For a talented singer, Amy Winehouse is a one-note character. At least as portrayed in the media, she’s caught in a loop of dodgy relationships, substance abuse, and abandoned concerts that keep her in the headlines. It’s sad, but above all it’s boring, to see someone go through the same stuff again and again without seemingly learning from it.

What Amy needs is a character arc, and today’s PR professionals are adept at spinning their clients’ stories in just that way. Only, what do you do with a problem like Amy? Some situations you can’t spin your way out of.

All this raises the question of whether character arcs are actually something we experience in life, or something we’d like to see, and that we lace into our fiction to give us hope that we too can change, and get the partner of our dreams, earn that promotion, lose that twenty pounds, or whatever it may be. And it’s not just fiction that we seek that kind of solace in. Trinny and Susannah are there to change our lives by dressing us differently, Paul McKenna will zap away your fear of flying, and any number of people will redecorate your home as long as you react with tears or horror to the result.

Film writing guru Robert McKee’s seminars are attended not just by writers, but people from advertising and marketing and journalism. For a few days, they’re pumped full of the lore on character arcs, and then go and roll it out into the pieces and campaigns that they’re involved in. Even products have lives of their own in today’s marketplace, the likes of KitKat developing brand extensions, limited edition spin-offs, and so on.

Interestingly, the changes that most people are interested in are prescribed for us. Boy to man, man to husband, husband to father, employed to self-employed. Those transitions are expected in the society we live in, and are the ones some people measure themselves by, the stuff of soap opera. Other transitions are frowned upon, especially when they encroach on social roles. Female to male. Straight to gay. Fascinating stories, that some writers handle with sensitivity and confidence, but still not tales that are likely to get a big audience, at least as long as we have the tabloid press trumpeting morality on our behalf and we continue, tacitly or explicitly, to support that stance.

But hey, isn’t this about writing? Yes. And writing is about people and the social worlds they inhabit and move between. Or, maybe, that they fail to move between. Not getting what you want is a story too, even if it’s one that Hollywood frowns upon. But with a little ingenuity, and juggling of the what a character wants vs what a character needs equation, even that can be turned into a tale of someone moving on, in the fashion that mainstream cinema approves and expects.

No one likes a loser, as Amy Winehouse has found out to her cost by association with the James Bond brand: she wrote a song for the next film that’s now apparently been turned down in favour of one by Leona Lewis, whose story arc of ordinary girl to pop siren is a lot less messy than Winehouse’s, featuring Simon Cowell and proposed duets with Whitney Houston rather than front page photos looking like a drowned rat on the way back from another court visit to see an addicted thug of a husband. Amy better had go to rehab - again - and I hope next time it sticks: she deserves a second act.