So it was a real treat when Rachael was able to include those additional scenes in the book. I was so happy to see the scenes with Tom and Erin, Meredith and Will, and especially Abby there at the pond for that last goodbye. Those were some of my favorite moments in the script and I hated to see them cut from the movie, but they got to live in the pages of the book, and for that I am grateful. Thank you Rachael!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I so appreciate being able to share these insights on the crafting of Five Feet Apart. Final Fun Fact: That script I mentioned earlier? The one Justin read that made him approach me to write Five Feet Apart? That script is now a book called ALL THIS TIME. It comes out September 29th! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50892133-all-this-time