The multi-award-winning team of writers on Corner Gas will have conjured up more than 300 storylines for the comedy series by the time the Regina story room shuts down at the end of August.

It will also spell the end of the room’s ‘rejection wall,’ which holds hundreds of cards of unused story ideas from the past six years.

‘[Our ideas] mostly go nowhere…there’s about a 10-to-1 ratio of ideas to ones that actually work,’ writer and showrunner Kevin White tells Playback while on a midseason break from Corner Gas’ sixth and final writing season.

‘It’s a different beast in year six than it is in year one,’ adds writer/producer Mark Farrell. ‘In year one, we had a blank slate and could do almost anything…but it’s been a little harder to write because of the back stories that have accumulated for all the characters,’ he explains.

White and Farrell are part of a seven-member story room for Corner Gas’ sixth season that also consists of star/creator and exec producer Brent Butt, Norm Hiscock, Gary Pearson, Andrew Carr and Dylan Worts.

Farrell, who juggles work on Corner Gas and CBC’s Halifax-based comedy This Hour Has 22 Minutes, has been on board since the show’s inception, and says it was a no-brainer when he got the call from director/exec producer David Storey to join the series in August 2002.

‘I knew that Brent was a really funny guy and it was just a matter of time before he was going to be in something like this…I was glad I could get involved,’ says Farrell, who befriended Butt after they met at a standup comedy gig in 1988.

Butt and Farrell ‘banged out a few scripts’ for CTV execs, which ultimately became the first two episodes of the series – ‘Ruby Reborn’ and ‘The Taxman’.

When Corner Gas was greenlit by CTV, Farrell brought on fellow 22 Minutes scribe Paul Mather, who left midway through the first season when his wife had a baby – paving the way into the story room for White.

‘My career path is to benefit from Paul leaving at a job,’ jokes White, referring to Mather’s subsequent return and departure from Corner Gas last year to join the writing team of Little Mosque on the Prairie. White was promoted to showrunner in his place.

‘I was very flattered when they asked me, [but] I found it daunting,’ White recalls.

A typical day in the Corner Gas story room begins with the team working at breaking stories for episodes, with each ep usually consisting of three storylines.

‘A lot of it is kind of shooting down the ideas…trying to come up with an original story takes up about 80% of our time,’ explains Farrell. ‘We’ve got eight mouths to feed in terms of storylines, and that’s the juggling act,’ he adds.

The eight mouths Farrell is referring to include Corner Gas characters Brent LeRoy (Butt), Ruby owner Lacey Burrows (Gabrielle Miller), gas station attendant Wanda Dollard (Nancy Robertson, who is married to Butt), Brent sidekick Hank Yarbo (Fred Ewanuick), Brent’s parents Oscar and Emma (Eric Peterson and Janet Wright), and Dog River police officers Davis Quinton and Karen Pelly (Lorne Cardinal and Tara Spencer-Nairn).

White says the team often delve into their own personal lives for story ideas. One such idea for a season six episode follows Wanda as she borrows Emma’s Rec Plex (recreational complex) card rather than paying the entrance fee.

‘She’s pretending to be Emma, and the guy at the front desk encourages her to enter a raffle, which she wins as Emma. But then there’s problems after that,’ White hints. The story is based on his wife borrowing a friend’s YMCA card.

White says he feels blessed with his small but ‘very creative’ writing crew. Since its airdate, the Corner Gas team has won seven writing awards, including a Canadian Comedy Awards nod for best writing on a TV series (2004) and the Gemini for writing in a comedy (2007).

‘The mix of writers in the room is very good. It’s a fickle chemistry…you can bring another person in and suddenly the room shuts down, or you can add a person and suddenly the room is way more fertile for some reason,’ White quips.

Both Farrell and White say that due to the hectic writing schedule, it hasn’t really sunk in that they’re working on Corner Gas’ final episodes – which will total 107 at the end of season six.

‘Once the last season starts to air, we’ll feel it more,’ says Farrell, adding that it was great to work on a show that Canadians were watching. ‘We proved everyone wrong…Canadian sitcoms do work.’

Adds White: ‘I think I’m going to appreciate it a lot more as time goes by…just the great collection of people. We’ll look back and say, ‘Boy, that really was a good gig.”