Friday the 13th: The inspiration behind the story

When I was in 4th year of high school my french teacher, Jean-Guy Lacroix, would often add personal touches to our somewhat boring exercises. The one that stuck out the most was our group effort to come up with a storyline for our writing practices. Someone would choose the protagonist, another the subject, and so forth until we had a good basis for the practice.

The one that kinda sparked my imagination was one involving a student finding a pool of red liquid seeping under a classroom door. When I had finished writing the intro I couldn't stop thinking of what happened next? What was the reddish liquid, why was it there, did something happen to the student, the teacher? I took a notebook used for religion class (really, who needs a notebook for religious studies???) and started writing the following events, as I didn't do chapters back then. lmao.

The end result was Student Cemetary, a prophetic story about choices and consequences whether they be good or bad. An action leads to a reaction. That was my very first short story and consisted of about 13 pages. I have since rewritten that story 2 times and wrote several sequels for all reincarnations and all of them more different then the next.

Like everyone who expresses themselves through art, I have found a muse; a friend who inspires me and helps me get through my ever so present writer's block. She is the protagonist in all incarnations of Student Cemetary, Friday the 13th, I Told You So, and We Are The Lucky Ones Here. Anytime I am stuck I turn to her for ideas, routes, anything that could help me move on from a tight narrative. This may be the reason why I am so driven about getting my major in English litterature so I can improve my knowledge of the english language and have better writing skills.

Dream = Published!


When I began to be comfortable writing, I decide to explore a new terrain, the one where you invent all the characters. In turn, I wrote Downhill, a story about spelling bee geeks stumbling into a conspiracy involving mutated humans, secret government agencies, and family connections. It is followed by Downpour.

I spent two years without writing. I didn't have time and I didn't have any ideas. I was always a fan of the Friday the 13th movies because they were one of the few horror movies that didn't scare me when I was younger. Nothing really scary about someone who just doesn't frigging die. And also, it had a good storyline (at first) that wasn't seen in horror movies back then.



And so I watched the 2009 remake and I was dissapointed with how cheesy and gratuitous it was. It lacked the complex storyline and twists that the original had and barely attempted to cover Jason's odd stops where he argues internally with his dead mother, something that was often depicted in the originals.

That struggle reminded me a lot of schizophrenia. So i used that as the backdrop to the writing, reminding the reader that he can be normal around people and snap when the voices start. I also wanted to incorporate people I knew and invented characters. I had in mind to write Jason as one of the teens but not expose him so I used something that usually annoys me, and that is the name change. But it makes sense later on. Hem hem...sequel...hem hem. I wanted to show a more human side to him. Essentially, Jason isn't born a murderer, he was conditioned to become one.

Nonetheless, you can't help but to cheer on the protagonist and see the bad guy lose.

But this is Jason. He never really loses, does he?!


Candles are out,
Eleven's Ink