Josh Senter, at just 26, is the youngest Desperate Housewives writer. Like creator Marc Cherry, he said he draws from his mother experience when writing for the show.

"I do tend to write a lot of stuff for Bree because I have an ability to sort of wrangle her voice. I hate to say it's my mother," he told News-Leader.com. "My mom is a big inspiration. And she knows this. You know what's amazing to me is that I think I understand my mom and my sisters more writing these characters. I begin to see [my mom] as, you know, she was raising five kids. She was Lynette. ... Suddenly my respect level has grown so much. What an awesome desperate housewife for sure."

His mother has something else in common with Bree, and that is her strong religious beliefs. Coming from a "fundamentalist" Christian family, Senter said he didn't even have a television until he was 13 or 14. "We'd go to my grandparents' house for the summer, and we would be there for a week, and all of us kids would just sit and watch television. We were just fascinated by it. Literally the first movie I remember (at about 8 or 9) was Little Mermaid. [My mom] was really trying to raise us outside the influence of the secular world."

A script he wrote focusing on a family in a town in Missouri has similarities to Desperate Housewives, was what caught the eye of Desperate Housewives producer Darren Star and landed him the job. For Senter, when it comes to creating a good story it's all about the characters. "I ultimately think that writing is about dimensional characters. Creating characters that have a good side and a bad side. When you create those types of characters, they are completely relatable. And that's why a show like Desperate Housewives is so successful. Because there is something in each one of those characters that a person can relate to."

You can read the full interview, with more on Senter's move to Los Angeles and his attempts to get into writing, over at News-Leader.com.

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