2-in-1

Warning: Don't let invading aliens stick this in your head

I've just finished a five page script: Spike.

I'm chuffed with it. Not because it's particularly original or especially good. No, the thing that pleases me about it is that I have learned a lesson: you need two ideas to make a decent short story.

What do I mean? Well, I've come to the view that one idea is not enough. I'm re-doing a lot of half written scripts to combine their ideas into one story, and I think this approach has mileage. In fact, I think it recognises that some of the old ideas were not strong enough on their own - which is why they were never finished. Now, though, they can be boiled down to their constituent parts and remade into something new and monstrous. And better, too.

Have a story about  mind control? And another about the internet? Why not combine the two? It's still cliched, but it's got more going on in it.

The result is something that I know is better than its two predecessors. Of course, I still need to convince an artist and editor that's the case.