6 Questions with Gina Fattore

Join the prolific writer for Saturday's Q&A!

She Dares

Our next live Zoom Q&A is this Saturday, 11/23, 11am PT, with the very funny, very smart Gina Fattore. The link is below for paid subscribers.

I always get a new perspective on writing or the television business when I talk with Gina Fattore, who’s written on everything from Dawson’s Creek early in her career to Gilmore Girls, Californication, Parenthood, Masters of Sex, and Better Things, among others. She’s the creator of the cheerleading drama Dare Me and co-showrunner of the upcoming Amazon show Off Campus.

Conversations with Gina have an invigorating effect. She makes you want to attack your writing from a new angle or she flips a switch in your brain that makes that impossible scene seem possible.

I’ll give you one example, from the first time Gina appeared on The Writers Panel back in 2017. She had this advice on receiving notes, based on the work in journalism she did in her 20s:

If you have something that’s structurally sound, then you don’t want to mess with that, and [you’re more likely to get] character notes or dialogue notes.

When you’ve written many, many drafts of something, it can be very hard to step back and [address new notes]. I worked at a newspaper in my twenties. And I was a copy editor. I didn’t like to ask people questions. But when I became a copy editor, I was like, deskbound, and I had to ask writers questions all day long about semicolons, and fact checking, and all this stuff.

You know, you have to do everything to this piece of copy before it goes and gets typeset. So you’ve got to make sure all the facts are right, you’ve got to make sure it’s stylistically of a piece with the way that we do our newspaper'; that was this training I had in my twenties. And that’s what the execs are thinking when they’re reading those scripts. They’re asking themselves those questions. So, apply that to your own script.

I like this idea of putting youself in the shoes of the person giving you notes. What are they looking for? What will they comunicate the idea you’re bringing them to their boss about how it fits in with their studio or network’s mandates?

I know! It’s difficult. But don’t cry.

Gina wrote this notorious episode!

6 Questions with Gina Fattore

1. What you working on right now?

I'm co-showrunning a new Amazon show called Off Campus. The amazingly talented Louisa Levy created it based on the Off Campus book series by Elle Kennedy.  She has such a cool vision for the show — very excited to be working with her on it.

2. What challenges are you facing specific to your current writing project?

I know there are advantages to the "write everything first" streaming style, but right now all I can think about is... no pilot. I miss them. Not only are they fun to make, a pilot gives you a template to share with every writer, every department head, every editor. Makes it easier to open your process up and say, “This is what we’re making, please jump in and give us everything you’ve got that might make this better."

I mean, truly an enviable resume.

3. What advice about the business of TV/film writing can you give to someone starting out now?

You know how people always say, “Fake it till you make it?” Fuck that. Don’t fake anything.  Just show up and be passionate and energetic about whatever you’re doing because more often than not in this messed-up industry — in meetings, when you’re pitching, when you’re actually hired on a show — energy and passion can be mistaken for confidence.

Oh, and duh…. the writing has to be great. To absolutely pop from page one. That’s the only part that hasn’t changed since I came up in the ‘90s. Otherwise, I don’t feel qualified to give advice to people just starting out because everything about the industry has changed so monumentally in the past ten years. It’s like when people who found a partner before the apps give dating advice. Do single people really want to hear that? I think not.

4. What advice about the craft of writing can you give to someone starting out?

Structure, structure, structure. I know it's boring, I know dialogue is more fun, and we all want to be Aaron Sorkin or Amy Sherman-Palladino, but in the immortal words of William Goldman, “Screenplays are structure.”

Books, on the other hand, can be anything! So if you love words and you want to focus all day every day on words, maybe write a book. That’s what I did. Please buy it. It’s called The Spinster Diaries. 

5. What do you respond to most in a piece of writing?

In a writing sample? Clarity. I do not want to keep flipping backwards to figure out why I’m confused.

When I’m reading or watching just for myself… sadness mixed with comedy. There is a moment involving an answering machine in Chris Kelly's movie Other People that I still think about all the time almost 10 years later.

It’s a great movie. Check it out.

6. What are you watching/reading/listening to lately that’s getting you excited or inspired?

To help me get inspired for Off Campus, I've been watching and rewatching a lot of romance-and-relationship stuff. My faves from last week: Normal People, Ten Things I Hate About You, and season four of Couples Therapy (Casimar and Alexes, I am rooting for you).

The only normal people I’m interested in.

You don’t want to miss this one! Join us this Saturday, Nov 23, 11am PT for the Q&A with Gina! Info below. If you’re not already a paid subscriber…