At this point we decided to re-evaluate our socio-historical narrative paradigm, and make everything up. Why not? It turns out that's what everyone else has been doing. A typical example runs as follows:

1. The survivor, a bulimic multiple substance abuser with self-harm issues, publishes a best-selling account of a horrifying childhood in which his psychotic mother, a morphine-addicted Russian ex-ballerina, chained him to a radiator, fed him on broken glass, and forced him to watch videos of old musicals all day for twenty years.

2. The survivor's sister publishes a book claiming that he had an idyllic childhood. She, however, was sold by their stepfather to slave traders who introduced her to cannibalism. She has discovered all this through 'recovered memories' in analysis.

3. The mother publishes her own account, claiming that her children, in collusion with their stepfather, are a making it all up to try and get their hands on her money.

4. By now, the film of the original book, 'Trampolining with Nitro-Glycerine' is in post production, while the films of the sister's book, and the mother's rebuttal, are the subject of Hollywood bidding wars.

6. The sister's analyst suggests that everyone should have several more years of counselling and recover a few more memories. He will take 25% of gross on any media exploitation. Individual rates apply, no discount for family bookings.

7. Everyone sues each other.

Sometimes, there is some truth somewhere in the torturous web of claim and counter-claim. But increasingly often the latest sensational bestseller, apparently dictated from death row by an illiterate teenage hillbilly whose dysfunctional childhood drove him to eat his own legs and murder everyone he ever met, turns out to have been dreamed up by a contributing editor at The New Yorker.

So, I was encouraged by the lack of any need for veracity. But even when you're making it all up, you need to have at least some idea of what you're talking about, although I realize this statement may come as a shock to many writers. I'm a great believer in research. For me, this usually means finding an expert and taking them to lunch. It's amazing what you can learn, and sometimes you can even get them to pay the bill. But everyone I approached who had suffered even the slightest childhood trauma was already writing their own book or screenplay. I needed some experience.

That's when my agent came up with the idea of locking me in a coal cellar. To be honest, it wasn't really a coal cellar. It was a wine cellar. It belonged to one of my agent's more successful clients who was away on a book signing tour. And I wasn't locked in; not from the outside, anyway. My agent had suggested I just pop in there to help me imagine what it might be like to imprisoned in a cold, dark place, but I discovered some very passable wines down there, and the door had bolts on the inside. After a week, my agent was desperate to get me out of there. He tried to keep constant watch, and catch me opening the door to take delivery of the pizzas I was ordering. But he's a family man, and they'll deliver pizzas at any hour of the night, so eventually he had to break the door down and have me forcibly removed.

I felt that the experience had given me the impetus I needed, and I got down to work as soon as I'd sobered up. And whenever I begin to flag, my agent reminds me that the book his highly successful client who owns the wine cellar is away promoting is a misery memoir. And every word is a lie.

Paul Bassett Davies is a writer and director of Euroscript.