Five Feet Apart

by Rachael Lippincott

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

We had a whole conversation about what going on the rooftop means for Will and why he does it. I remember Mikki said something like: “He goes to all of these places for these treatments, but he only ever gets to see them from the rooftop. He never gets to actually experience them.” And that’s really what’s at the heart of this line. More than anything, Will wants to actually be able to experience life. To walk through the streets of Paris, or go to Carnival in Brazil, instead of watching from a rooftop. He wants, more than anything, to use the time he has left to really live. In taking the screenplay and adapting it into the book, I knew from the outset that writing in dual-POV was the intention. I feel like Will’s perspective was really where I got to stretch my legs a bit, and scenes like this from the screenplay were really where I was able to nail down his voice.