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Meet the Adelaide Studios Tenant: Word Ninjas
30 January 2025
The SAFC’s Adelaide Studios isn’t just a screen production facility, it’s a creative hub that’s home to dozens of South Australian screen businesses and screen practitioners. In this ongoing series of SAFC interview profiles, we invite you to meet the tenants and get to know their work.

Word Ninjas is all about storytelling. The brainchild of South Australian writers Ruth Estelle and Pete Monaghan, Word Ninjas both write their own scripted material and also collaborate with other creatives on scripts and adaptation.
Their creative projects span genres across film and TV, including comedy, drama, supernatural, thriller, detective, romantic comedy, love story, zombie road-trip, science fiction, biopic, adaptation, animation and fantasy drama.
We got together with Ruth and Pete to talk about their screen industry journey, what Word Ninjas has been up to and what’s next for the team.
What’s your background – how did you get into the screen industry?
Ruth: I trained and worked as a journalist while writing novels on the side. I ran a stress management business for years, then finally decided to focus on writing full-time when my first script was optioned.
Pete: For many years I wrote comedy for the ABC and commercial radio. I also produced and performed several one-hour comedy shows. While I was living and working in Ireland doing stand-up, I wrote a TV pilot episode for a dramedy. It got interest from a production company, gave me the bug, and entrée into the SAFC’s 2010 TV MiniLab. I’m now firmly ensconced in the screen industry.
Word Ninjas was founded in 2013. How did that come about? How does your team work?
We met at the SAFC’s TV MiniLab in 2010 (an initiative that brought together 27 writers, producers and directors for a four week lab-style program). We read and edited each other’s projects for a while, then started creating projects together. We discovered that each other’s notes were beneficial! We formally established our business Word Ninjas and have since created, developed, script-edited, and been commissioned to write many, many projects. We both have our own “solo” projects, too.
Planning is crucial to our creative projects. For scripts, we usually write the first 25 per cent together to find the “voice” of the project before divvying up the work. We run brainstorms for clients together and separately, to help them hone their stories. We also do pitch decks, drafts, editing… anything to do with words and stories.
We have highly complementary skills and tools for our craft, as well as running a creative business.
Why did you choose to base your business at Adelaide Studios? What do you like about it?
Adelaide Studios is a unique creative hub. We love the access to and affiliation with other screen industry businesses. Writing is often seen as a lonely business, but we find working around others adds a vibrancy to our work. The social and professional connections we’ve established have been vital for both business and morale.
What’s the best thing about being a part of the SA screen industry?
Having easy access to the infrastructure and varied resources of the local industry is very handy. We enjoy building and consolidating our reputation at home, as it makes it easier to sell elsewhere!
What’s your favourite thing about your work?
Human stories. Words. Finding the right combination to make people cry or gasp or laugh or think differently or feel something about our shared humanity.
What qualities/skills do you need to succeed in your field?
Tenacity, persistence, and patience are right up there. The willingness to work on your craft and continue to strive to make your work better. The ability to manage feedback while defending the true heart of a story so it doesn’t get lost in development. Also, networking. Always networking. And more patience. We cover the endless waiting by creating more content to send out into the world.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve come up against in your work?
We’ve turned most of the challenges to our advantage. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, work shifted online. The “walls” between the states came down and we established relationships with more people and production companies. We ran brainstorms and story-sessions online for a much larger range of clients, most of which continue to this day.
Being self-employed has inherent challenges for cashflow, work fluctuations, vulnerability to external events and so on, but we’re now in our 12th year of business and really settling into it.
What’s in the future for Word Ninjas? What can we expect next?
Our feature film OK Boomer is scheduled to shoot in May this year for Brouhaha Entertainment – so you’ll see that!
Our SAFC/Screen Australia supported TV musical dramedy Sharehouse, about a group of homeless women living in a squat, is now out to market. It took our creative partnership to the next level, as we wrote 17 songs for the series.
We had a very successful trip to the Content London market in December 2024 and have hopes for our slate of TV projects (including Sharehouse) getting serious traction. We also have projects with several South Australian production companies that will continue this year. We have just reconnected with American writer Michael Hauge, and he’ll be working with us on an exciting new feature film.
What is your favourite South Australian screen production?
Bad Boy Bubby. But it’s very difficult to select just one. There are many unsung production heroes in South Australia. We love documentaries like Gravity Films’ The Last Daughter and 57 Films’ This Is Port Adelaide. And we’re big fans of projects that show great potential in the teams: Alice Yang’s Finding Jia, Melanie Easton’s Dragon’s Breath, Karu Karu’s Wishes, Henry Reimer Meaney’s The Hitcher, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight’s Behind The Seams…
Learn more about Word Ninjas at their website.