Writers Room X

Noted is Canberra’s independent festival of writing and writers. Nick Delatovic is a writer who likes to create insane challenges for himself. Put them together and you have Writers Room X, a week-long experiment in content creation/sanity destruction that begins this Sunday.

Like many folks I dream of being part of a professional TV writers room. Like many folks, I’m far removed from this scenario becoming reality. Unlike many folks I lack the maturity to accept my lot in life, so I convinced the producers of Noted to let me try and create my dream right here in Canberra.

I’ve selected a team of 5 writers (half from an open public callout, half from just approaching people I’ve been wanting to work with) plus myself. We haven’t all met in person yet, but from Sunday we’re going to be shut in a room together where we’ll write full scripts for a six-part web series from scratch. They’ll be a public reading of the scripts the following Sunday, whether we’re ready or not.

I have no doubt that we’ll succeed in completing the scripts. The question is, can we make them good in just 7 days? I’m way too pretentious to just have a bit of fun with this, I want to create something that’s going to actually be shot and turn out well. I’ve got a killer batch of writers, so probably the whole thing hinges on how well I facilitate as the nominal ‘showrunner’. We’ll seeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Noted also have me curating an event called Binge Watch, a panel discussion in which clips from TV shows are screened and dissected on writing grounds. As you can imagine, I’ve been waaaaay overthinking the choice of clips.