Behind Door 113

Stories serve as vessels for exploration, offering spaces in which to confront questions that resist simple answers. The most compelling narratives often reveal life’s complexities, challenging audiences with morally ambiguous choices and profound dilemmas rather than providing reductive resolutions. Door 113 thus began as an investigation into a question that deeply intrigued me, as double-underlined in my writer’s diary: “When perceptions are mediated by artificial systems, how can we distinguish between what is true and what is artifice?” The question was prompted after watching White Christmas, an episode in the Black Mirror series, which dramatised how technological interfaces mediate human relationships and identity. But as I explored my imagination, a place where my subconscious began to present itself, that question spiralled into deeper, more introspective reflections—on love, forgiveness, and the ways we find meaning in ambiguity to construct our personal interpretations of life. The sterile corridors, glitching screens, and eerie figures of the story’s mindscape became metaphors for the internal struggles we navigate in the wake of loss and self-doubt.

What better medium than science fiction, a genre that interrogates the edges of possibility, to confront the labyrinthine corridors of grief, guilt, and the fragile architecture of the self? In fact, science fiction is uniquely suited to explore “what if?” scenarios that challenge boundaries and reveal the human condition in heightened, imaginative contexts. Science fiction, for me, is a realm of paradox: at once limitless in its ability to imagine new worlds and deeply intimate in its reflection of our own. From the dystopian moral landscapes of Black Mirror to the disorienting dream-logic of Inception and the existential dilemmas of Westworld, I’ve always been drawn to stories that challenge our assumptions about reality and identity. This duality of science fiction, where speculative scenarios provide a lens for human introspection, resonates strongly with Darko Suvin’s notion of “cognitive estrangement”, which underscores the genre’s power to provoke reflection by presenting the familiar in unfamiliar contexts. In writing my screenplay, I wanted to push these boundaries, crafting a narrative where the technological and metaphysical blur; where augmented reality serves not only as a tool but as a mirror to the characters’ fractured psyches.

Yet Door 113 is not merely an intellectual exercise. At its heart is an exploration of love’s ability to endure, evolve, and reconcile even the most profound of fractures. The story of Jane and Guy, two people lost in their own grief and guilt, yet searching for each other in the spaces in between, is as much about connection as it is about separation. Their journey through surreal, nightmarish landscapes is a metaphor for the messy, non-linear process of healing. The symbolic potential of external settings and events can serve as powerful representations of a character’s inner journey. But, more importantly, it can also be a journey that, when mirroring the writer’s subconscious, enables a deep exploration of complex personal emotions.

This essay’s critical and reflective commentary invites you to step behind the door of 113—to examine the interplay of genre conventions, thematic depth, and stylistic choices that shaped its creation. It is a journey through my creative decisions, the challenges of balancing speculative concepts with emotional resonance, and the influences that informed the screenplay’s tone and structure. Above all, it is an invitation to explore how a story rooted in science fiction and psychological horror can illuminate the most universal aspects of life. Such a tension between the real and the “fantastically” imagined creates a liminal space that challenges perception and invites introspection, resonating with Tzvetan Todorov’s notion that the fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. After all, the labyrinths we all navigate are, in some way, of our own mind’s making.

The name, “Door 113”, was conceived as a concise, enigmatic title that aligns well with the conventions of a sci-fi psychological horror film, offering intrigue and potential thematic resonance. According to Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! (2005), a title should encapsulate the essence of the story while sparking curiosity. The specificity of “Door 113” was intended to imply a unique narrative focal point, a mysterious or sinister threshold, which could immediately pique the interest of genre audiences. Its brevity and ambiguity were intended to invite questions, setting the tone for a narrative rooted in suspense and discovery.

The titular door of the screenplay opens into a world—the “mind room”—where certainty of thought is an illusion and meaning emerges not from conceptual clarity, but from the personal experience of engaging with the emerging story. The idea of the mind room came from a personal fascination with spaces that exist between the real and imagined. I sometimes think of memories as rooms I return to—places that aren’t real anymore but still feel as vivid as if I’d just left them. This concept is reminiscent of Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, where he explores how certain spaces, both physical and imagined, can become vessels for memory and emotion, shaping the way we experience and understand our inner worlds. However, the specific idea of the mind room—where minds connect—also augments concepts found in speculative science fiction, expanding on the notions of virtual spaces and shared consciousness.

Within their respective rooms, Jane and Guy Artin’s parallel struggles reveal the isolating nature of grief, while their attempts to forgive and reconnect offer a redemptive counterpoint to the oppressive forces that constrain them. The deliberate dissonance between what feels real and what is slightly off-kilter heightens the psychological tension. Tension often arises from a dissonance between the familiar and the unsettling, which destabilises the audience’s expectations and engages their deeper fears. The deliberate juxtaposition of reality and subtle distortions creates conflict within the narrative’s moral geography, enhancing immersion and the emotional stakes. The result in Door 113 is an environment that mirrors instability, where the audience is invited to question the truth and the nature of reality alongside the protagonists.

The mind room was conceived as a means to explore the interplay between the conscious and subconscious aspects of the mind. A particularly impactful work for the conception was Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which examines the interplay of trauma, repetition, and the human drive towards healing and meaning-making, particularly in the face of loss and suffering. The idea also resonates with the notion of the “inner journey”, where protagonists, in an archetypal structure of storytelling, confront their deepest (often suppressed) fears and desires—leading to growth, transformation, resolution, and ultimately an alignment with a universal quest for meaning and connection. Thus, the mind room of Door 113 became a psychological space for emotional struggles; its reflective imagery mirroring fragmented internal states, where even within overwhelming dread and despair there remains hope for meaning, connection, and release.

Jane’s longing and unspoken feelings manifest as tangible experiences within her surreal environment, blurring the boundaries between memory, thought, and reality. Her internal monologue—spoken aloud in the mindscape—reveals the depth of her pain. The reflective space around her serves as a physical manifestation of an emotional void, eventually forcing her to confront the feelings she has repressed. By transforming internal pain into an externalised audible monologue within a unique setting, the narrative is intended to marry character development with visual storytelling—an approach to not only deepen the audience’s connection to the character but also enhance the cinematic quality of the emotional expression. Similarly, Julian Hoxter advocates for creating narrative moments where the internal becomes external, allowing the audience to engage directly with the character’s emotional struggles. By situating the monologue in a “mindscape”, the technique avoids static introspection and transforms internal pain into a dynamic, visualised experience. This approach aligns with Hoxter’s call for innovative experiments in screenwriting, where psychological depth is rendered cinematically to deepen audience empathy and maintain narrative momentum.

The events of the shared mindscape—also revealed as Guy’s subconscious attempt to reconstruct meaning within a coma—become an AI-like simulation where fears, guilt, and imagination take tangible form. In his former life, Guy had been a creature of routine, trapped in repetitive processes of data and work. His experience of the mindscape becomes a distorted mirror of that existence, his mind now interrogating itself in an attempt to answer fundamental questions about the meaning of his life.

But, as Guy discovers, life’s deeper experiences, much like meaningful storytelling, often defy clear labels. This thematic approach was central to the screenplay; it was considered, for example, in the naming of the characters “Guy” and “Gunter”. The deliberate similarity—breaking a conventional rule of avoiding character names with shared letters—serves to blur the boundaries between the two individuals. David Trottier, in The Screenwriter’s Bible, emphasises the importance of clarity and distinctiveness in character names to avoid confusion for the reader or viewer, especially in screenplays where quick identification is crucial. Avoiding shared letters or similar-sounding names helps differentiate characters visually and aurally, ensuring smoother comprehension—thus making the screenplay as accessible as possible, particularly for first-time readers like producers and executives. However, my choice is symbolic, representing the fluidity of identity and the collapse of clear categorisations. It invites the audience to question the distinctions between the characters, subtly reflecting the broader philosophical argument that explanations, especially in relation to metaphysical questions, are not always fixed or straightforward.

A “distorted mirror” motif permeates the script, reflecting the fragmented nature of identity and reality. For instance, “G.O.D.”, which alternately means “Guy’s Operational Database” and “Great Oracle’s Database”, across the parallel experiences, operates as both a literal system of control and a symbolic representation of the unknowable “prime cause” of the reality. This semantic shift underscores the fluidity of meaning within the story, where even something as seemingly definitive as an acronym remains unstable. The distortion of Jane’s reflection in the hooded man’s mirrored visor is an example of a biblical “glass darkly” theme (1 Corinthians 13), as it suggests that Jane’s perception of reality—and of herself—is mediated, refracted, and inherently unreliable. This existential ambiguity is expressed in Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage”, where the individual confronts an external reflection that defines and destabilises their sense of self. However, Door 113 presents the possibility of an existential mirror in which metaphysical meaning is forever refracted and elusive. Such fundamental uncertainty is highlighted in the textual suggestions that the events of the story exist within an outer layer of reality—perhaps a dream, a simulation, or another mindscape created by G.O.D. The screenplay intentionally leaves the prime cause ambiguous, reflecting existential questions about the unknowable origins of the universe and the nature of reality.

The protagonists frequently lie down, close their eyes, and exist in liminal, almost somnambulistic states. Inez Hedges explores how dreamlike storytelling blends reality and illusion to evoke emotional and psychological instability. By portraying surreal uncertainty, Door 113 aligns with Hedges’ observation that such ambiguity enhances the audience’s engagement with the characters’ inner conflicts and the thematic depth of the story. The psychoanalytic fever-dream tension within the screenplay is heightened by disjointed visual and auditory cues, effectively placing the audience within a disoriented perspective. Visual and auditory elements are essential in creating a unified emotional and narrative experience that immerses the audience in a character’s psychological state. The fragmented sensory experience—interrupted sounds, shifting lighting, and sudden visual disruptions—mirrors Guy’s fractured psyche and the uncertainty of his environment. The surreal visual elements that emerge represent the character’s disorientation and existential horror—resonating, for instance, with the techniques employed in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror and Stalker , where disjointed soundscapes, shifting visual tones, and ambiguous spaces evoke a sense of existential unease, reflecting the characters’ psychological states and the unknowable nature of their journey. Influenced by an appreciation of Tarkovsky’s films, my narrative choices, thematic focus, and structural design gradually evolved from the initial technology-focused question to explore the prospect of existential unknowing, albeit within the context of an increasingly mediated and technologised world.

Balancing the psychoanalytic and philosophical enquiries with the emotional core of the story became one of my greatest challenges. It was tempting to drill too deeply into the mechanics of the mind room—to float away in the surreal elements of a reality shaped by internal mental states—but I had to remind myself that the heart of the story was Jane and Guy’s journey to reconciliation. The narrative’s recursive structure—where thoughts and memories leak into each other’s experiences—therefore had to balance the competing influences, while fully relating the protagonists’ story arcs. The solution emerged that Jane and Guy’s experiences echo each other, presenting different interpretations of the same challenges that influence their shared but dissonant reality. I decided that Jane and Guy would be perceiving the same events of their story through subjective phenomenological lenses, creating divergent yet intertwined realities. Jane’s memories, for instance, blend with her present experience, as seen in the restaurant scene where she replicates a romantic moment she had once shared with Guy. The ambiguous presence of Gunter—hinting at a liaison—introduces a layer of psychological unease, questioning the reliability of her memory and whether her perceptions are influenced by emotional projection or buried truths. This interplay of memory and perception can be seen, for example, in the techniques used in Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour, where fragmented memories and shifting timelines blur the boundaries between past and present, exploring the unreliability of memory and its emotional impacts.

For Jane, the recurring reference to tea underscores the ways in which seemingly insignificant events—such as forgiving her daughter Emma for spilling a cup of tea—take on profound symbolic weight. Tea becomes an emotional touchstone, a manifestation of her subconscious need to forgive Guy in the same way she had once forgiven her daughter. This small everyday moment represents her pathway to healing, although its significance remains elusive to her conscious mind. And in the subconscious mind of this writer, the recurring tea motif wasn’t just about symbolism—writing long into the nights often involved staring at a cold cup of tea, much like Jane in the screenplay. However, my writing decision to use an ordinary object to explore emotional complexity was also informed by numerous examples in literature; for example, in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, where the mundane act of serving and eating food becomes a vehicle for profound reflections on relationships, time, and memory. In an analogous way, the idea that something so ordinary as a cup of tea could hold so much meaning became an anchor for both the script and my writing process. By making an ordinary object or idea central to both the story and the creative method, I sought to establish a cohesive emotional throughline, and to align with William Goldman’s observation that the most impactful screenplays often emerge from a deceptively simple yet meaningful premise. Grounding the narrative in relatable, tangible details while allowing deeper meanings to unfold organically enabled the story to potentially resonate with audiences on multiple levels.

The symbolic use of objects throughout the screenplay—such as the small hair ribbon Jane finds on the beach—often serves to tie the plot back to Emma’s storyline. These storytelling elements were, in part, informed by Sigmund Freud’s exploration of dreams, where objects and symbols carry deeper, often obscured meanings, reflecting the characters’ unresolved conflicts. In a screenwriting context, Lajos Egri emphasises that every narrative element should serve a purpose beyond their surface function, representing deeper emotional or thematic layers that resonate with the audience. By extension, the symbolic use of objects can create a visual language that supports the story’s subtext, enriching the viewer’s understanding without requiring overt exposition. In this framework, each object referenced in Door 113 acts as a tangible remnant of memory: the ribbon, for example, evokes Jane’s grief, while the upturned photo frames of Guy and Emma (with their differing colours) introduce subtle questions about identity, perception, and memory. Objects such as Jane’s house number “113” symbolise Guy’s desperate attempts to return home, and the penguin soft toy in Guy’s hospital room adds a layer of intrigue, functioning both as an innocuous symbol of childhood innocence and as a deeper unanswered question. The word “Penguin” appearing within Jane’s “GUY AI” password further exemplifies the interconnectedness of their emotional landscapes and hints at undisclosed aspects of their shared history, to be revealed later in the story.

The crash test dummy, appearing as a visual motif, ties back to the trauma of the car accident preying on Jane and Guy’s minds. Its lifeless artificial form symbolises their internal paralysis—how the accident has reduced them to “test subjects” trapped in an emotional loop. The uncanny presence of the figure reinforces the screenplay’s psychological horror framework, where symbols of grief and trauma manifest in disorienting, surreal ways. Indeed, psychological horror often relies on the uncanny to externalise internal struggles, such as grief and trauma, through disorienting and surreal imagery. The technique creates a sense of dread by making the intangible tangible, forcing characters and audiences to confront repressed fears. The imagery resonates, for instance, in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, where surreal and unsettling symbols—such as the enigmatic figure behind the diner or the shifting identities of the characters—emerge as physical manifestations of repressed trauma and psychological conflict. In a comparable way, the crash test dummy functions as a haunting reminder of the accident, blurring the boundaries between external reality and the characters’ internal emotional states.

Jane and Guy’s confinement in the endless, sterile corridors, lit with harsh and dehumanising light, evokes a clinical environment reminiscent of dystopian horror tropes. This narrative technique reflects discussions in Kim Newman’s Nightmare Movies, where he examines how horror films use oppressive, institutional-like settings to symbolise loss of autonomy and humanity. Such environments serve as metaphors for dehumanisation, compelling both characters and audiences to confront themes of control and isolation.

The harsh lighting amplifies the psychological unease by stripping the setting of warmth, reinforcing a cold, alienating atmosphere. The spaces feel simultaneously familiar and alien, their repetitive design reflecting the mind’s inability to escape its own looping anguish. The creature pursuing Jane—its grotesque, inhuman qualities, such as speaking without moving its mouth and crawling unnaturally—embodies Julia Kristeva’s concept of the “abject”. Kristeva describes the abject as that which disturbs identity and order, eliciting horror by blurring the boundaries between life and death, human and monstrous. This confrontation with the abject mirrors Jane’s psychological disintegration, as she faces tangible representations of her deepest fears. The nightmarish figure externalises her inner fears of being hunted, controlled, and ultimately consumed by her grief; the futility of conventional escape routes underscores her desperation and isolation. The imagery is also partly influenced by the labyrinthine dread described in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, where spatial disorientation and the intrusion of the inexplicable transform physical spaces into manifestations of psychological trauma, heightening the sense of existential terror. Similarly, Jane and Guy’s confinement in endless, sterile corridors, illuminated by harsh and dehumanising light, reflects their fractured inner states, making escape feel impossible not only in the physical sense but also emotionally and mentally.

The corridor itself operates as a psychological and spatial metaphor, combining Lacanian and existentialist frameworks to reflect Guy’s confrontation with his existence. By functioning as both a literal and symbolic construct, it deepens the connection between the character’s internal journey and the external setting, adhering to Jule Selbo’s principle that all story elements should contribute to character development and thematic resonance. The non-functional lift—a symbol of unattainable escape—suggests an illusion of autonomy. Presented as a choice, its failure exposes the futility of seeking freedom within a controlled system. When Guy rejects the prescribed pathways and chooses to enter the void, this act signifies a break from imposed systems of control. By embracing uncertainty, he asserts his agency, no matter how limited, in contrast to the illusion of freedom that authoritarian structures perpetuate. This is a decision redolent of Albert Camus’ assertion in The Myth of Sisyphus that, even within an absurd reality, conscious rebellion can affirm one’s humanity and existential freedom.

In Guy’s work pit, superficial motivational phrases, emojis, and banal slogans mask systemic oppression under the veneer of positivity and inclusivity. The line “Lexi smiles brutally” epitomises this duality, parodying corporate jargon that appears harmless yet ultimately perpetuates psychological horror. The juxtaposition of meaningless slogans with Guy’s Sisyphean tasks—randomly generating numbers in an endless loop that resets each day—reinforces the existential dread of his condition. Like Sisyphus, Guy’s work is absurd, monotonous, and devoid of purpose, intensifying his sense of futility. His situation lays bare the dissonance between the surface-level optimism of such environments and the crushing monotony they disguise. As Guy experiences the reset of each day, he experiences the dehumanising impact of an environment where productivity and compliance take precedence over genuine human connection and self-actualisation.

Guy’s dystopian work environment—mechanised, monotonous, and oppressive—represents the character’s existential dread. As outlined in Syd Field’s The Screenwriter’s Workbook, the setting of a screenplay should reflect and amplify its thematic concerns, serving as a mirror to the characters’ internal conflicts and the broader narrative themes. The ever-present Emoji Men, acting as both enforcers and participants in the system, symbolise the internalisation of societal norms that prioritise productivity and compliance above individuality. Their presence is an example of Michel Foucault’s argument that power operates through the visibility and regulation of behaviour, reducing individuals to passive components within an unrelenting machine. Jane’s journey through the tunnel, ultimately returning her to the mind room, encapsulates a harrowing circular entrapment, a visual and thematic representation of a system designed to reinforce confinement. This structure evokes Foucault’s ideas on surveillance and control, where any attempt at escape is subtly engineered to lead back to submission. Jane’s futile loop reflects a broader commentary on autonomy within oppressive systems, highlighting the psychological toll of a reality where freedom is illusory and every path leads back to the centre of one’s captivity.

The oppressive atmosphere exacerbates Guy’s experiences of passive recklessness and external desensitisation. His near collision with a car in a location filled with painful associations speaks to the depth of his psychological numbness. Guy’s indifferent response to the incident reveals an absence of self-preservation, suggesting that the will to protect himself has been eroded by unresolved grief. Viewed through a psychoanalytic lens, his actions reflect a subconscious compulsion to revisit the site of trauma—an attempt, however passive, to confront or relive his pain. His psychological detachment contrasts sharply with the outside world’s shock, as represented by the horrified driver. The juxtaposition reinforces Guy’s alienation from his surroundings, as though his inner world has rendered external reality meaningless and distant. This dynamic recalls Meursault, the protagonist of Albert Camus’ The Stranger, whose detachment from societal norms and indifference to self-preservation underscore a deeper existential crisis, where external events fail to resonate with the individual’s internal emotional state. In a similar vein, Guy’s behaviour demonstrates the disconnection and alienation that unresolved trauma can impose, placing him in stark opposition to the expectations of the world around him.

The surreal, eerie figure that silently follows Guy on the beach embodies Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow. Following Guy without leaving physical traces, the figure symbolises the intangible, unresolved elements of the psyche—those repressed fragments of self that he cannot escape. As Jung describes, the shadow represents the darker, unconscious aspects of the self, which relentlessly pursues the individual until acknowledged. The creature’s silent yet watchful presence evokes an atmosphere of existential dread, a reminder of the internal struggles Guy has yet to reconcile. As the figure lingers behind him, the script suggests that past traumas and unacknowledged truths remain inescapable, no matter how far one tries to retreat; thus deepening the psychological and existential complexity of Guy’s journey.

The transitions between day and night reinforce a thematic duality, and echoes the Romantic trope of nature reflecting human experience (as is also manifest in the mind room). The darkness of night—symbolising introspection, loss, and the descent into personal reflection—eventually gives way to daylight and resolution. The cyclical passage of time mirrors the emotional journey of the characters, as they move from the heaviness of grief to the possibility of peace. This motif resonates in Romantic poetry, for example, with the natural symbolism in William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality, where the progression of the day mirrors the speaker’s movement through memory, loss, and eventual reconciliation with life’s transience. Equally, Door 113 uses the natural cycle of day and night to chart an emotional landscape, where darkness becomes a space for self-confrontation and, ultimately, the renewal of light.

Indeed, the screenplay’s aesthetic and tonal contrasts offer several moments of ethereal reprieve amidst the psychological horror. The field of long grass, for example, functions as an almost heavenly space—other-worldly in its stillness and beauty. This visual contrast highlights the duality of grief: it isolates and fragments, yet it also holds the potential for connection and renewal. The field becomes a shared space of emotional release, offering Jane and Guy a temporary escape from the constructed systems that confine them. Its pastoral quality evokes Romantic ideals of nature as a site for emotional healing and spiritual rebirth, where the characters’ connection to each other and to the memory of Emma transcends their personal pain. The imagery resonates with Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, where natural spaces become symbolic arenas for existential reflection and emotional reconciliation, serving as both a counterpoint to human suffering and a reminder of the enduring beauty of life. In Door 113, the field of long grass becomes a momentary refuge, representing the possibility of transformation and the prevailing power of shared human connection.

The deserted beach also serves as both a reflective and transitional space, allowing the characters to confront their emotional truths while navigating the blurred boundaries of reality and imagination. This use of a dreamlike setting to externalise and symbolise inner meaning reflects Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious, where archetypal landscapes—like the ocean or shoreline—become shared symbols of transition, loss, and renewal. Jung describes water as a symbol for the unconscious, representing the depths of the psyche and the pathways to psychological transformation. The beach’s vastness and ambiguity amplify the characters’ emotional journey, making it a central motif in their reconciliation with grief and memory, and a liminal space where the subconscious and conscious meet.

The progression from darkness to light mirrors the script’s broader arc: from despair to hope, from fragmentation to wholeness, from isolation to connection. This cyclical renewal emphasises the transformative power of human connection, offering an uplifting resolution that underscores the enduring opportunity for redemption. The screenplay’s conclusion reveals Jane’s bedside words as the tether that brings Guy home, threading through the fabricated logic of his coma and guiding him through a labyrinth of challenges. In a reality fractured by trauma and distorted by perception, love emerges as the force that transcends suffering, offering a path to reconciliation and meaning. In contrast to Gunter’s destructive, shadow-like influence, Jane becomes an antidote, a redemptive force that bridges the divide between suffering and healing. The climax of the script dramatises forgiveness as an act of liberation, underscoring the transformative power of compassion, and ties into the screenplay’s central assertion: that in a fragmented and artificial reality, love and forgiveness remain profound acts that hold the power to transcend external artifice, to find true humanity within. The choice to end the script at the start of a new day reinforces the optimism of this shared resolution.

In The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler, building on Joseph Campbell’s monomyth framework (The Hero with a Thousand Faces), identifies the “death and rebirth” stage as a pivotal moment in the hero’s journey. The stage symbolises profound transformation, as the hero confronts their deepest fears and emerges with newfound strength and understanding. Indeed, Vogler emphasises that this symbolic cycle of death and renewal is essential for crafting compelling and universally resonant storytelling. Guy’s confrontation with his greatest pain—a loss too overwhelming to process—becomes the catalyst for release, breaking the restrictions he had imposed on himself. The butterfly in the field of long grass represents his metamorphosis and reawakening from his coma-induced chrysalis. He emerges stronger and more integrated after confronting his shadow—and becomes representative of the universal truth that the greatest opportunities for profound change often emerge at the point of deepest despair.

As I reflect on Door 113, I am reminded that every story is a door—an invitation to step into a space that challenges, confronts, and transforms. Writing this screenplay was not simply an exercise in speculative storytelling; it was a personal exploration of the labyrinths we all navigate. The corridors of Guy’s mind, Jane’s whispered truths, and the unsettling echoes of the mind room were not just constructs of fiction but mirrors reflecting struggles with grief, guilt, and the search for meaning. What began as a science fiction exploration of Artificial Intelligence quickly turned into an emotional meditation on love and forgiveness; it helped remind me that stories often have a life of their own, and the writer’s role is to listen as much as create. At times, writing the screenplay felt like being in the mindscape myself: surrounded by unfinished sentences and shadowy images that turned out to be my own reflections.

Dara Marks highlights the profound connection between a writer’s personal journey and the narratives they create. In Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc, she contends that storytelling often reflects the writer’s inner conflicts, with the creative process acting as a vehicle for exploring and resolving these internal struggles. When writers effectively embed their personal thematic concerns into their work, the result is often emotionally resonant storytelling that operates on both intimate and universal levels. I experienced this directly while writing Door 113. I was initially concerned the story might feel too bleak, but the emergence of a hopeful resolution became significant not only for the characters but for me as well. Writing the final scenes—where Guy forgives himself and steps into a new day—was cathartic and reflects my own journey in completing the screenplay. That act of completion became a moment of emotional closure, echoing the characters’ journeys and reaffirming the redemptive potential of storytelling. As the door closes on this critical and reflective commentary, it remains open in another sense. Just as Jane and Guy find their resolution in the new light of a shared day, Door 113 invites its audience to find their own meanings in its layers. The story may be one of surreal landscapes and fragmented realities, but its beating heart is universal: the enduring power of love, the necessity of forgiveness, and the courage to begin again.