Jenny had seen an old movie on TV–she could barely remember what it was called anymore–about a young patient who chillingly finds her childish doodles coming true in real life. The film had held her rapt attention for an hour while the sitter made some long distance calls.
In the end, though, it hadn’t been a terribly good movie, with the heroine using her powers for the mundane purpose of exposing a nefarious doctor who had been stealing and selling medicinal supplies on the mean streets. Granted, Jenny’s parents never would have let her watch the movie if they’d been home, but she still felt cheated that the film had squandered all its potential.
She sat down to rectify that the next day.
Using the same character names and first thirty minutes or so of the film (what she remembered of it anyhow), Jenny wrote out a script for a far more interesting adventure, where the doodles became increasingly sophisticated, eventually blurring the line between reality and fantasy and ending on a very uncertain note as the young girl found herself home safe…but also noticed a drawing of herself at home on the fridge.
The story was only ten pages long–hardly epic length–but Jenny felt immensely satisfied in what she’d done. In the years that followed, she often found herself doing the same thing mentally to films, TV shows, and even games she felt had turned out poorly: re-imagining and “improving” them. These improvements were never written down; the first attempt had been proof enough to Jenny that she didn’t have the muse in her.
That is, until she caught the same film on TV many years later. Basking in nostalgia, she put on some popcorn and waited for the picture to implode in on itself as the fabulous premise deteriorated.
Only it didn’t.
The movie ended not with the disappointment Jenny remembered, but with the treatment she’d sketched out on notebook looseleaf as a nine-year-old.
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 