If you listen to the way that people relate the things that happen to them, some interesting differences emerge.  Even in this most basic form of storytelling, about a visit to the doctor, or what happened when you ran into someone you weren’t expecting to see, there are distinct ways of doing so.

Some people tell what’s happened in a linear way, going through events in sequence, and reporting conversations in the form ‘I told her…She says to me…’ and so on.  Others are less involved in recounting the particulars of what happened and will tell a story such that it relates to a particular theme.  Quite often, these will be consistent, and point to matters of character, eg the friend who tells you about their bad luck in love, the colleague who boasts about how he stitches people up, etc.

It’s easy to assume that people telling things in a more linear way are ‘telling it like it is’, but even then you’ve got to take into account that they’re not telling you everything that happened in their day.  Instead, they relate matters of personal and hopefully mutual interest, and that editing process itself can be a revelation. 

I’m very much a non-linear storyteller, who talks in an associational fashion that darts about here and there, through personal experience to things I’ve heard or read, leading to tentative conclusions and models-in-progress.  The same applies to my writing: I’m much more comfortable connecting apparently disparate themes and concepts through a narrative than following a relentlessly linear way forward.  And that approach has its advantages, and a downside.

Currently I’m writing a sample script for a television show that’s very linear, and it’s a fascinating experience.  Whereas I’d normally hop, skip, and jump between characters and locations, here my guiding light is one particular story being followed through the duration of the programme.  And that’s stretching me in interesting ways.

In practice, what it means is I’m having to approach the story in a different fashion, pausing to find the drama inherent in every scene.  There might not be any on the surface, but this is a show where all the main characters are involved in the same profession, so one way to get across conflict is to present different professional attitudes and approaches.  And that itself is useful, because it forces me to delve more deeply into the characters I’ve been given to work with and reveal their differences.  In the process, it also creates interest for the audience, hopefully, who can see what makes their heroes tick and enjoy the teamwork and tensions they experience.

Linearity also changes story choices that I’d otherwise make by reflex, and anything that challenges writing habits has got to be a good thing.  In this instance, I can’t cut away to what some of the other characters are doing without one of the protagonists being there, and the protagonist will always be there in a professional context.  Again, it obliges me to bring fresh thinking to what I’m doing, rather than rely on whatever traditional approaches to writing I’ve habituated to.

So.  It’s not an easy piece of writing, the script I’m working on.  But it’s one that’s teaching me things that’ll be useful in more personal projects that I tackle, and get me to think in terms of the advantages of linear thinking, rather than dismissing that approach as I’ve tended to up until now.  Anyway, straight lines were good enough for the Bauhaus movement, so I’m sure I can do something interesting with them.

I watched Breaking Into Tesco thinking I was going to learn something about supermarkets, and realised I was actually watching a documentary that was relevant to writers pitching for television and film. And the more I watched, the unfunnier that comparison got, though there were some fascinating moments along the way.

The show followed a group of people who reckoned they’d got the culinary chops to get their home devised recipes onto supermarket shelves, and it traced their progress over a few weeks as they went from having a dream to pitching their product.

Starting with four people, by the end only one was standing, and I’m pleased to say I was with her all the way. First casualty was a woman who’d developed something she called, if I recall correctly, a hotpot foot, which was a Lancashire hotpot that for some reason was entombed in pastry so that it was half-pastie. An unclear concept in other words, and she was the first of the contenders to leave the field.

That left three players. A man who was pitching all his hopes on cherry ravioli. A woman who reckoned she’d come up with a superhealthy muffin that absolutely everyone could eat. And a Malaysian woman who wanted Brits to pick up a pot of her curry noodles for lunch instead of a sandwich.

Cherry ravioli. It doesn’t even sound right, does it? I have experimented with sweet pasta on a menu, a chocolate one, and wasn’t particularly impressed. And the guy couldn’t even make decent pasta until he was coached into tripling the number of eggs he put in to give it a decent silky texture and golden colour. Anyway, he struck me as a bit of a chancer – he was a theatre director looking for something that would make him some money while he was resting. And he was the next one to be gone, still reckoning he’d got the best idea.

And then there were two. Face it, someone who’s trying to make something that’s not only good for you, but can be eaten by their freakish nephew who’s allergic to everything, is not going to win you over as much as the person who puts you at the top of their list. Which is why the muffin was never going to bowl anyone over unless it was indeed used to topple wickets etc, which frankly it looked like it could be. Meaning the nice Malaysian woman, the only one who was cooking anything that looked like food, got to win – or at least get through to the next round, when her home cooking will become factoryfied.

Remember what I was saying about the metaphor though? Or maybe learnings transferable to another context would be putting it more accurately. Because it struck me that what the cooks were learning was just as appropriate to anyone who reckons they’ve got something that the public should be watching. That would include me, and a good few of you too.

Let’s look at the losers first. And you know, there’s still something about a hotpot foot that doesn’t feel right to me. An object lesson in having a concept that you can actually describe, and a reminder that if you’re going to create a hybrid, for god’s sake give it a tasty sounding name. As for cherry ravioli, there probably is a place for it. Somewhere. But it’s always going to be a minority market, in which case you want to be looking at BBC3 to put it out rather than expecting it to replace Eastenders in the Radio Times.

Which brings us to the final two. A healthy muffin is alright in principle, but altogether too earnest: perfect for a documentary slot on BBC2 or Channel 4 then. Whereas what won the spicy Malaysian dish through was not just its distinct difference, but the fact that its creator was wanting to share something of herself that she was passionate about, that she knew wasn’t out there already, and which will still be there for her even if she doesn’t hit the big time.  Interesting.

Going on stage with guitars you can barely play, making a wall of feedback and glaring at the audience through it is all about attitude, and it’s easy to make a superficial impact that way. Actually connecting with people through your songs is an entirely different matter: which is why so many people go down the shock and alienation route, since it’s so simple.

And that, broadly speaking, is why I’m so impressed with Mad Men. It doesn’t take the easy route to startle that shows like CSI and Dexter traffic in, fun though they can be. Instead, it relies on the ability of a writer, director, and performers to paint a picture of life forty years ago, and allow the audience to be affected by immersion in that world. And that takes real skill.

Part of the shock effect we do experience is akin to what happened in Life on Mars when we were taken back to the 1970s, when men were men and women in bikinis adorned peanut packet dispensers in smoky pubs. And the effect is even greater when Mad Men takes us back to early sixties New York, and ad agency Sterling Cooper, where creative director Don Draper is stressing over what he can come up with for the Lucky Strike account now it seems public opinion is slowly turning against cigarettes.

Matthew Weiner’s sample script for the show got him hired on Sopranos, and it’s easy to see why. Unlike delightfully simple Gene Hunt from Life on Mars, Don Draper is a complex character. In some respects, he is as emblematic of his time as his peers, who exhibit attitudes that would easily be described as racist and sexist now. Don’s relationship with those colleagues is more complex though: he’s distanced from them, perhaps by the experience he’s had fighting in Korea. Or maybe he really is that bit more sensitive: certainly he is compared to crass colleague Pete Campbell’s lecherous attempts to pull Peggy Olsen, Don’s new secretary.

By the end of the first episode we’ve seen a few of Don’s facets, and the combination of them fascinates. He comes up trumps in the meeting with the Lucky Strike people despite not having anything in his head beforehand; he sleeps with a beatnik illustrator and clearly has affection for her; storms out of a meeting with Jewish department store boss Rachel Menken; and then arranges to meet Rachel out of hours to find out what makes her tick and see if he can come up with some creative advertising for her that doesn’t rely on the stereotypes of women wanting discount coupons that were presented in their meeting earlier.

Having worked at ad agencies myself, and continuing to dip a couple of toes in that world from time to time, I found Mad Men convincing in its portrayal of agency politics and egos. This is intelligent, subtle television that offers real rewards: Mad Men shows up a lens to the past that equally offers comments on the world we live in now, and I intend to stick with this show: Sundays, 10pm, BBC4.

Take a look around you.  What sort of character are you, and in what sort of genre?

For me, when I look outside I see a bruised indigo sky with trees skeletal against it.  An upstairs light is on in a house at the back of my garden, and a selection of white goods, fridges from what I can tell, are standing proud in that house’s garden.

Drawing my attention inside, the curtains at my window are a fresh green, against the equally vivid blue of the walls.  A suit jacket hangs from the door, and there’s a bag bursting with clothes between the door and the blank-walled corridor outside, a Sopranos DVD box set and a book on Stonehenge also visible.  Looking at those, I’d conclude I’m someone who travels in a hurry, but doesn’t take time to unpack. 

The room itself is on the first floor, and two of its walls are lined with shelving.  A third has standalone bookshelves the other side of what seems to be a chimneybreast, though there’s no fireplace.  The shelves are stacked with books.  Psychology, science, mythology and Forteana seem to be favoured topics, though on one wall all the books are either screenplays or books to do with film and writing.  Another bookshelf has an assortment of indie-looking comics on its bottom shelf.

There’s a stereo, all black separates, and wooden speakers on metal stands, on a polished wooden floor with a patterned blue rug.  But much of the rug is invisible under random stacks: boxes of CDs, paperbacks, a mobile phone box, a shoulderbag with index cards poking out. 

There are more index cards on the top of a Frank Zappa CD on a desk looking out of the window assembled from a large wooden surface and two old style filing cabinets.  Mostly though, it’s occupied by a stack computer, printer, modem, and speakers.  And more CDs – jazz and left field rock by the looks of things – envelopes, and paperwork from a regional screen agency.  To the right of the desk there’s an ivory phone, and on the wall above it a calendar with a black and white picture of an old man walking towards a pair of windmills, perhaps in France or Spain.  No other pictures are hung, but there are three of different sizes facing the wall by the door.

Based on all that, I conclude the occupant of the room is some kind of researcher or writer.  But that still doesn’t help identify the genre.  The clues there are outside, with the sky as indicated before, and Fridgehenge.  All that points to me being in some kind of thriller, perhaps with an otherworldly twist, directed by David Lynch maybe.  Or a tv drama by Alan Plater, king of the idiosyncratic detail.  On reflection, I’d prefer that, not least because I’d have a better chance of surviving whatever comes next.

This exercise is one I’d recommend that you try for yourself.  It points to the assumptions that we make based on the choices of directors and their art directors, many of which could do with being challenged.  Like, why does it only rain in thrillers, or if a couple need to be grudgingly forced to share an umbrella in a romcom?  What would happen if female characters were shown to read books, and not just magazines: is it because they’d intimidate men in the audience?  Why do so many protagonists live in well-designed and sizeable homes, when their likely economic circumstances would dictate otherwise (aka the Friends conundrum)?  Anyway, food for thought…