BRAID ADULT

Idea for a film

The story of two friends and how they influence each other over the course of their lives. Told in a series of vignettes as the two meet and tell each other how their lives are going, with the story each tells influencing the other, causing them to try new things. At first, when they meet at college, A is out going, B studious. B becomes convinced to have more fun, while A starts taking studying seriously. In their late 20s B is drinking too much while A is mired in academia. A resolves to get out while B is convinced to sober up, and so on, back and forth. In their final meeting they reflect on how their lives have been braided.

AVERAGE EMPHASIS

Idea for a film

An advertising Art Director discovers that her firm has a statistically average man that they test campaigns on. She sets out to prove that no one is truly 'average' and, in doing so, completely disrupts his life. But he begins to find her presence in his life energising, even as she starts to enjoy the stability his 'normality' gives her. Meanwhile, her interfering has so changed him that his choices of campaigns become more and more unusual. But they also prove increasingly popular. As he gets more bizarre, so does the culture, so that he remains strangely average, or perhaps, averagely strange.

FAN SWIM

Idea for a film

A genuine cult develops around a pop star. Their fans realise that the dizzy rapture they reach in the presence of their idol is an almost holy ecstasy that brings on visions and spiritual experiences. They cultivate their fandom as a religion, meditating over icons and undergoing pilgrimages to significant sites. The weird thing is that the visions they experience start to become accurate prophecies. It starts to seem that the pop star genuinely is some kind of deity. And when they refuse to accept this status the fans realise there is only one way to secure the immortality of their legacy.

COMBINATION GARAGE

Idea for a TV show

A show about a garage specialising in light commercial vehicles. As different tradespeople bring in their vehicles for repairs, we get to know not just the mechanics working in the garage, but also the customers and what they do. And through the tradespeople's jobs we meet the people they work with and for, the businesses and homes they visit. So we begin to see how all these people: plumbers and electricians, private ambulances and taxi drivers, delivery drivers and couriers, bind the town together, bringing us all kinds of stories of everyday life.

SHORTS CONSUMER

Idea for a film

The day in the life of a head teacher at a school in an '80s teen comedy. The teacher was, in fact, a member of the Weather Underground in the '70s and is trying inspire their pupils genuine political rebellion against Reagan's America. Instead the kids just get up to dorky shenanigans like stealing sports cars, hacking into the school computer and telling the teacher to 'eat their shorts'. Eventually the FBI catches up with the teacher and the Gen X kids must pull their fingers out, wise up and help them escape.

CAREER SHOW

Idea for a film?

A jobs fair institutes a 'show' event, in which representatives from different careers perform little routines to advertise themselves: estate agents do some close to the knuckle and not very funny stand up, a group of middle aged plumbers do an inept but charming dance routine, bankers just pay professional performers to do it for them. One accountant, depressed at the bad rap his profession gets for being boring, teams up with one of his clients, a theatrical impresario, to put on an accountancy musical. Surprisingly, the show is amazing. The impresario tries to get the accountant to change jobs but he realises that it was his love for accountancy that made it so great, and he happily goes back to his spreadsheets, leaving the glitz and glamour behind.

ROOM ECONOBOX

Idea for a TV show

(I had to look up 'econobox' - apparently its an American term for a normal European / Japanese car)
Two brilliant inventors: one a megalomaniac, one a humble tinkerer. The Megalomaniac has invented a massive robot, the size of a moon, with which they are attempting to conquer parallel dimensions. The Tinkerer has packed a pocket universe into a fuel efficient, practical hatchback, filling it full of contraptions and tools. They travel the multiverse in their little yellow car, using their pocket universe as a lifeboat, fixing the disasters that the Megalomaniac has caused and trying to thwart their terrible plans.

LAND SHINE

Idea for a TV show?

An alternate past in which the Soviet Union went ahead with the plan to launch vast mirrors into orbit so as to provide sunlight to agricultural regions around the clock. The people working on these farms never experience night-time. They take to living underground, the only place they can find darkness, without which they will go mad. One child resolves to experience real night-time and stows away on a truck taking produce to the city. His only experience of darkness is comforting and safe underground, but beyond the range of the mirrors, he discovers a land of wonder: the moon and the stars and neon, but also a dangerous time of secrets and deceit.

INVITE SPHERE

Idea for a book?

A child finds a small armillary sphere - a model of the sky made of interlocking bands of metal - in their grandparent's house. They play with and, by mistake, set it to the right combination. The sphere is, in fact, a puzzle, if set to the right arrangement it unlocks a door to a parallel dimension. It is, in effect, an invitation from the inhabitants of that dimension, dropped through into our to find the brightest humans and them into this other world. The child discovers that one of those humans has taken over the parallel dimension and is planning to invade the Earth. The child is rescued by the resistance and becomes involved in their attempts to rescue not just their reality but the Earth's too.

RELATION MERIT

Idea for a comedy film?

A wealthy aunt announces that she will leave her estate to the niece or nephew who most deserves it. Of course the cousins start battling, trying to one up each other, to out do each other or bring the others down, in a desperate attempt to win the legacy. The trouble is that her definition of 'merit' keeps changing: is it career success, or philanthropy, or personal presentation, or just being nice to her? Only one niece suspects that the aunt is playing a longer game and is really testing them all to see how genuine they are. She does not take part in the contest, instead posing as a rebellious artist, a pose that rapidly starts to take over her life as she discovers how much she truly loves art. In the end the aunt splits the money between all of them but reveals to the niece that she has won the true prize: finding her own joy.

BUTTOCKS FREEDOM

Idea for a film?

A young man on a stag night gets caught for stealing the 'Welcome to Buttocks' sign on the outskirts of the small country village of Buttocks, and the rest of the party goes on without him, leaving him there. The next day, confused and hungover, he discovers that the village is actually delightful, but it is dying: all the young people are moving away and the elderly residents are increasingly isolated. He decides that Buttocks should embrace it's name and sets out to make it a venue for stag and hen nights. At first it is a nightmare, but gradually the more and more young people fall in love with the village and discover a new lease of life, both for them and their Buttocks.

PEDESTRIAN LOBBY

Idea for a TV series

It looks like a perfectly ordinary apartment building lobby, with only one visible oddity: all the doors leading off it are different. This is because each door leads to a different moment in time. Through this lobby you can walk through history, from age to age, but each door leads to a knot in the skein of history, a problem that might rewrite the past and which must be solved to set time back on the right track. Solve it and you will find the door that will lead back to the lobby, where all the doors will have changed again, leading to new moments in time, once of which, one day, might be your own.

PIPE CONCESSION

Idea for a fantasy novel

A fantasy world in which magic is worked by. striking deals with spirits. Magicians are able to talk to the spirits by smoking particularly herbs in pipes made of particular woods. Different combinations of herb and wood conjure different spirits. A young failed magician is given the chance to become the representative for a new line of pipes, made from an exotic wood. They are very successful but he begins to realise that the spirits the wood conjures are not what they seem. The pipes are tricking magicians in deals with demons. The young man has to find out what is going on and stop it even as he tries to track down and destroy all the pipes he has sold.

ROCK COMMITTEE

Idea for a short story

The minutes from the second public consultation meeting on the SH1 Belgae Megalith Project, 3098BC, Wednesday afternoon. The story of the building of Stonehenge told entirely through the minutes of planning meetings, in which the committee has to deal with complaints about the psychic emissions of the megaliths causing headaches, objections to the use of Welsh bluestone instead of local flint and concerns over it ruining the view. Eventually the decision is made to site it away from everyone on Salisbury Plain, despite the priests pointing out that this will mean that the ley lines will be in the wrong orientation and the original aim of using the henge as a Large Pebble Collider simply won't work, rendering the whole thing pointless.

SALON LEAN

Idea for a short story

A poet spots a man she doesn't know quietly leaning on the mantlepiece in the background of a literary salon, looking faintly superior. She starts seeing him at all the artistic gatherings she attends and assumes he's some brilliant, but reserved, genius. When she finally gets to meet him, she discovers that he is, in fact, spectacularly dim and knows nothing, his resting expression just looks very impressive. She and a bunch of her friends start publishing work under the leaning man's name and he quickly becomes famous for the breadth and variety of his work. His habit of answering any questions with 'I know nothing' is read as evidence of his deep wisdom. When the literary prank is revealed instead of shaming him, he is instead praised as a great satirist and japester and eventually ends up President, with his poet friends behind him as the unacknowledged legislators.

VEGETATION OPPOSED

Idea for a short story?

An art prankster erects a herm to Pan in a overgrown, vacant plot in a suburban back street. It's only a little situationist joke, but it awakens something. When developers come to build on it, workers keep bunking off, machinery stops working, eventually the locals rally to defend the small green space. As the clash between locals and developers intensify things start to get very strange. Residents tear up pavements and plant trees, vegetation starts running rampant, strange birds are appearing in the trees, the shadows of large animals prowl in the dusk. When the developer himself comes to remonstrate, he is seized with panic and runs, screaming into the new, dark woods. Passing motorists on the dual carriageway hear the shout go up from the closes and cul-de-sacs: the Great God Pan is alive again!

NOTION JOKE

Idea for a period comedy

The nineteenth century. A man runs a joke shop selling silly little practical jokes and amusing geegaws. He has been persuaded to hire his inept cousin as a delivery boy, which is largely a disaster. But that doesn't matter because his real business is selling actual jokes, crafting witty repartee for aristocrats and society figures. A gentleman has a bet with a famous wit over which of them can make Queen Victoria laugh and comes to the shop owner for help. Nothing works until he sends his useless nephew to deliver fresh material and his slapstick antics cause Her Majesty to be very amused indeed.

PROCLAIM AFFECT

Idea for a fantasy novel

The Emperor's Proclaimers are blessed with a spell that makes their proclamations immediately effective. Everyone always does what they are told. A young Proclaimer in a distant province is influenced by a friend to start introducing fun little extra elements into his Proclamations. Gradually, though, these little jokes start to warp their community, having long term effects that they could not have foreseen. By the time the government hears of this and sends troops to bring things back under control, they have accidentally created a happy little community outside of the Empire. Now the Proclaimer must decide whether he is going to use his powers to rally the people in defence of their new identity or do the right thing and let them decide for themselves.

SKELETON BROKEN

Idea for an adventure movie

A collector who has recently acquired a medieval reliquary finds themselves being followed by mysterious figures and their house broken into. They discover that the reliquary does not contain the remains of a saint but an ancient monster. The remains of the monster were split up and disguised as relics in an effort to hide them because, once reassembled, the monster will be reborn. And now a cult is attempting to do precisely that. The collector must team up with a modern priest, who is very sceptical of all this occultism, to stop the cult succeeding and keep the monstrous skeleton broken.

ATTACHMENT DANCE

Idea for a romantic comedy

A Rom Com that takes the form of a Quadrille: a friendship group of four couples who meet and whose relationships develop over time. The story follows the figures of a quadrille: 'The Trousers', which is about the jockeying of gender roles between the friends, 'The Summer', in which a joint holiday entangles the relationships, 'The Hen', where come of the couples having children complicates things, 'The Shepherdess', when a mid-life crisis introduces a new partner into the dance. At last, in the 'Finale', everyone ends up exactly where they started. Bow and curtsey.