All: Do you prefer fast-paced or slow-paced storylines

[aMLCproduction]

again here we go again fans komplain but seeing the same ol storyline and being bored with there shows. When soomeone comes along and decides to try something out and different, since EVERYTHING has been done on soaps, he did posseion. But to each is own. Imo NO ONE KAN [!@#$%^&*] WITH JER'S first tenure at DAYS and yes I WILL SAY IT, IT WAS [!@#$%^&*] FLAWLESS and thats my final answer.

[KMan101]

I really would love to know what happened to the Reilly of old. Not to turn this into a thread just about him, but I was so excited when he was announced as coming back to DAYS in 2003 ... but he just sucked. It was all just shock factor instead of a decently written story to go along with it. Sigh. I think he does what he does because he just wants the buzz and the "shock factor" and doesn't like to write the in-between anymore, or he's just burnt out. I mean, honestly folks, he really hasn't stopped writing, headwriting, since 1993. That's a long time and any one can get burned out.

I've said this before and I'll say it again ... I miss the days of STORIES. Like Maison Blanche, like Erica/Tara/Phil, Jesse/Angie, Marty's rape, Steve/Alice/Rachel ... where new drama happened every day, things were dragged out, new elements added ... I just want STORIES, that have a beginning, a drawn out middle with new twists and turns, and an ending to launch a new story.

[bongobong]

I agree with alot of what you say here, but mostly disagree on the Marlena storylines. Maison Blanche was indeed amazing, and parts of the Devil storyline had their moments. But after that I thought her storylines were pretty snooze worthy until around 1997 when the Kristian/John/Marlean triangle came to a head. The Paris and Aremid storylines where boring and horrible paced IMO

[Matt]

I have to say that I like a mixture of fast and slow. Soaps have long had the notorious reputation for dragging things out ad naseum, but it takes a *very* skilled writer who can do it well. After all, it was the great Agnes Nixon who said "make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait." But making them wait does *not* including repetative dialog and story contrivances put in place just for the purpose of stalling. If a writer's stalling is so blatant that it calls attention to itself as stalling, then (at least IMO) that's the sign of a bad writer.

An example of an extremely long-running storyline that was well executed by two different writers was the Alice/Steve/Rachel triangle on AW in the late 1960 through early/mid 1970s. Let's examine it....

Steve Frame was a newcomer to Bay City. He was a charming, dashing, handsome man who had been born dirt poor and fought his well to wealth and success. He had an air of bad-boy rougishness and could be something of a scrapper.

Alice Matthews was the quintessential ingenue. She was the fairhaired good girl from the show's central family as well as a dedicated nurse.

Rachel Davis was the scrapper and schemer from the wrong side of the tracks who resented her lower-class status and wanted to better her social standing and position in life. She'd been a former model who'd had dreams of Hollywood stardom. She had a father who'd abandoned her at an early age and a struggling, shoot-from-the hip mother that had raised Rachel alone, indulging in nearly every whim to make up for her father's abandonment with the result being a spoiled brat who believe she deserved everything she wanted --- and she wanted it now.

Tying the characters together was the fact that Rachel had married Alice's brother Russ -- a doctor -- as a means of climbing the social ladder, putting her in the respected Matthews family as well as the enviable position as being a doctor's wife.

In the early stages of the story, we saw Steve & Alice meet and slowly start falling in love while we saw Rachel becoming more and more bored and dissatisfied with the life of a doctor's wife. Russ was just starting out as a doctor and didn't earn nearly as much money as Rachel had imagined. Also, Russ's job meant that he had to work long hours which displeased Rachel even more. When Rachel met Steve, there was an immediately attraction on her part -- both to him sexually as well as to his money and social standing (the man owned a professional football team, for goodness sakes).

Rachel managed to seduce Steve (he was drawn to her because of their many similarites in background and personality) and became pregnant (necessitated by Robin Strasser, who played Rachel, becoming pregnant in real life), which brings us to the next part of our story. Steve refused to leave Alice, breaking off all connection to Rachel. Rachel rededicated herself (as much as she could) to her husband Russ and then announced that she was carrying *his* child. Meanwhile, Steve proposed marriage to Alice and she accepted. However, Rachel wasn't completely done with Steve and still harbored hopes of one day having him for herself. She viewed Alice as an obstacle to that, and realized she needed to get her out of the way.

Rachel waited until Steve & Alice's engagement party, quietly and calmly pulled Alice aside, and spilled the beans -- that she was pregnant by Steve and not by Russ. Hurt and horrified, Alice broke up with Steve and fled Bay City for Paris (necessitated by Jacqueline Courtney, who played Alice, leaving the series for an extended honeymoon with her new husband). With the truth out, Russ promptly ditched Rachel, but Steve refused to believe that the child was his and blamed Rachel for Alice breaking up with him. Rachel then found her long-absent father in Somerset and met Ted Clark who worked with him. Ted wooed Rachel and she married him, mostly to give her son by Steve (Jamie) a father. However, Ted was a shady character who was involved in drugs and ended up in jail. Meanwhile, it was proven that Steve was Jamie's father. Steve wanted to spend time with his son, but Rachel made it a condition that to do so, he had to spend time with her, as well.

Alice returned and she and Steve reconciled and were married in the house Steve had built for her during her absence (always believing that she would return to him). Meanwhile, Ted got tired of Rachel always obsessing about Steve and divorced her and left town. Alice became pregnant, but lost the child during a fall at home (which resulted in her not being able to have a child of her own) while Steve was secretly with Rachel on the pretext of visiting Jamie. When Alice later found out about it by overhearing a conversation between Steve & Rachel (thank to a scheme set up by Rachel's father which also led Alice to believe that Steve & Rachel had been having an affair), Alice fled Bay City again and divorced Steve.

Baffled by Alice's abandonment (she never told him the reason why she was divorcing him) and believing that she was never coming back, Steve was an easy mark for Rachel who persuaded him to marry her for Jamie's sake, to give the child a real family. However, Rachel did insist on marrying Steve in the *exact spot* where Steve & Alice had married in the house Steve had built for Alice. However, once Alice had returned to Bay City (along with her new employer Elliot Carrington, his wife Iris Cory Carrington, and their young son Dennis), Alice learned the truth about Steve & Rachel's meetings and she and Steve professed their love for one another. But now Steve had to get out of his marriage to Rachel.

He left her and sued for divorce, but worried that the judge wouldn't grant it, bribed Rachel's father into testifying that the plot to have Alice believe Steve & Rachel had been having an affair was all Rachel's idea and planning (in reality, she hadn't known anything about it until much later). Steve got his divorce and planned to remarry Alice, but then the truth came out about the bribery. Steve & Alice remarried, but Steve was sentenced to prison for her part in the bribery and perjered testimony, leaving Alice alone.

Once Steve was sentenced to solitary confinement after a fight in prison, Rachel began to torment Alice while Alice began to have a nervous breakdown as a result of the trauma and stress. Rachel claimed that Steve had given the house he'd built for Alice (which she and Steve lived in) to her and Jamie and threatened to have Alice evicted. It was all too much for Alice and she had to be institutionalized. Steve was released, Alice recovered, and they were happy and planning to adopt a young orphan named Sally when Steve was killed in a helicopter accident in Australia while on a business trip. Meanwhile, Rachel was becoming enamoured with Iris Carrington's wealthy, older father Mac Cory.

All of this took place between the years 1968-1975. While the primary storyline was the Alice/Steve/Rachel triangle which lasted 7 years, so much other stuff happed to the trio underneath the primary story of the triangle that it never felt drawn out, dull or boring. IMO, this is an excellent example of how to stretch a story without making it the least bit dull.