{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Write On: 'Good American Family' Co-Showrunners Katie Robbins and Sarah Sutherland","description":"\u201cOne of the things we talked a lot about in the room is that very rarely do people set about their day saying, \u2018Okay, I\u2019m going to go do some evil.\u2019 But for most people, we\u2019re all sort of the leads in our own stories and we\u2019re all crafting the narrative of who we want the world to see us as. And we do start to believe that. You tell yourself these stories about yourself that you want to be true and you move through the world and you make decisions based on that narrative. And I think that one of the things that as writers, we really try to do is get into the shoes and the heads of the characters that we\u2019re writing and really try to break down why they\u2019re doing what they\u2019re doing and make it feel as real and true as possible. The things that these characters believe \u2013 or convince themselves that they believe \u2013 have to feel really real and grounded to us,\u201d says Katie Robbins, co-showrunner of Good American Family, on writing flawed characters who prefer to live in fantasy, not reality.  On today\u2019s episode of Write On, we speak to Katie Robbins and Sarah Sutherland, co-showrunners on the explosive limited series, Good American Family. The show tells the story of a midwestern couple who adopts what they believe is little girl with dwarfism. Soon they are in the midst of a battle fought in the tabloids, the courtroom and ultimately their marriage. The show is based on the real-life story of Natalia Grace that made many headlines. Robbins and Sutherland talk about the unusual yet brilliant structure of telling various episodes from different characters\u2019 points of view, and how the tone changed when they got to the episodes told from Natalia\u2019s perspective. They also talked about the messiness of writing a dysfunctional family while still keeping the story grounded.  \u201cWe all know family is this wonderful, beautiful thing, but it\u2019s so complex. And I think that it\u2019s really hard to talk about the complexities of family because we\u2019re afraid to undermine the sacredness of it. It\u2019s my view that if we are actually more open about what is hard about coexisting as a unit who loves each other, but also what\u2019s not perfect, it would make us all better. And I think that that\u2019s true both for family but also even for our enemies. We\u2019re not writing autobiographies, but I think that we take those very real emotional experiences that we all have and then put them into a story that is cinematic, that is more interesting than our lives, but that is deeply steeped in those real moments of heartache and joy and confusion,\u201d says Sutherland.  To learn more, listen to the podcast but be aware there are SPOILERS ahead.    ","author_name":"Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast","author_url":"https:\/\/www.finaldraft.com","html":"