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The WriteHer List

The WriterHer list is a go-to resource for industry-vetted, quality female-driven scripts available for television. We reach out to some of the most successful names in development (heads of networks, showrunners, directors, and producers) and ask them to submit for consideration their favorite unproduced television scripts written by women with significant roles for women.  

 

In the 2014-15 television season, women comprised only 23% of series creators and only 26% of all on-staff writers. WeForShe is proud to present the 2016 WriteHer List to help improve these statistics to reflect the breadth and quality of available female-driven material on television. Culled from hundreds of nominations, the 2016 WriteHer List features 16 scripts that are all, in some capacity, available to be developed. Where we were able to confirm additional rights holders, it was noted. Scripts are listed in alphabetical order.

 

Congratulations to the writers and thank you to all the amazing individuals who participated in the list!Below is the WriteHer List’s 16 for 2016.

 

You can also read about the list in Deadline.

The WriteHer List 2016

THE CHOSEN

by Julie Richardson

A notorious criminal defense attorney is delivered the sacred Book of Life, thought to exist only in legend, that hides within its text an ancient code. Pre-ordained to decipher this code,  the reluctant attorney struggles to stop a series of events that will ultimately lead to the destruction of mankind.

 

Contact: Jeff Field at Field Entertainment

Genre: One Hour Drama        

 

 

 

THE DARK PIECES

by Naomi McDougall Jones

Follows the descent of a 49-year-old mother, wife, and veterinarian from Aspen, Colorado as she evolves into a serial killer and the suicidal policewoman whose life is saved by the serpentine case.

 

Contact: Joanne Zippel - Zip Creative

Genre: One Hour Drama

 

DIARY OF A SOCIOPATH

by Valerie A. Brotski

Dana Strausse moves to a town in Nebraska with the lowest population hoping her isolation from people will keep her sociopathic impulses at bay, but when the other inhabitant dies suddenly and a tour bus rolls into the alleged Gold Rush watering hole, Dana finds it difficult to keep her hands to herself.

 

Contact: Noah Jones at Gersh

Genre: Half Hour Comedy

 

 

A dark, sexy, bitingly feminist take on the world of a young woman who rubbed up against her own time – a distant period

that in some painful, hilarious ways, doesn’t seem so different from our own.

 

Contact: Christopher Licata at Paradigm

Genre: Half Hour Comedy

 

DICKINSON

by Alena Smith

DISCIPLES

by Blair Butler

DOUGLASS HEIGHTS

by Leah Keith

 

A cop gets pulled into a serial occult murder which plays out over years and years eventually finding its way to his own family.

 

Contact: Lars Theriot at ICM

Genre: One Hour Drama

 

DUST

by Joy Blake

Set in Atlanta, Georgia during the turbulence of the early 1960s, it chronicles the dramatic highs and lows of the wealthy heads of a burgeoning African-American real estate dynasty, as they create the elegant utopian community that they call home. Loyalties are tested, secrets come to light, and passions flare as the community rises in popularity. 

 

Contact: Ian Greenstein at Gersh

Genre: One Hour Drama

 

 

 

Combining action, conspiracy, and romance - a young woman fights for her family, her land, and her very life in the midst of the largest, government-created, environmental disaster in our country's history.

 

Contact: Peter Miceli, Tom Young, and Chelsea Reed at CAA

Genre: One Hour Drama

 

 

 

HARMONY

by Sara B. Cooper

After a devastating loss, a young woman on a spiritual journey is called to settle in conservative Minnesota, believing her job is to raise the consciousness of the close minded people of the town.

 

Contact: Ian Greenstein at Gersh

Genre: One Hour Dramedy

 

HOW TO HATE YOURSELF

by Laura House

A young woman working in the world of self-help battles her inner voice of self-hate.

 

Contact: Jack Leighton at APA

Genre: Half Hour Comedy

THE HUNTER AND THE MYSTIC

by Whitney Hamilton

A crime drama following a backwoods Alabama detective and an intuitive searching for a missing girl who ultimately join forces.

 

Contact: Sylvia Caminer at Dolger Films

Genre: One Hour Drama

 

LINEAGE

by Marlana Hope

Three generations of women within two families, one black and one white, are brought together through changes in perceptions of race, gender and age over the last fifty years.

 

Contact: Zadoc Angell at Echo Lake Entertainment

Genre: One Hour Drama

 

MAYBE TOMORROW

by Hayley Tyler

RABBIT WARREN

by Vivian Tse

A family's lives are upended when their high-achieving daughter attempts suicide. Everyone is convinced they know how to "fix" her, but their own long-overlooked dysfunctions soon get in the way. 

 

Contact: Ryan Draizin at WME

Genre: Half Hour Dark Comedy

 

RED LINE

by Caitlin Parrish & Erica Weiss

In a future world where humans have altered their bodies in order to survive drought and famine, an ambitious federal agent and a local doctor play a dangerous game of deception in order to uncover the truth about what really happened to humanity and why its last hope for survival is being kept a secret.

 

Contact: Vivian Tse - viviantse@me.com

Genre: One Hour Drama

 

 

Still recovering from his husband’s death, high-school history teacher Noah tries to rebuild his rocky relationship with their adopted African-American teenage daughter, Jira, while grappling with her desire to find her birth mother.

 

Contact: Chris Licata and Mark Ross at Paradigm

Genre: One Hour Drama

Rights with Warner Bros.

 

WE PEAKED IN 8TH GRADE

by Julia Lillis

When three lifelong best friends in their 30s realize they peaked in 8th grade, they set out to "repeak" at a New Kids on the Block reunion concert.

 

Contact: Zac Simmons at Paradigm

Genre: Half Hour Comedy

YANK

by Marin Gazzaniga

On the run from the Mumbai mob, Bollywood Princess Mira Vijay has to start over in New York as a bikini waxpert.

 

Contact: Marin Gazzaniga - maringazz@gmail.com

Genre: One Hour Dramedy

Ones to Watch

Although there was not room for them on the list's 16 for 2016, the following unique voices and stories are presented for additional consideration.

FREE SKATE

by Caitlin McCarthy

When an injury ends the pursuit of Olympic glory for a talented but poor teenage singles skater, she joins a traveling ice show as a pairs partner to pay off her coach -- and discovers that Olympic gold may not be out of reach after all. 

 

Contact: Caitlin McCarthy - www.caitlinmccarthy.com

Genre: One Hour Dramedy

ROYALLY SCREWED

by Ari Berkowitz

BROAD CITY meets FROZEN in this animated pilot about sex, love and feminism in the land of fairytales. 

 

Contact: Jacquie Katz at CAA

Genre: Half Hour Comedy

SHADOW

by Yvonne Slaten

A forensic psychologist, haunted and unraveling because of her turbulent past, works with a pair of troubled girls who have come under the spell of a mysterious figure.

 

Contact: Yvonne Slaten - yvonneska@yahoo.com

Genre: Half Hour Drama

SUNDOWN

by Scarlette Bennett Tapp

& Nikki Braendlin

A serialized thriller centered around Shae Conner, the head of the investigative arm of a civil rights group that infiltrates and dismantles America’s vilest hate groups.

 

Contact:  Eleonore Dailly - edailly@gmail.com

Genre: One Hour Drama 

UNIQUE STATE OF MIND

by Thembi Banks & Rochee Jeffrey

Unique Austin is a Wall Street analyst by day and rapper by night. When her music career kicks into high gear, she decides to pursue her dream full time and take on the male-dominated world of Hip Hop.

 

Contact: Rochee Jeffrey - rocheejeffrey@gmail.com and Thembi Banks - thembi.banks@gmail.com

Genre: One Hour Drama 

VERBATIM

by Sydney Mitchell

A haunted legal transcriber begins to track the criminals from her cases, and as the line between the hunter and the hunted starts to blur, she realizes that the key to her survival lies in her troubled past.

 

Contact: Manal Hammad - Abrams Artists

Genre: One hour Drama

WeForShe evaluated material based on several criteria, including number of nominations, uniqueness of the roles given to female characters, competency of writing, diversity of the entire cast, break-out potential of the writer, and if the script passed the Bechdel Test.

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