Gossip Girl Showrunner Stephanie Savage is giving a master class on June 10th at 2:30 pm as part of the Banff Television Festival. Here’s some info I dug up in preparation for the session.

Stephanie and writing partner Josh Schwartz developed the series for television and co-wrote 3 of the 18 first season episodes (the pilot, episode 2 and the season finale.

(Josh Schwartz has been doing double duty this season, working on both Gossip Girl and Chuck.)

Stephanie is a Canadian — born in Ottawa and raised in Calgary. She’s now LA resident. Before Gossip Girl, she was supervising producer on The O.C. for 27 episodes, a series she wrote 10 episodes of between 2003 and 2007, including The Best Chrismukkah Ever.

I resisted Gossip Girl. I didn’t even make it through the whole pilot. But when I started watching it a month or so ago in prep for Banff, I got hooked. It’s got all the addictive qualities of a good juicy soap. Most of the episodes I’ve seen were produced post-strike. I can’t wait for the re-runs of first season so I can fill in some detail on the various relationships.

Gossip Girl focuses on the lives of high school student in Manhattan’s Upper East Side; many of them are ultra rich kids. The show is written in a tease, five acts. Both the teaser and final act are long – about 6 scenes. The third or fourth act is often shorter than the others with only 4 scenes.

I broke down two episodes recently, 105 Desperately Seeking Serena (written by Felicia D. Henderson) and 106 All About My Brother (Paul Sciarrotta). They had about 34 scenes each. Because this is soap or continuing drama, a scene often services two or more plot lines. Almost all of the scenes in an episode are two handers, but one person may leave and a new one will arrive. The exception are the scenes featuring Blair and/or Jenny. In those scenes, the trio of sidekicks are present but since they get little dialogue, these scenes are virtually two-handers as well.

Both episodes had four storylines running through them. About half of each show was devoted to the Georgina-Serena story arc that was playing out over about four or five shows.

Along with the 16 beat A-story came Bs, Cs and Ds that ranged in length from four to ten beats. In the episodes I watched, Serena, Blair and Jenny stories figured prominently. There were single episode storylines that began and ended in that show, like Blair sabotaging Nelly Yuki’s S.A.T. chances and two-episode storylines like Jenny’s romance with Asher. Other times, we’d drop into a story that had been brewing all season to bring it to the fore, as when Eric is outed or Lily and Rufus finally sleep together.

In contrast to Friday Night Lights, the teens of Gossip Girl are not particularly emotive. There’s a bit of crying now and then, some giddy drinking behaviour and once there were some sounds of puking from off-camera, but mostly these kids keep their cool and speak in even tones. While FNLs teens have clear eyes and true hearts, GGs kids specialize in bad behaviour. They backstab, gossip, screw their bestfriend’s boyfriend, drug drinks and pay others to write their exams. While FNL has an air of authenticity, Gossip Girl makes you wonder what’s so great about reality anyway.

More reading on Stephanie Savage:

Adweek profile.

Gossip Girl Insider

Salon on the Gossip Girl Finale