INNOVATION: DANIEL EVANS is a 38-year-old widower for whom singing is a way of overcoming the death of his wife Jacqueline, who died six days after giving birth to their daughter, writes RICHARD GILLIS

"Jacqueline had always been my biggest fan and often said, 'You should enter The X Factor' - but it was never the right time," says Daniel. "After she died, I found some peace and pleasure in singing. I decided to go for it because if the last year has taught me anything, it's that you should live life to the full."

Evans made it through to the finals of the reality television show where his audition song - Sometimes When We Touchby Dan Hill - caused The X Factorjudge Cheryl Cole to break down in tears. "It's like he was singing just for her," said the Girls Aloud pop diva. Subsequent performances by Evans have included other equally emotionally charged power ballads such as The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, sung originally by Ewan McColl, and Against All Odds, by the former Genesis drummer turned tax exile Phil Collins.

According to the judges of the The X Factor, including resident pantomime villain Simon Cowell, he is not a very good singer. He looks a bit like Ricky Gervais and his style is best suited to the pubs and bars that line the Costa del Sol, where he lives.

But what Evans has got is worth more than talent in today's television marketplace - he's got a story. Daniel Evans is on "a journey" and is living proof that the legacy of reality television shows like The X Factor, Wife Swapand Big Brotheris to spread the cult of the story.

The more manipulative and soul-wrenching this "narrative arc", the better the chances of surviving a vote-off. Comedian Peter Kay recently did a great spoof of the genre, in which he presented 2 Up, 2 Down, a pop group comprised of two couples, with both women in wheelchairs.

The best stories, as with Evans, can be explained in a single sentence, like the pitch of a movie - which is not surprising, as the tactic was originally conceived by Hollywood scriptwriters to hook the interest of studio bosses.

For example: "A young man and woman from different social classes fall in love aboard an ill-fated voyage at sea" (Titanic). Or this one, that has gained momentum on the internet: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again" ( The Wizard of Oz).

The king of the story is Robert McKee, whose book of that title is the basis of a lucrative 30-year career teaching screenwriting seminars to both wannabes and established writers in Hollywood and across the world.

McKee's students learn that "the story" is about transformation; a protagonist undergoes change in the two hours of a movie (dumb to smart, nobody to somebody, bureaucrat to whistleblower).

These are elements of structural narrative that have engaged us on a fundamental level since the days of caveman stories through to Shakespeare and James Bond. Integral to this form of storytelling is the "inciting incident" - the moment our lives, or the lives of our characters, change. In Evans' case this is the day his wife died, a tragic moment he is using to set up the next acts of his life story, which he hopes will come to a satisfactory resolution.

When a business applies these principles, the brand becomes more compelling, says McKee, who also teaches chief executives of major corporations.

Most executives are trained to use intellect to persuade us, which today usually means the dreaded PowerPoint slide presentation: lists of bullet points, graphs and analysis. Storytellers, people like Steve Jobs of Apple or Virgin's Richard Branson, however, engage us on a deeper level, hooking us in and presenting the facts as part of, you guessed it, a journey.

Now that we all know about this stuff, no self-respecting job applicant can go into an interview without a fully fleshed-out version of his or her life. Help is at hand for those who lack the imagination to come up with this on their own, and you don't even have to pay McKee's huge seminar fees or even the €20 cost of his book - the Random Logline Generator does the work for you.

It's a website that throws up story ideas at the click of a mouse. "Three dessert chefs exchanging minds in a cottage" may or may not make it to the big screen, but surely "a fashion-conscious jingle writer and a greedy nurse struggling for survival" could be woven into someone's Big Brotheraudition tape.