Another World

[amybrickwallace]

 

Thanks. I wonder why Sam never returned at some point. Even if they couldn't get Jordan Charney back, I don't think he was irreplaceable.

[ScottyBman]

I stumbled upon this from Douglas Marland, about how to write a Soap Opera.  At one time in my life, I thought it would have been great to write a soap opera.  I even penned one that I still have in notebooks 30+ years later in a closet.  While not AW specific, the advice seems legit.

During his tenure at As the World Turns, Marland gave an interview to a soap magazine with his rules on "how NOT to ruin a soap". In the years that followed, and since his death, the rules have been much discussed in the serial press and by Internet soap opera fans. [3]

The rules are:

• Watch the show.
• Learn the history of the show. You would be surprised at the ideas that you can get from the back story of your characters.
• Read the fan mail. The very characters that are not thrilling to you may be the audience's favorites.
• Be objective. When I came in to (the show), the first thing I said was, what is pleasing the audience? You have to put your own personal likes and dislikes aside and develop the characters that the audience wants to see.
• Talk to everyone; writers and actors especially. There may be something in a character's history that will work beautifully for you, and who would know better than the actor who has been playing the role?
• Don't change a core character. You can certainly give them edges they didn't have before, or give them a logical reason to change their behavior. But when the audience says, "He would never do that," then you have failed.
• Build new characters slowly. Everyone knows that it takes six months to a year for an audience to care about a new character. Tie them in to existing characters. Don't shove them down the viewers' throats.
• If you feel staff changes are in order, look within the organization first. P&G (Procter & Gamble) does a lot of promoting from within. Almost all of our producers worked their way up from staff positions, and that means they know the show.
• Don't fire anyone for six months. I feel very deeply that you should look at the show's canvas before you do anything.
• Good soap opera is good storytelling. It's very simple.

[Contessa Donatella]

ScottyBman, Doug Marland's 10 rules on how not to ruin a show are infamous & have been posted every where multiple times. Just letting you know, FYI. The only person I've ever seen dispute them was Pete Lemay, AW's Golden Author, who basically said that he doesn't like to go by a set of "rules". That's a paraphrase of Pete, not verbatim.

[ScottyBman]

I apologize for the redundant post, but love the response. :-) 

[Contessa Donatella]

LOL! It's never a problem to repeat some writers! Marland & Lemay are two of them. PGP soaps had brilliance in those two!

While I am at it, replying and all, I would love to read the soap you wrote.

[Contessa Donatella]

What "GoodReads" has to say about Pete Lemay:

 

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1760197.Eight_Years_in_Another_World

[Melroser]

I'm only "quoting" this one because it's smaller. LOL.

 

I, too, while growing up always wanted to write for a soap. Never came to be, of course. Later in life, I wrote out my own story in novel form and am still working on it. I tried self-publishing through Amazon (four volumes worth) but didn't get very far. I have now decided to use a different co-op publishing company to relaunch them. I'm hoping the first novel in the series will be out the beginning of next year. If I can't write for a tv show...maybe I can make one in book form. I call it my DALLAS in a book. Ha...

 

So don't give up. You can still have your dream of writing a "soap"...just use a different avenue.

[robbwolff]

 

Also a writer here. I've written a play, a novel, and some murder mystery dinner plays. Have you considered a platform like Radish? It's an app where they serialize your work, and you receive payments. They're pretty quick with letting you know if they're interested in working with you.

 

https://radishfiction.com

[Soaplovers]

Marland was too rigid and he should have let the breakdown writers write instead of micro-managing them. Shows he wrote had great plots.. but the day to day episodes tended to be on the dull side.  I've always thought Marland and Pam Long would have been a power duo because what one lack, the other had in spades.  Such a shame.

 

Lemay said once that as long as you could justify a character actually doing something, it was ok to put a plot onto a character.  He had said whenever he would sit in writing rooms, if the writers were focusing too much on plot.. he would ask if it would fit the character.. and say as long as you can answer why the character would do something and it made sense.. than it was ok to go about doing the plot.  He said Marland fascinated him, but also was too rigid for his own good sometimes.

[Khan]

But, here's the thing: you never have to worry about justifying a character's actions if you actually KNOW the character.  Just as you never have to wonder whether you're forcing a plot onto characters if you write FROM character.

[denzo30]

Wow, words to live by unfortantely there is no such thing as a soap opera anymore and this advice won't probablly hold true to the last 3 on the air.  I have no idea if there are 2 or 4.  Although, GH and DOOL were the only other shows I followed other than AW and they are still on the air but have no idea what the storylines are about today .  I know Marland did write for AW but for the most part he, like any other writer wrote differently for any other actor that replaced a role.  Otherwise, all the other rules he believed were a receipe for a sucess make sense

At least to bring him back when Connie Ford passed away.  Not even a mention about Ada's brother, when she passed.  Harding Lemay would have been writing at this point if he stayed and hopefully he would have made the writing to include Sam could not make it.

Yeah and as much as I love Harding Lemay and his dedication to characters he had no problem with recasts.  The most weirdest one was Wesley Ann Pfenning as Alice Frame #3.  So odd and the actress looked nothing like her the previous actresss's.  I get it, sometimes the Prodcuers that make these decisions but dont write or subscribe to rules that don't fit a character.  Why wouldnt a show like AW ask VW for advise when they are writing about a past character or family.  We as fans, see all their mishaps with writing..

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by denzo30

[denzo30]

Years ago, I always wanted to write for AW because of the mistakes I saw but in reality I am not a writer.  I bet if social media and technology was adavanced when AW was on the writers could rely on people like us at least as consultants for facts about the families and history

Edited October 27, 2019 by denzo30

[Melroser]

I always wanted to write for AW too! It was my show. Especially the characters of Cecile, Cass, Felicia and I loved Vicky and Jake (But Anne Heche as Vicky). Rachel, I thought, was so underused at times. I'll say if I wrote the show her and Carl would never have been a couple after the years of previous history. Nor at the end of the show would there ever have been a Jordan Stark or Lila's baby in a tree! Ridiculous...

 

I've always felt gimmicks were never the way to go. Devil Possession (DAYS). Vampires (PC). Alternative places like Eterna (OLTL). Yes, maybe you get a few more viewers on a temp basis, but I prefer character driven stories.

Just my opinion. 

[OzFrog]

 

Donna, please do not assume to talk for other people when you say how “infamous” Marland’s 10 rules are. I’ve been posting on and off on these boards (and also RATS*) for many years, and that was the first time I had ever seen Marland’s 10 rules written explicitly, although I had heard them alluded to many times. And I actually got a lot out of reading them.

 

So @ScottyBman thank you so much for posting these, they were a pleasure to read.

[ScottyBman]

I 100% agree with your thoughts.  Anytime it got weird, I was out.  Although referring back to my "writing venture", I dipped into the bizarre a couple of times with what I believe to be an epic fail.  As far as AW goes, I would have never put Carl and Rachel together.  I understand that Cecile burned her way through the families of AW, but somehow I would have found a way to keep her in the mix.  AW to me, was often times the story of the haves and the have nots and how that all integrated.  Anna Stuart was also a gem as Donna and would have always been in the mix somewhere.  I loved when Donna lost her money (the first time) and sghe struggled to maintain the "Love fascade" being broke.  Evidently, so did the writers as they did it to her 2x.  :-)