5 Tips for Emerging Creators from Showrunner Marsha Greene

We were thrilled to have Canadian showrunner Marsha Greene join us during Black History Month to talk about TV writing and telling Black history through screen-based stories. She also shared the inspiration behind some of her characters on her acclaimed CBC show, The Porter, for our February Content Creator Chat.

Marsha was interviewed by Amira Anderson, one of the content creators from STORYHIVE’s inaugural Black Creators Edition, who recently released her narrative short, “Amara.” This project can now be viewed on TELUS Optik TV Channel 707 and the STORYHIVE YouTube Channel. 

We were lucky to hear from Marsha as she dove into some of her favourite things about working in television, but more than that, we were thrilled to be able to provide mentorship moments to our audience of emerging content creators first hand from one of Canada’s most revered figures in screen-based arts.

Here are 5 major takeaways from A discussion with Marsha Greene: Black History through screen-based stories that emerging content creators can heed:

1. Do your research.

“It’s not as intimidating as writing, but it will give you ideas. It’s still like you are doing the work, but you don’t feel afraid to start doing the research.”

2. Meet people and keep in touch with them.

“When you’re in a program, there’s the people that are in your program that you might meet and keep in touch with, which is a great touchstone for you to have people to read things for you, or recommend you. That organization that you’ve gone to might have events and it’s good to go to those events and meet graduates from other programs. You’re creating those degrees of separation.”

“I think that to put yourself out there and connect with writers even at your own level, that’s important because that builds community… you never know what contact that you have that is going to come in handy."

3. Put yourself out there. 

“Push yourself a little. When I went to Humber, I was nervous about reaching out to people I didn’t know well to ask to go for a coffee. I felt so uncomfortable, but I had an instructor there who said, “you have to have no shame.” That was really good advice because that made me push myself outside of my comfort zone and that really paid off. You might not be a person who wants to go to every party and talk to everyone, but you could push yourself to reach out to one person—just an email, just a coffee, just to make that connection and you never know how that might come back to help you.”

4. Tell personal, authentic stories.

“People are looking for more personal, authentic stories. What people are responding to is authenticity and that comes from a personal experience. There’s been a lot of content that’s been broad and has mass appeal, but I think what we’ve come to see over the last couple of years is that something that is, in fact, quite specific has that mass appeal… there’s something in that authenticity that creates a universal appeal.”

5. Don’t stay in bad situations.

“I was bullied in a situation and I didn’t stand up for myself. I didn't do that because I was afraid and I was so new, I didn’t know what effect that would have on my career. What’s more important is how you feel and how you’re being treated, than your career. You need to make sure you are taking care of yourself as a human being before your career.”

You can now watch the entire discussion replayed on TELUS Optik TV Channel 707 and on STORYHIVE’s YouTube Channel.