But if you’re looking for the key to Tarantino’s success, look at his early collaborator Roger Avary. It was Avary’s script doctoring that transformed Tarantino’s verbose and chaotically structured scripts into something that was viable on screen. The proof? Have a look at what happened to Tarantino after Avary stopped working with him. Sure, he made Jackie Brown, perhaps his finest film, but being based on an Elmore Leonard book he was working with a structured narrative anyway. After that? From Dusk Til Dawn? Wigga, pleeze? Sure, the opening section is coherent and fun, but after that it signals the start of Tarantino’s decline into believing his own publicity.

Sadly, things haven’t picked up much since. Kill Bill absolutely had its moments, but there really wasn’t a case for splitting the film into two parts. And Death Proof? Let’s have a minute’s silence please: it wasn’t big, it wasn’t clever. And please believe me, I’m speaking as a Tarantino fan, one who’d love to see him return to his glory days, so that the mismatch between reputation and reality can be corrected.

The solution? A good script doctor. I’m not going to be so gauche as to suggest myself for the job, though I reckon I could have a good crack at it. But believe me, a working relationship with someone who can see the potential in your material and help shape it into something that shines can make all the difference when you’re lost in your material and looking for a map or compass to help guide you.

It’s thanks to a good script doctor that I learned the importance, in writing the pilot episode of my television serial The Sharp End, of having a character or scene representing the antithesis of the show’s theme, to clarify what it’s really about. And, in the same script, the advice to show the consequences of one character’s actions within one episode rather than letting it dangle made for a much more emotionally satisfying end than I’d initially conceived.

And, you know, I’m a dab hand at this myself too. Ask any of the participants in the Three Minute Warnings shorts made in 2005 by Britfilms. Ask the writers I worked with in in the same year, who with just one hour consultation with me tripled their chance of having their concepts picked by a regional screen agency for development into digital short films. But hey, enough of the self promotion. Unless, that is, you’re looking for assistance with a script or concept of your own, be it for screen, stage, or prose…