25 My Screenwriting Story from In Conversation with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]

Transcript:

Host: Speaking of screenwriting technique, I feel I should ask you to tell us a little bit more about your career as a practicing screenwriter. Yeah, what have you been working what what what have you worked on, and are you working on anything at the moment?

Rosanne: Yes I come out of the world of –  I came out in LA from Cleveland. I was a kid from Cleveland and I moved out here for the purpose of working in television and had to do the whole – I was an English teacher – high school – that was my out of college job and luckily I got hired on as a writer’s assistant because I could spell, which was the funny joke like I could clean up their spelling which I thought was funny. So I was an assistant for probably about five years and everyone and when I tell students that they sort of cringe because they think they’re going to get the job and then they’ll get hired as a writer and they have to say you know it’s about networking. It’s about meeting people and then meeting people who like the things you’ve written. You have to write a lot of spec scripts and keep showing them to people who are willing to read them. They have to decide the stuff is good enough and then they’ll offer you a freelance script. That’s one season. You’re still the assistant while you’re doing that and then if they think it’s good enough and the show doesn’t get canceled they’ll offer you, perhaps, a staff –  you know it’s all so much of that as part of it. I would get offered scripts on shows for the second season and it would cancel at the end of the first season. So not only are you scrambling for a job to pay the rent but you now lost that hope and so you’re in a new place with new people. You convince them you’re pretty good. They give you a freelance on their show and the next season they’re canceled.