Darlington writer Ian Fenton has won an off-screen role in ITV soap Emmerdale in a search conducted rather more privately than the talent hunt to find unknowns to play a new family in the Yorkshire-set series.

While auditions for the new performers were conducted in the full glare of cameras in the Soapstars series, he and fellow writers were away from the public gaze on a new writing scheme that led to him being commissioned to write for Emmerdale.

The first episode he has scripted is being shown the day before the new family is introduced on screen on November 7.

He admits that writing for a soap was not an idea he'd considered before joining the writers' scheme run by Yorkshire Television in conjunction with Northern Arts and Yorkshire Arts.

"When I was approached about the scheme, I said at the end of it I would like to do something like Emmerdale, which they found quite funny because the stuff I'd submitted was nothing like it," he says.

"For me, it was just the chance to work in a bigger team and not be isolated, sitting in a room in Darlington knocking my head on the wall to find a good idea."

He was born and grew up near Carlisle, coming south of the border in 1995 after completing a media studies degree course to work for an independent production company in Newcastle. He worked as an editor before moving to directing, continuing with the writing he'd begun while at college.

When approached about joining the Yorkshire TV writers' development scheme he was cynical about its usefulness after a bad experience on a previous Channel 4 course.

"The danger with these schemes is that they just pay lip service. There's a lot of interest from broadcasters at first and it just peters out. So I was sceptical," he says.

"This course was different. They picked a group of writers and tailored the package to each writer's needs. It was always about the individual approach as to how they could develop your writing."

Before the course, 35-year-old Fenton had been working as editor and director in mainly factual programming. He also directed King Of The Run, one of the series of short dramas in Tyne Tees Television's recent series First Cut.

"I'd made a commitment to writing but felt it was something I could never make a living out of, so I was working as a director," he says. "As a writer it you have a piece of paper and pen, you can at least develop your craft between other jobs."

During the course, he'd seen how the Emmerdale story and scriptwriting department operated. He'd been to story conferences and written a trial script in the hope it could lead to more permanent work.

"I wrote it in May and it took until July for them to read it," he recalls. "Then they said, 'we've read it and think it's great'. And I was commissioned to write an episode."

The soap operates on three-week cycles with a team of 18 writers working on 15 episodes each time. Every three weeks storyliners, script editors, producers and writers meet at Yorkshire TV studios in Leeds to thrash out future plotlines. Storyliners provide writers with detailed outlines to work from.

"You have to structure the episodes and make the scenes work," he says. "It's quite a challenge. The stuff I've written before is very unlike Emmerdale. I've chosen the location and what's going on. On Emmerdale all that's done for you.

"My first episode is the start of the culmination of the hit-and-run storyline. That was quite daunting because it was a big autumn story and I got the end of it."

Since that initial episode, Fenton has been asked to write three more and is obviously hoping to continue after that.

He was not an Emmerdale fan before becoming a scriptwriter. "I think the last one I watched Annie Sugden was still in it, which shows how long ago it was. I was very honest at the interview and said I didn't watch it. But I do watch it now," he says.

"When I wrote the first one I was on the telephone to my mum asking, 'which one is Kelly?'. She has always looked at my TV career with a certain amount of scepticism, saying, 'How do you make money out of that?'. When I told her I'd got this job on Emmerdale, I had made it, as far as she's concerned."

There is the advantage that his words will be heard by millions of viewers. "The great thing about soap is that it's five nights a week, 52 weeks of the year. The other things I'm working on are single dramas that might never see the light of day. It's great to write something and see it go out."

He's concentrating on Emmerdale at present as his wife, who teaches computer animation at Teesside University, is expecting their first child the week after his first Emmerdale episode is broadcast.

But he has other projects, including single dramas and a film script, in mind for later. And he hasn't given up directing entirely.

"It's something I'm still interested in but you come to the point where it becomes more difficult. Regional broadcasters are cutting back and it's increasingly difficult to get a job," he says.

"For me, writing was always further down the road. Then last year it seemed to make more sense to try to make a living out of writing."

* Emmerdale is on ITV, Monday to Friday at 7pm.