Producers behind hit reality TV shows reveal the secret tricks they use to orchestrate crazy drama

Many reality shows with ensemble casts will bring in more people than they need, because it's hard to tell if someone will fall flat. In those cases, producers try to help the struggling cast member out.

"One thing I like to tell my casts sometimes is, look, I want you to have a story and if so-and-so is showing up for more scenes, they're going to naturally get more screen time, and they're going to tell your story and you'll have less of a voice to tell your story. It's better to be present and show up and have some screen time. The last thing you want is for someone else to tell your story," the anonymous producer said.

"You do everything you possibly can to try to bring out the best of them," Dash said. "You try to see who it would be good to pair them up with, who do they bounce off with naturally, what tends to spark them."

But sometimes it's a lost cause. "Real Housewives" is known to bring in extra women who attend shoots alongside the other ladies. And by the end of shooting, it becomes clear whether they've earned a place in the opening credits.

"If somebody just doesn't deliver, they just begin naturally to fade because the edit bay, honestly, is a meritocracy," Dash explained. "The best characters win out and the best stories win out. People who don't deliver just end up on the cutting-room floor."

In Lifetime's hit "Unreal," which parodies the production of a "Bachelor"-like reality show, producers constantly coax their contestants. The truth is that's a very big part of creating the drama you see on reality TV.

"I like to be like an assassin. I'll try to subtly get the story way before the scene," the anonymous producer told us. "I'll put it into their heads so they think about it organically. I'll trick them. Basically, I'll sort of give them story beats a couple days in advance or remind them what's happening in real life and what we want to see in a subtle way, so they don't know I'm doing it."

Sure, that sounds underhanded, but it can actually turn out to be cathartic for a cast member who may not want to handle confrontation, or who's trying to figure out what's bothering them, according to the producers.

"You simply prompt them and you say, 'Hey so-and-so, I know you feel this way, tell him about that,'" Dash explained. "In a weird way, you're doing on-camera therapy, but all you're actually doing is bringing out the tension that exists between these two people and letting them talk it out. I know this sounds bizarre, but I have seen relationships actually improve because of the intervention of the show in people's lives."

"Real Housewives" is notorious for its over-the-top fights during cast dinners. One secret to getting the drama flowing is assigned seating.

"A lot of that is prearranged seating," the anonymous producer explained. "You'll say, 'When you walk up, you're going to sit next to him and sit across from her,' in some cases. Sometimes the whole cast knows where they're sitting, and sometimes they don't know. Sometimes just a few know."

Every "Survivor" or "Amazing Race" fan has had that moment when you feel that a person either doesn't deserve to move on, or it seems like a show fixed it so that a dramatic or popular contender can continue.

The truth is there's little producers can do to mess with the results of the competition, or they open themselves up to major legal ramifications.

"[Competition] shows have a lot of rules and restrictions that are governed by a lot of legal people," Tennione said. "When you're in a competition series, and when you work on a competition series, everything has to be fair. People have to start from the same place... Competition shows play by the rules."

Blogger Mariah Smith has made a career out of exposing the storytelling tricks of E!'s "Keeping Up with the Kardashians." Her blog "Keeping Up with the Kontinuity Errors" examines scenes on the show and compares them to the stars' social media posts and appearances to organize events on a real timeline, revealing various editing and shooting tricks.

Editing scenes out of order, or doing what's known as pickup shoots — essentially, extra filming to fill in holes in the story, like reenacting a scene that occurred off-camera — are commong techniques in reality TV, according to the producers who spoke to us.

"There are going to be times when great things happen that we weren't present for, but it affects how the cast feels and it affects how they operate going forward," Tennione said. "Sometimes, you have to do a pickup interview where you explain this is what happened. It's very natural and very normal, and I think shows that can afford it, do it. Is it the ideal and best way to do things? No, it isn't, because we're humans and not robots and very few shows run 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week surveillance."

According to the anonymous producer, however, Bravo doesn't approve of doing reshoots for the "Real Housewives" franchise.

"They want it to be as real as possible in the timeline, so they don't do pickups," the producer said. "It comes off so false and there's no flow if you have to do a pre-scene of something you've already shot, getting ready for the party when the party has already happened. There's a lot of out-of-order shooting, but people like Bravo don't like out-of-order shooting and they're kind of religious about it."