Television – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Rosanne moderates “Beyond the Book: Writing Adaptations” at the Writers Guild Foundation

During all of our Stephens College Residency Workshops, my favorite job as Executive Director is when I moderate a panel at the Writers Guild.

Last August, we hosted “Beyond the Book” which covered writing adaptations and spin-offs. The panelists shared ideas about how to manage IP; we discussed how creative decisions are made when one deviates from the source material and how thematic material, characters, and plot points are emphasized or expanded upon in TV series and features.

I always like to cover shows that focus on female-driven stories (no matter the writer) so while Olivia Newman, writer-director of Extremely Bright Creatures was out of town we were happy to hear from John Whittington, who wrote the first drafts of the script – and Lego Batman, which provided a completely different challenge. The rest of the panelists were a great set of writers across mediums including MFA Mentor Valerie Woods (The Crossover, The Big Cigar, Sweet Magnolias), Jessica O’Toole (XO, Kitty; The Summer I Turned Pretty); and Rhiana Yazzie (Dark Winds).

It’s already time to start planning and booking our WGA panel for January – stay tuned for that topic – and that recording, which we’ll post in early March.

The Writers Guild Foundation teams up with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting for a conversation about writing adaptations and spin-offs for the screen. This conversation covered how writers approach adapting IP to the screen, how creative decisions are made to deviate from the source material, and how thematic material, characters, and plot points are emphasized or expanded upon in TV series and features.

Panelists include:

Jessica O’Toole – XO, Kitty; The Summer I Turned Pretty
John Whittington – Remarkably Bright Creatures
Valerie Woods – The Crossover, The Big Cigar, Sweet Magnolias
Rhiana Yazzie – Dark Winds
Moderated by Dr. Rosanne Welch, Executive Director, Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.

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Another Wonderful SRN Conference On the Books – Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

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Another Wonderful SRN Conference On the Books

It’s been a minute as we settled in back home after all the lovely things that happened at the latest Screenwriting Research Network conference held at Oxford Brookes University.

Doug and I spent our first week in Europe visiting our Catania cousins, which is always a joy and deserves pages and pages of details – but this is a blog about the conference, so… back to Oxford.

After that great week in Sicily, we flew to Oxford to hang out with another great group of people, SRN colleagues from all across the world – Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Romania — too many places to name. All screenwriting professors and practitioners presenting papers that expanded our curricula, helping us bring the many new things we learn back to our own MFA candidates.

My Australian friend and colleague Rose Ferrell and I won the Best Book award for our Shaping Global Cultures Through Screenwriting: Women Who Write Our Worlds. The presence of several of our chapter authors among the membership (and in attendance at the conference) made that presentation even more enjoyable: Joanne Tindale, Kath Dooley, Armando Fumagalli, Karen Jeynes, Juan Carlos Carillo, to name a few in attendance. The judges of the Book Award had this to say about the book:

“Bringing together an outstanding collection of international scholarship, the volume examines the profound influence of women screenwriters in shaping culture, history, and storytelling across generations and national cinemas. By foregrounding voices that have too often been overlooked, the collection expands the scope of screenwriting studies while offering fresh perspectives on authorship, creativity, and global impact. The judges remarked that the volume is a landmark contribution to the field, distinguished by its scholarly rigor, international breadth, and compelling demonstration of the central role women screenwriters have played in shaping both cinema and culture.”

Then I moderated the Annual General Meeting where we announced other awards, including a Lifetime Award for Ian Macdonald, who founded the SRN originally. He was on hand to receive all the kudos from the crowd who were enjoying the fruits of that idea as it has grown stronger and stronger each year. I can’t wait to gather with all these lovely folks again next year when the SRN conference is hosted in Mexico City at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Universidad Panamericana.

My Mother Always Told Me Busy People Get Things Done – They Also Have Fun!

I guess it’s a sign I’m involved in a lot of projects since on a recent September weekend when I was:

Giving a presentation on Susan Harris at the Screenwriting Research Network conference at Oxford Brookes University.

I could also have been:

On a panel talking about my book at the Monkees Convention in Connecticut celebrating 60 years of The Monkees TV show

• At the Los Ángeles Silent Film Festival celebrating my book on the female screenwriters of the Silent Era

At a book launch in Prague for Stories of the Holocaust: Art for Healing and Renewal, in which I have a chapter celebrating the writing team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and their work adapting The Diary of Anne Frank into a Pulitzer Prize-winning play and then their Oscar-winning film.

Along the way, I gave email advice to an author for our Women Making History series at Bloomsbury and set up a lunch with another writer for after I returned. And, of course, I graded things online whenever I was sitting somewhere (airport, hotel, cousin’s house).

Why does one work on so many projects? Largely, because not everything comes to fruition, so that means that often more things happen at the same time, and you might as well jump in and enjoy the ride when they do. It was a pretty fun month.

Rosanne’s Presentation on Television Writer-Genius Susan Harris [Video]

Rosanne’s Presentation on Television Writer-Genius Susan Harris

At the 2026 international Screenwriting Research Network conference held at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, UK, I had the privilege of giving a presentation based on my Introduction to my upcoming book The Works of Susan Harris (To be published around March 2028).

I walked the audience through her career from freelancing for All in the Family to Maude, where she wrote the still timeless 2 parter where the 43-year-old Maude decided to have an abortion. Then I covered her groundbreaking storytelling on SOAP and, of course, The Golden Girls.

There is so much more to say – so you can watch this video from the conference and then keep an eye out for the book!

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Rosanne presents “Creative Play #8: Emotional Monologues Written By A Few Accomplished Female Television Writers” – Screenwriting Research Network [Video]

I was pleased to be asked to host a session of the Creative Play Working Group of the Screenwriting Research Network (SRN), chaired by Professor Chris Neilan of Edinburgh Napier University.

I had the chance to introduce the attendees to some wonderfully emotional monologues written by a few highly accomplished female television writers, from Susan Harris (on SOAP) to Linda Bloodworth Thomason (on Designing Women) to Maxine Alderton, who wrote a great monologue for the Jodie Whitaker Doctor in her episode “The Haunting of Villa Diadoti”. (Doing a bit of history by showing monologues from TV shows from the 1970s and 80s is one of my goals in our MFA – along with celebrating female screenwriters).

Then I introduced an exercise in writing monologues that involves Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as an inspiration. A few of the attendees shared what they wrote so we could all learn more about how the specificity we bring from our own lives makes our work more universal.

Thanks to Leslie Kreiner for inviting me to do a presentation on Monologues to a conference last year, which created the seed of this exercise. Thanks to Chris for the invitation to share it – and to all the attendees for… attending. Special thanks to those who shared what they wrote to help others see if this is an exercise they would like to incorporate into their teaching.

Rosanne Presents on Shaping Global Cultures Through Screenwriting – Stephens College [Video]

Recently, I was asked to make a short presentation to the faculty of Stephens College about the newest book I edited alongside my dear friend and Screenwriting Research colleague Rose Ferrell. Shaping Global Cultures Through Screenwriting: Women Who Write Our Worlds.

I was happy to discuss the inspiration for the book, which came from a conversation Rose and I had during a conference. That’s one of the best things about gathering for conferences – the casual conversations that create new collaborations.

I was also happy to discuss the way we arranged the book in “Worlds” because continents are the easiest classification. I give a quick thumbnail of one chapter in each of those Worlds to highlight what type of social or legal advocacy the screenwriter in discussion addressed. It was lovely to be reminded of all the interesting stories told by the writers of each chapter and to appreciate the cultural diversity of storytelling around the world that Intellect made possible by publishing the book.

Chapters cover a spectrum of storytelling from artists offering a window into how women around the world use the screen to advocate for social or legal change. For example, the Samoan performance artist Angela Tiatia, known for her 2014 work, ‘Walking the Wall.” Tiatia displays her Malu Tatau tattoo, which symbolizes the preservation and documentation of cultural practice and identity in online spaces.

One chapter focuses on a junior Pacific Islander lawyer who created a music video calling on the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on climate change, a matter of concern as rising sea levels threaten the homes and histories of island communities. Other readings in the book examine the film “Kajillionaire” by Miranda July as a platform for imagining queer utopias, the transformative power of the female gaze in the Italian documentary “Trial for Rape,” and the frequently ignored creative roles and contributions that women make behind the scenes of the beloved children’s television show “Bluey.”

It was a pleasure to make this presentation for my colleagues. I hope you enjoy it, too.

Rosanne Interviewed on “TV We Love” on the CW

This season the CW has been airing a new documentary style series called TV We Love which has covers a popular TV show from each decade from I Love Lucy for the 1960s to Happy Days for the 1970s and Dynasty for the 1980s. The last of 8 episodes covered Touched by an Angel (where I served as a Writer-Producer for 6 years). I show up a few times in the hour, discussing writing for the show and why we think it still resonates.

It felt odd to be on the other side of the camera, considering I had researched, written, and filmed a documentary in 1998 with my friend Dan Forer for ABC NEWS/Nightline called “Boys to Men: Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963,” so being the one answering questions was interesting. It helped me think deeply about my responses – trying to make sure they were in full sentences, that they used emotional verbs, that they were stories unique to me, so no other interviewee could be used for that point. And, of course, I tried not to fill empty spaces with “um” or “like”. A very fascinating experience – and then seeing the final product it was fun to put on my producer hat and recognize what director Megan Harding chose both of the quotes and of the B-roll.

She interviewed me for a couple of hours and distilled that into several appearances. My favorite part was being able to tell the story of how star Roma Downey let my 2-year-old son Joseph join her 4-year-old daughter (and her nanny) to play in her trailer for a while since the kids were both so bored on set. Heck, I was often bored on set, but I was at work, I couldn’t run off to a trailer with coloring books and have goldfish crackers for a snack. But he could – and thanks to Roma’s generosity, we have that memory.

What I’m most proud of is the chance to say things that reflect on my professional goals of creating more female-focused stories about women who make a difference in people’s lives. I used to say the show was Cagney and Lacey without guns, and I was proud of that. For the interview, I kept my focus on how amazing it was to be able to write for two powerful female characters portrayed by two high-quality actresses (heck, Della Reese was already a legend). I’m happy they used this quote: “It was getting to write for female characters who had something important to say. That was a dream job.” That broadens my mission with the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting. Near the end, they used a quote that I hope defines the themes of most all the episodes I’ve written for this show and others: “All of us need to believe in ourselves and in our community and to understand that all of us have the ability to make change.”

If you don’t have the CW you can see this episode (and any of the others that interest you) on their website at TV We Love.

When Women Write What They Say, They Say So Much More: Powerful Actress-writer-producers Past, Present & Future with Dr. Rosanne Welch, SRN 2025, Adelaide, Australia [Video]

In another example of my love for a good, long, alliterative title, I name this year’s Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) presentation:

“When Women Write What They Say, They Say So Much More: Powerful Actress-writer-producers Past, Present & Future”.

It covers writers like Emma Thompson, who adapted Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, in which she starred as Eleanor, and Gertrude Berg, creator, writer, and star of The Goldbergs, and then everyone from Tina Fey to Issa Rae, to Mindy Kaling to Lena Waithe. This presentation discusses the way women writing their own characters, dialogue, and worlds into existence impacts the audience, the industry, and the way women are seen in society.

WGA Panel on “Writing Bold and Complex Young Women” Now Streaming [Video]

WGA Panel on Writing Bold and Complex Young Women Now Streaming

One of the fun-nest things I get to do during each MFA Workshop is moderate a panel of working writers at the Writers Guild of America, which is recorded and presented on the WGA Foundation YouTube channel.

Now available to stream is our latest panel, “Unapologetically Herself: Writing Bold and Complex Young Women”. I always try to include one of our MFA alums who have gained spots on TV shows so this one has Alexandra Fernandez who has been on the writing staff of Station 19. Other panelists for this event were Karen Joseph Adcock (Yellowjackets), Beth Appel (The Sex Lives of College Girls), and Stephens alum!!, and Autumn Joy Jimerson (Forever).

Several past WGA panels have included such screenwriters as Marta Kauffman (Creator and Executive Producer of Grace and Frankie), Lucia Aniello (Co-Creator, Executive Producer, and Director of Hacks), Meg DeLoatch (Executive Producer of The Neighborhood and Family Reunion),Joan Rater (A Small Light); and Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding – and sequels). You can check those out here on our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting website.

“Unapologetically Herself: Writing Bold and Complex Young Women” Panel at the Writers Guild Foundation – Friday, August 8, 2025, 7pm

Unapologetically Herself: Writing Bold and Complex Young Women

During every MFA Residency Workshop I moderate a panel of writers – often proudly including one of our MFA alums – and this August we’re doing it again. Join us on Friday, August 8, 2025 from 7:00 PM 8:30 PM at the Writers Guild Foundation (7000 West 3rd Street Los Angeles, CA, 90048) for:

Unapologetically Herself: Writing Bold and Complex Young Women

We’ll explore how writers develop these strong characters, how to approach sensitive scenes intentionally, and how they navigate nuances of character personalities, behaviors, and motivations.

Panelists include:

Karen Joseph Adcock – Yellowjackets
Beth Appel – The Sex Lives of College Girls
Sahar Jahani – Life and Beth (MFA alum!)
Autumn Joy Jimerson – Forever
Dr. Rosanne Welch – Moderator/Executive Director, Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Get tickts for this WGA Panel Discussion

And if you’d like to see some of our previous WGA panels you can find them on our MFA Website