There’s a particular feature script I’ve wanted to write for about three years now. Only, I’ve never found the right way into it. And then, earlier this evening, I cracked it – at any rate, it certainly feels that way. About time too, especially since a small but perfectly formed production company are interested in paying me to write said script.

The solution came as several other writing solutions have come to me over the years: by utilising an element from another story. In this case, a scene that’s a piece of visual storytelling I’m proud of, part of a grim and unfinished thriller. In its original context, it was a flashback that served an important purpose in that story. But it works just as well in its own right, and now seen as an early scene in the other story, witnessed by the protagonist, it helps explain why that protagonist embarks on his particular journey. Perfect.

I’m also confident that I’ve got an ending for it, too, which was something I struggled with before. So now, I have a first and third act, should those be useful labels for this script. Meaning I ‘just’ have that pesky second act to tackle, with its ups and downs, red herrings and blind alleys. Oh, the fun. Fortunately, I have a setting that’s pretty…unusual, and which I can write about with authority. That alone will give the script something to interest the casual reader. Then, it’s just a matter of layering several plot strands, to do with the incident at the start, and something that comes later, and how they affect the protagonist and his plans, and it’ll all come out fine in the wash.

Well, that’s the plan. And one I’m pretty confident about, right now. All I have to do next…is everything. Which in this case means embarking on what I know will be a complex script, a psychological thriller that will appeal to people who like Memento or Insomnia. If only I could find a title as snappy as those…the best one I’ve come up with so far was used by a film a couple of years ago, and I want it to have a good title. Titles are important.

It’s an interesting challenge, living up to your own expectations of a screenplay you’ve been hyping in your own mind and to others for years. Now it’s time to get beyond that hype and write the thing, once some funding has been secured. Curiously, I’m much more matter of fact about another feature script I’m planning to write before I start on this one. That’s just, you know, this funny personal drama I’m doing. The other is, like, The Big One: my psychological thriller I’ve talked about without writing for far too long now.

In practice, the wait has been good for me. I’ve written other scripts in the interim which have taught me a whole bunch of tricks. I’ve learned more about some of the technical stuff I need to know. And moved on from the personal issues that underpin the story for me. So, by the time some money does appear to crack on with the script, I’ll be raring to go. It’s just nice to know that, after all this time not writing it, and thinking about it, I’m now confident that I can do it justice.

There’s a kind of writing which I find grates, and that I can best describe as too neat. And the kind of neatness I’m thinking about sits at odds with my experience of life itself, which doesn’t conform to regular patterns and easy conclusions. As an example, ‘Brotherhood’, episode 7 of the first series of Six Feet Under, a generally excellent series that I’ve been catching on DVD after, as ever, failing to see it when it was broadcast on tv.

The brotherhood referred to captures the relationship of brothers Nate and David, and in particular Nate’s declaration that he loves David, an instance of ‘hugs ‘n’ learning’ that sits at odds with the generally distanced emotions of the Fisher family. And in this specific episode it also refers to the brotherhood experienced by a young soldier whose funeral the Fishers are arranging. For good measure, it serves triple duty when it comes to exploring the politics of the church that Dave is a deacon of.

The dead soldier’s funeral is arranged by his brusque older brother, who wants it to be a military-free zone. Only, Nate believes that the deceased really would have wanted his army buddies present, and arranges for that to happen. He does so, and the service is conducted against the brother’s wishes – only for him to turn up and concede that it really is what he’d have wanted after all. I found it unconvincing that he changed his mind in the short time devoted to the storyline: in other words, the dramatic reversal was unearned, and felt false because of it. In tandem with the story being about Gulf war veterans, it felt tokenistic to me, and what could have been a powerful story was diluted by an unearned payoff: confronted by uniforms, the brother just changed his mind.

The other overly neat aspect to this story was Dave’s rejection of a new senior figure in the church, whose crusading style would likely have brought up uncomfortable issues to do with his closeted homosexuality. It may be that the storyline develops new wrinkles in future episodes, but for now at least it felt like the dead serviceman story: just too neat to really convince.

So, if those are examples of neat writing, what’s the contrary to that? Messiness, I guess. The kind of messiness that feels more like life than it does the geometrically precise laying down of story beats that rise and fall and are mirrored over time. It’s also something I have an issue about when I see tv shows that have clearly delineated A, B, C storylines where the people involved in one never get involved in the others, and to all intents and purposes are involved in their own 12 minute hermetically sealed story rather than one that’s a living breathing part of an organic script.

That kind of messiness is harder to write, I know from my own experience. And it’s also much more rewarding, and effective when it’s achieved. The Shield features writing along the lines I’m talking about, and is achieved by a table of writers hammering out stories as a team. I believe I’ve achieved it in a pilot episode for a series I’ve devised, and one of the technical elements I learned from that which leads to quality messiness on the page works like this:

Get characters involved in each other’s storylines, for instance by having scenes in which a character’s actions create beats for two or more stories. In doing so, see if you can also get those actions to highlight different, even contrary, aspects of character to those established earlier.

Sound tricky? Well, it can be. But it’s a lot of fun getting it right, and feels a lot more like life than the A, B, C way of doing things…

Paying attention to commissioners can drive you crazy. A friend of mine who’s written a forthcoming feature film and done a few tv scripts was telling me about the things he’d heard from people in the market for sitcoms. Some years ago, received wisdom from the success of The Office was that edgy dark material was what the public wanted, which led to the excellent Nighty Night being commissioned. Now, the same people are all about touching upbeat comedy in the wake of Gavin and Stacey. Similarly, in mainstream drama, everyone’s looking for a family success that will emulate the Dr Who demographic. Like, who wouldn’t want a hugely popular franchise that spawns spin-offs and wins awards?

Is there a lesson to be learned from all this? Probably that it’s best to stick to your guns and write what you’re passionate about. If you’re following a trend, odds are it’ll be over by the time it comes round to commissioning whatever you’re working on, especially if the people who claimed they wanted it are so timid and fickle that they were only ever after a knockoff in the first place. Besides, write something that’s strong and unique, and it’ll never fall out of fashion, and will at least hopefully serve as a good calling card script even if nobody wants to commission the damn thing.

Which isn’t to say that you can’t learn something from what’s already out there. Let’s look at Big Brother. Why look at a reality show at all? Well, it’s come back for yet another series, it helps to define what Channel 4 is about, and it pulls in a substantial audience for a long time, many of them willing to watch spin-offs too.

Viewed as a drama, Big Brother just shouldn’t work. Take fifteen strangers, bring them together in a closed environment, and leave them to interact. Ensure that they’re not exposed to outside influences, and give them arbitrary things to do. Get rid of one person a week by the results of a poll, until there’s just one left: the winner. That’s pretty much it.

What’s interesting from this dramatically speaking is that Big Brother’s makers have confidence in our ability to get to know so many people so quickly. And they don’t expect us to like all of them – they know that audiences prefer to dislike at least some of the people parading for our entertainment. Yet where drama is concerned, writers are often told to create likeable protagonists with big character arcs and a small cast – Big Brother proves that audiences have the capacity to enjoy the tiny details of people interacting, without a plot, and instead relish the infinite gradations between loving and hating someone.

To some extent then, Big Brother is a soap opera. But what other lessons could writers and programme makers learn from its success and incorporate into fictional shows? Emulating reality tv is one direction, and The Office did that to perfection. But take a look at another show, Saxondale, to see the influence taken in a more interesting direction. There’s no pretence that Tommy Saxondale is the subject of a reality show, but the naturalism of Steve Coogan’s performance and the ebb and flow of the storylines are very influenced by the genre.

What would happen if that approach was taken to a drama rather than a comedy? I’d be interested in seeing what would happen if that surface ease was adopted by a show which had the social concerns of say, The Street. Perhaps that verite style of drama has been realised to some extent in a show like The Shield, but there the influence is on the surface: underneath it’s a much more conventional (albeit superbly scripted) drama with high stakes and evolving characters.

Lost is arguably another show influenced by reality television, allowing viewers to get immersed in the lives of strangers interacting in an arbitrary situation where weirdness intrudes. Only, the flashbacks create backgrounds and arcs to make it more of a conventional drama than it first appears.

A lot of writers are sniffy about reality tv, seeing it merely as cheap and nasty programming. But that misses an important point. Big Brother isn’t the enemy: it’s proven that there’s an appetite for a different form of narrative television in audiences worldwide. Canny dramatists and programme makers would do well to learn from that.

It’s fair to say that I don’t know a great deal about manga, though I’m pretty well versed in comics generally. Japanese titles have been a big story in book stores in the west for the last few years, and I wanted to check out the cream of the crop.

My first port of call was Death Note, which started very promisingly with a supersmart teenage boy who is befriended by a demon. He uses his power to kill people to eradicate criminals, and himself becomes the subject of a criminal investigation. So far, so good. Only, our protagonist gets a girlfriend a few volumes in, and she’s so annoyingly depicted – we’re pretty much talking Lolita fantasies – that I gave up on the series.

Thing is, I know a lot of manga isn’t going to be to my tastes. Acres of it is devoted to subgenres designed to appeal to 13 year old girls, or 9 year old boys, or for adults but about subjects such as baseball that hold no interest for me. Which leaves a whole bunch of science fiction material, and thrillers, both genres I can enjoy.

So, I did a bit more research, and discovered that Monster, by Naoki Urasawa, is highly rated. It’s a clever thriller with intriguing elements: a Japanese doctor gets a job at a hospital in Germany. Dedicated to saving the lives of everyone, and not just the dignitaries that hospital politics dictates he should devote his talents to, Dr Tenma keeps a young boy alive. Oops. The kid turns out to be a killer, and the good doctor sets out to find him and rescue his reputation. In the process, Tenma falls among criminals and uncovers secrets better forgotten in today’s Germany.

That’s as far as I’ve got anyway: I’m three volumes into a series of 18 small inexpensive volumes. So far the ride has been a lot of fun: the characters are more plausible than those of Death Note, though sometimes stereotypical, brought in from Central Casting to bring particular moral questions alive for the reader. I identify less with Dr Tenma than the dilemmas he faces, put it that way.

In terms of plot and action, it’s exciting stuff, with all kinds of fun twists and turns. But there are times when it becomes melodrama. A cop turns up to arrest Dr Tenma in a remote location he’s been sheltered, only to discover that Tenma is operating on the cop’s own mother! Her life is in the hands of a man the cop believes to be a bad ‘un, and the situation is not only milked but the milk then turned into cheese of the ripest sort.

But maybe I’m being a little unfair: after all, I swallow the most ridiculous nonsense on a regular basis when I read superhero comics, on the rare occasions when I still do (Brian Vaughan’s excellent Runaways has been a recent favourite, now written by Buffy creator Joss Whedon, though I’ve not checked any of his issues out). Only, I grew up reading that particular kind of soap opera, so I know what to expect. Maybe I’m encountering a particular form of manga histrionics at this point, and I’ll get used to it if I read more. And there’s more to Monster than that: this is young adult fiction of a high order, though without the maturity and sophistication that, say, Pete Milligan or Jason Aaron regularly bring to the table in their comics.

For now, I’ll stick with Monster: a volume every couple of months as bedtime reading suits me fine at the moment. And then maybe I’ll explore the quality end of the manga science fiction scene, to see what I can find there to recommend. Anyone with any favourites, please let me know.

I popped out earlier, and passed the corner shop at the end of my street. Among the various cards in the window was one from someone wanting spare HRT patches. And it made me think: we’re living in a science fiction world now. Which begs the question: what do you do if you want to write science fiction in today’s world?

Science fiction was my genre of choice when I was growing up. I devoured Asimov, Heinlein, Silverberg from the local library, quite often reading three books at the same time. Later, I encountered Philip K Dick, and thinking about it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see one of his stories kicking off with HRT patches being offered in a local shop window. Only, the ones in a Dick story would initially seem to transform people into aliens, before the realisation kicked in that they were actually keeping you human, and it was everyone else changing into something non-terrestrial.

An underground movement of people trying to stay human in a world populated by aliens posing as human: I’d read or watch that story, at least to discover how well executed it was. Coronation Street mixed with Alien Nation. Now there’s a pitch! Norris Cole putting up the cards in the window of the newsagent, a lizard’s tongue flicking out the corner of his mouth. Sally Webster, thinking it’s time of life that’s got her unsettled, when actually it’s aliens tampering with her DNA causing the upset. No wonder she gets stroppy with Kevin: and what will she do when she discovers he’s one of the saurians?

OK, forget the aliens: what else in our present world is evidence that we’re living in a science fiction world?

CCTV everywhere, fulfilling the promise of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta that we’re living in a police state.

Plastic surgery: men getting implants that feel like muscle to go where a sixpack would go if you had one.

The Dalai Lama: I was at a party last night where a good few of the guests had been to see him speak at an ice stadium where I saw Arcade Fire play last year. There were even merchandise stalls.

I was looking at a website earlier for an artist I got talking to in a cafe recently. She says her work in inspired by angels, and now she paints them and reproduces the pictures in different forms, all of which she’s making a decent living from. Bet your art teacher never mentioned that as an option when you were messing about with poster paints at school.

With all of this going on, it makes science fiction and satire two forms that become more difficult to write. We’re already living in a surrealist film: what can you write to draw peoples’ attention to that fact in useful ways?