Speaking – Page 23 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch Talks Worry and Wonder in Screenwriting on the Courier 13 Podcast [Audio] [Video]

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.

Listen to the audio version of this podcast

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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27 Inside The Write’s Room from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

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:

Let’s think about what happens inside a writer’s room. By the way, that’s not a bad book right there. A couple of really important showrunners in America right now and what they have to say about it right? Nahnatchka Khan is Fresh Off The Boat. I don’t know if that’s in England or not. It’s the story of an Asian American family immigrating to the United States. It was based on a famous chef in New York. He wrote a memoir. Now they turned it into a tv show. It’s a comedy. It’s quite fun and so obviously she came in she wanted people who were different. She was smart enough to know she needed people who understood being on the outside looking in because the theme of the show was how do you assimilate without losing the heritage you came in with. That’s the big question, right? So it’s a really, really important new show. It’s about the third season now.

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† Available from the LA Public Library

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An update – Thanks for 2600+, Find videos on YouTube, and San Diego Who Con talks announced via TikTok [Video]

@drrosannewelch

An update – Thanks for 2600+, Find videos on YouTube, and San Diego Who Can talks announced ##doctorwho ##whocon ##screenwriting ##thanks

♬ Doctor Who (Main Theme) – TV Generation

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Save The Date — Rosanne Speaks at San Diego Who Con – October 8-10, 2021

SAVE THE DATE!

I’ll be speaking at San Diego Who Con on these topics:

Doctor Who: The Jodie Whittaker Years

and

Why Torchwood Mattered

Make plans to join me there!

More info on the San Diego Who Con Web Site

Dr. Rosanne Welch Speaks at the 2021 Stephens College MFA in TV & Screenwriting Commencement [Video]

Dr. Rosanne Welch gave the welcoming remarks at this year’s commencement ceremonies for the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting for the Class of 2021, reminding everyone of the program’s motto: Write. Reach. Represent.

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22 People of Color and Television from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

Still, there’s something missing in writer’s rooms in America.

There’s some girls in that picture because it’s executive produced by a girl.

Missing something else. (Audience: people of color)People of color because you know they exist in the world.Isn’t that interesting but they were not yet existing on very many TV shows. Again a whole font of stories not being told — not being told correctly. On my show Touched by Angel we had we had two women of color and you have to remember that you only have experiences until you do research that come from your own life and that’s good and that’s a building block but it’s not everything right?

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

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21 Buffy The Vampire Slayer from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

Now. Lack of women. Ta-Da. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Thank god, although we’ve discovered in the states that Joss Whedon, who ran the show and got all kinds of points for being a feminist was, in fact, having sex with every other girl he could meet so apparently not such a feminist. His wife has now left him — ta-da — but I academically am going to interpret to you that the reason the program maintained its level of feminist theory was because of all the women who he hired in his writer’s room. So perhaps subconsciously he knew he was a jerk and he wasn’t going to interpret this right and he wanted to get a room full of people who could give him a real interpretation of what it was like to be a girl in high school who was othered — who was different in this way. So Buffy is a pretty breakthrough and I highly recommend that show

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

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20 More On Russell T Davies from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

This book here, I highly recommend if you like Doctor Who, but if you like writing, Benjamin Cook, the writer, the journalist asked Russell Davies in the last season of David Tennant’s era, could I email you across this year and just ask you questions like — what are you thinking of today and Russell was like sure and so it’s this it’s the collection of their emails as he wrote the last season. So you’ll start with something like well today I’m thinking what if water was deadly? I don’t know what to do with that but that’s on my brain today and a few weeks later it was — what if some astronauts were on Mars and Martian water was deadly and by the time you’re done we have an episode called Waters of Mars right? So he watched the progress and development of a story through these emails with Russell Davies.

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19 Russell T Davies and Doctor Who from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (40 seconds)

Transcript:

I got a beloved chance to interview Russell Davies who came to the states to do the fourth season of Torchwood and the editor Written By knew how much I love Doctor Who, so he asked me if I’d like to interview him? Which I did and this was something that he said that meant a lot. Again you probably know he’s an openly gay man and it bothered him what he was seeing on television. So obviously, he invented Queer As Folk, and from that, he invented and revived Doctor Who and invented Torchwood, which allowed us, Captain Jack. it was just so adorable. I can’t stand it, but not on my team. So there you go. So this is really important. He was recognizing that in what he was creating for television and again made the programming more inclusive.

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

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Have questions about the craft and/or business of screenwriting for film and TV? Drop them in the comments! via TikTok [Video]

@drrosannewelch

Have ##questions about the ##craft and/or ##business of ##screenwriting for ##film and ##TV? Drop them in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them!

♬ original sound – Dr. Rosanne Welch

Read more about screenwriting with these books

* 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

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