Beth Stewart is at the peak of her children's television writing career. She earned her stripes working on series like Caitlin's Way, Madison, The Magician's House and The Adventures of Shirley Holmes. Now she's headwriter and executive producer of Guinevere Jones, a Canada-Australia co-production about a contemporary 14-year-old girl who is the reincarnation of the legendary Queen Guinevere of Arthurian fame. The show's first episode aired May 4 on YTV.

On Guinevere Jones, Stewart is heading up a story department that includes 23-year-old Jesse McKeown-who was hired straight out of UBC's creative writing program to work on Da Vinci's Inquest before going on to Guinevere Jones. No matter what he says, I bet his classmates were green with envy…

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Born in Oshawa, Ontario, Stewart graduated from the University of Toronto, worked for the CBC as a researcher and associate producer and then moved to Vancouver with documentary filmmaker husband John Thomson. "A lot of women experience a surge in creative impulses and energy just after childbirth," she says. "While my daughter Kim was napping, I wrote a really bad novel then a really bad screenplay, but I kept writing and was fortunate to hook up with people who mentored me: Susin Nielsen, Peter Mitchell from Cold Squad and Rick Drew from Northwood-who took a chance and gave me my first professional job." Stewart credits her mentors with helping her "to reach a critical point when I was able to understand the notes I was being given and to self-critique."

As executive story editor and writer on The Adventures of Shirley Holmes-a teen series whose main character is Sherlock's great-grandniece Stewart "mastered the craft of writing a half-hour mystery series," says Helena Cynamon, one of the Shirley Holmes producers. "She ensured that there was a labyrinth of twists and turns and a fun payoff to the sleuthing adventures." No wonder that when Shirley Holmes producer Kim Todd wanted to develop a new series, Stewart was the first person she called. "YTV were interested in another series from us," says Stewart, "and we knew that strong girl protagonists were the way to go." "We brainstormed and came up with an idea," says Todd. "Then Beth went away and wrote and developed the idea and we took it to YTV."

From the 6th Century to the 21st
"Initially we thought Guinevere was problematic," says Stewart. "She had that affair with Lancelot and brought down Camelot single-handedly, but it's interesting to work with a flawed character. YTV had no interest in doing a period piece, so that opened doors. Who might this bird in a gilded cage in the sixth century have been if she lived now-when women are empowered? We were intrigued by the Buddhist idea that you keep coming back until you get it right. So she does have this fatal flaw and the question is: will she get it right in this lifetime?"

The show plays with the Guinevere-Lancelot-Arthur triangle. Stewart says: "We've constructed a love triangle in the arc of the series. These two characters are not the reincarnations of Arthur and Lancelot but are inspired by them. Josh is the boy your mother wants you to date and Michael is the bad boy Gwen can't resist. Merlin projects himself from the past to teach her magic, but he expects her to foul up. This is a constant thorn for Gwen, because she's not Guinevere. Like any teenager, she says, 'Don't tell me who I am! I am unique!' So the reincarnation plays against a teenager's struggle towards individuality too."

Stewart's two daughters went to high school in the middle-class Vancouver district of Kitsilano, where Guinevere Jones was originally set and which-according to the March 2001 funding round for the Canadian Television Fund's Licence Fee Program-was not Canadian enough.

Unable to finance the show entirely in Canada, Stewart and Todd used their commitment from YTV to make a deal with Australia's Network 10. Then they formed a co-production partnership with Australian production house Crawfords and moved the production to an abandoned convent complex in Melbourne under the supervision of showrunner Lynn Bayonas. On the Canadian side, showrunner Tim Williams supervises post-production in Toronto. Kim Todd is the creative and executive producer from her offices in Winnipeg and Toronto, and Stewart heads the story department in Vancouver. Stewart and Todd are used to geographical challenges because of Shirley Holmes, but Guinevere Jones' early financial difficulties did cause problems for the story department.

"No one is willing to put up money until the deal is absolutely solid," says Stewart. "Then as soon as the deal is solid we're shooting in three weeks and we're doing 26 episodes and we're shooting three episodes every 10 days. It's just staggering! As an executive producer I could write on spec, so I had eight episodes written before the financing finally came together. That gave us the leg up we needed. Initially we had hoped to assign more scripts to a smaller number of writers who could become more familiar with the series, but because we need to keep people working all the time, it's basically one per outside writer."

Keeping the Canucks and the Aussies Happy
Although she isn't writing scripts, Gwenda Marsh is Guinevere Jones' Australian story editor on the ground in Melbourne. "Besides coordinating between the two continents and passing on director's notes to me," says Stewart, "Gwenda is the 'Canadian-ism' police. She catches culturally inappropriate dialogue for the Australian characters. For example, Australians would say 'the shop down the street' instead of 'the store down the block,' or 'biscuit' instead of 'cookie.' To a large extent, teen talk is teen talk around the English-speaking world, but there are still differences."

Disappointed by the Canadian Television Fund last year, Stewart is celebrating now. "We've just been awarded LFP for our second season so we're very pleased about that," she says. "They've adjusted the rules so that now, if the writer of the series is Canadian, you get it."

Building the Story Department
This is the first time that Stewart has built a story department from scratch, but she's quick to learn from previous experiences, noting, "With Shirley Holmes the story department was skewed very female so we had to seek out male writers." For Guinevere Jones, she wanted a young male writer/story editor working in-house. This is where Jesse McKeown re-enters our story. With a snowboarding hat over messy dark hair, he could almost pass for a teenager himself.

Da Vinci story editor Alan Di Fiore gave McKeown his first break, hiring him as an intern while he was still a UBC student. "You're always hoping to come across somebody who has that extra little bit of spark and talent that you want to nurture along," Di Fiore says. "Jesse has that ability to jump in there and put a new spin on it. I think he's going to go on to great things."

"I was sitting at Da Vinci's Inquest and the phone rang," remembers McKeown. "It was Beth, who I'd never met before. She just said, 'Hi. Susin Nielsen gave me your number. We're looking for a young story editor to come onto this new show.' I had a little interview, then they called me a month later and said, 'We'd love to have you.'" "We saw Jesse's material and we both saw that imagination," says Todd. "Obviously the ability to craft a story-but beyond that he was displaying a delight in character. That's what Beth has."

McKeown began working with Stewart and Todd in November 2001. "We just locked ourselves up in a hotel in Winnipeg," he says. "And for two long days we just worked out the season's character arcs and beat out a few stories. It was very intense all of a sudden. It was just right into it right away. From then on we've done everything in Vancouver."

Apart from what Stewart calls his "raw talent," McKeown also brings first-hand knowledge of the inner workings of acontemporary high school.

"Beth and Kim Todd are really interested in the machismo that goes on in high school and how guys act towards each other and the unwritten code of guys in high school and how that works," McKeown says. "There's an episode we're doing where there's a gang thing going on that escalates into almost-violence and they were really interested in hearing my take on that and how that sort of stuff erupts. I have a really good memory of that. It wasn't that long ago."

Finding the Stories-Fast
By the time he came aboard, McKeown says, "the bible was in good shape and there were about five drafts and eight outlines already written. So I read through all that and got to know it, then Beth gave me a choice of three or four outlines. I chose the one I liked the best and then in January I started writing. That first one didn't take long-like a week or a few days-because I'd been staring at the outline so I had mentally planned it. She was quite happy with the first draft. She gave me notes. After that I did another pass. She said 'Great.' Then a little while later I saw the actual released script. She had made some changes but it was pretty close to what I had written, thankfully. I was very happy because it was my first shot and gave me confidence."

By March 2002, McKeown had finished his second script, started a third and was writing notes on the other scripts that came in. "Beth and I conglomerate our notes," he says. "Then the writer will give us another draft and we'll make any changes that need be." When the second draft of a script comes back from an outside writer, the story department usually has less than a week before it goes into production. "It goes through a couple of stages once it's in-house," says Stewart. "It goes through these stages at every level, with the pitch, with the outline, with the second outline. Then, once the producers are satisfied, it has to go to YTV for approval. Network 10 is only taking scripts at final draft. The trick there is anticipating what is required."

By the time production started, Stewart says, the arc of the show "was pretty much in place" up to the end of episode 26. As a result, she's not looking for pitches or spec scripts from freelancers. "We're not taking pitches because it's fairly serialized with complex character arcs winding through the stories each episode-so it didn't make sense to have writers pitch to us. And you know as a freelance writer, I always find it's a mug's game anyway. The show knows what they want, so you're just shooting arrows in the dark. So our approach has been to give stories to writers we know will deliver for us-Rick Drew, Susin Nielsen, Thérèse Beaupré.

"Some episodes are more stand-alone than others," continues Stewart. "So in those situations we give the writer a couple of paragraphs, meet with them for a few hours and flesh out the story and ask them to go away and think about an outline. But in other episodes where it's really more the ongoing story, we just write the outline, or beat-sheet, in-house. The writer's paid from outline regardless. The writer has a week to polish that outline then turn it into a script. It's an odd quirk of the way our contract is structured. Any working writer will tell you the real work is in the outline stage and that's where you need a couple of drafts to get it right. I find there's far less benefit between the first and the second draft and I would far sooner trade off on a writer to get two drafts of the outline and one draft of the script and then take it in-house because I find there's very little increment between the first and second draft. They're never going to achieve the voice exactly the way you need."

The complete article can be found in the Summer 2002 Issue of Canadian Screenwriter.

Katherine Montagu is a screenwriter, producer and winner of a 2001 Praxis fellowship. She grew up in England and now lives in Vancouver, BC.