In researching and writing my book on Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi) I re-discovered the first American female war correspondent – Margaret Fuller — who I had first met in a college course on the Transcendentalists. I was once again fascinated by a life lived purposefully.
Host: This might be a really sad thing to say, but do you think that, sometimes, it’s not always the best writers who get their pitches up but it’s the people who can work the room, by either maneuvering around, can get their stuff into the ears of the right people and then present that?
Rosanne: That is very true. I wouldn’t say — I mean you have to be a good writer to get in the room in the first place or they wouldn’t have hired you across all those stacks — you’ve seen all the things you’ve read for —
Host: Yeah. No. There’s a lot of crap to filter through. Absolutely.
Rosanne: Absolutely. So, generally speaking, you had to be a certain level to get in the room, but, yeah, it’s the people who can work — you have to work both things. A friend of mine is fond of saying, “It’s called show business. not show art.” So business is half of the job.
It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.
Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).
We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.
Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!
The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.
Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.
Transcript:
Terence Winter on Boardwalk Empire. He came off of The Sopranos so he had a very good pedigree and then he moved into Boardwalk Empire and the idea of how you parse out the story and this comes from structure. At what point to do give out what information. How do you string the audience along. I think that’s really interesting. That’s a whole other conversation.
Watch this entire presentation
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* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Host: How would you pitch to a showrunner who seemed deflective to your ideas? Or like, I know that’s a loaded question.
Rosanne: Oh no, that’s an excellent question. That can happen because relationships grow and change. People get mad a each other for some reason. Maybe other people poison someone’s attitude about somebody else on the show, simply because they want to get rid of them because they’re competition. I mean, it doesn’t always happen. I’ve worked for some lovely people for whom I had a marvelous time and who were very supportive and wanted to help new writers moving up and they really were — there’s some wonderful people in this town. I really say the problem is we hear more of the bad stories than the good ones. But yes, in case such a thing happens, I think you should take a psychology class frankly. I think everyone should take a psychology class to understand the personalities out there and then you have to find new ways around that. When I felt like there might be someone getting in my way I figured out who my allies were and you made sure to connect with them. At certain points, there were certain things I wanted to change in a script and I knew a person at the table would argue against it. So, I went privately to a different producer on the show, who I knew I actually did get along with well, and explained why I didn’t like something and he was like… He had to agree with me first, right, or he wouldn’t help. He agreed with my point of view and so he knew he could present that in the room because he had a higher title than I did at the time — and so he did and when he presented it, it got accepted. So, I went sideways to get my ideas moved forward. So you know, you find a way.
It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.
Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).
We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.
Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!
The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.
Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.
Transcript:
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is in charge of Riverdale. Was that here yet? Based on The Archie comics which is kind of funny. First season, pretty good. Second season, getting a little sillier. Third season, getting a little sillier. Not very good but the idea that a writer’s room is like a dinner party and you’re just kibitzing with people and having a good conversation and from that people go “Oh wait. i like that and I like what you said. I’m gonna put all these things together and we’re gonna end up with a story which we all like.” Love Tina Fey. Tina Fey is a great example of going from acting because of the strength of her writing becoming the first woman to run the evening report the weekend update on SNL. Then of course she did Mean Girls. She got hired from her comic chops to write Mean Girls. May or may not know that was recently nominated for Tony because she turned it into a Broadway show. Writers own the product throughout all of its lifespans. Directors do not right? The director of the movie Mean Girls was not invited to direct the musical but she was invited to write it. So I think it’s powerful. So her and her husband. Robert Carlock is her husband so they’ve worked the last two tv shows together and that’s their opinion. Again, diversity in the room with lots of things even educational status is an important thing.
Watch this entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Then you have to understand them. What are they like? How do they want to hear things? Are they — what type of personalities do they like? You can’t really change yourself but you can readjust some things when you see how the rhythm is of what they like to do and actually, one of my favorite stories is that you also can cheat because I recognized early on in a particular show that there was a gentleman who didn’t like other people to win and so when you started to pitch he would find ways to tear it apart before the boss could say yes. Once you go the yes, he would be on board, because he wasn’t going to go against what the boss said. So, a joke I often tell students and friends is I had an idea that I wanted to pitch and I didn’t want to do it in front of that person being in the room so I waited until the boss — who happened to be another female — went to the bathroom and I pitched it over washing our hands at the sinks and by the time we got back to the room, she liked it enough that she started with “Rosanne had this great idea. We should talk it through,” and I saw the guy’s eyes across the table and I saw that he wanted to say something and he stopped and then I got the script because I stole it away from him. So…
It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.
Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).
We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.
Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!
The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.
Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.
Transcript:
On Orville. I don’t know if this is transferred to England yet but it’s — who’s seen Galaxy Quest — Alan Rickman. I love Galaxy Quest. That is a movie that is survived by the writing. It could have been a silly piece of nonsense that was just a couple of gags joined together but the story is so strong, the movie is actually really good and Alan Rickman is of course always wonderful but Seth McFarlane talks about this idea. You have to tell the stories of your life. You stumble upon things by saying this happened and that happened or I had a friend to whom this happened right? One of my early episodes of Touched by an Angel had to do with a couple who was going to having a baby and they found out it was going to have Down’s Syndrome and then they had to make the decision were they capable of being the parents of a handicapped child and of course there was a moment where they could have chosen abortion. They did not but they had that discussion right because drama’s built around making a choice and that’s probably the biggest choice a person could ever make right? So that was built on the fact that somebody in the room one day, that was happening in their cousin’s family and they were talking about it and how they’ve been on the phone with them and we thought oh my gosh that’s an excellent story to try to move into and why would you what are the possible reasons you would make this choice? What are the reasons you would be talked out of making this choice? How do you deal with that problem? It just came up in personal conversation. So being a good conversationalist makes you a good writer because you can tell stories about your life and your friend’s lives.
Watch this entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
The first job you have to do and any new show, of course, every new show — unless it’s someone you’ve worked with before and that that can happen but not always right sometimes your friends don’t get other jobs and so you move in with somebody else kind of. You have to understand them first. First, you have to understand their show and what do they think the show is. I give a classic example that most people will have heard of or at least seen some of The Sopranos and the joke about The Sopranos was they described the show as a family drama where dad happens to be a hitman. So if you were pitching an idea, you weren’t pitching a crime. You were pitching mom and dad had a fight and I’m afraid they’re getting divorced so I’m going to pretend to be sick to draw mommy and daddy together and while I’m doing that, daddy gets busy having to kill someone and I don’t get his attention right? Always the the dad’s story with that. Crime was a secondary thing and if you didn’t understand that you would pitch the incorrect kind of stories and you’d never win right? So first you have to understand what the person thinks their show is.
It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.
Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).
We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.
Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!
The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.
Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.
Transcript:
Safe… but open. There was a huge lawsuit in the United States in Hollywood. The writer’s assistant on Friends, which everyone knows because everyone’s seen Friends a million times, she sued them for harassment because in her job of listening to them talk, of course, they talked a lot about their raw sexual experiences. That’s kind of what Friends was about. Although you didn’t really see that part of it right? You got the… it was more soft and she was embarrassed but she knew she was getting a job on a sitcom where that kind of thing was going to be discussed. So kind of a mess because that is the job but then you have to be gentle about how you’re doing that and recognize who’s in the room and think about how you honorably discuss these things. It wasn’t really part of how people behaved a few years ago. So it’s that’s a that’s a delicate balance that a writer-producer is trying to create in their room.
Watch this entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
The best thing I learned was that everybody has their own different way. You can’t try and copy somebody else or it’s just like a bad tv show that’s a rip-off of a ripoff of a ripoff. You know it and it’s very doesn’t have any emotion or passion to it. So it was really important to learn that you’ve got to do it your way and you’ve got to get better at it. You can’t be that shy person in the corner waiting for someone to offer you a turn that’s never going to happen because a room full of writers is a room full of performers and they’re all wanting to tell you their story. So they’re not going to turn around and say and what do you think about that? So you have to be comfortable doing that. So it was a really good lesson. I really say of course that is the jumping-off job for television writers. You need to get a job as an assistant because you need to study that little world before you dive into it because then you won’t know the people management part of it. You might be a really good writer — and that happens to a lot of people — but if you can’t manage the people aspect, you’re not going to be successful in the writer’s room.
Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.
Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!
The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.
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