New families that took off and families that didn’t

[DRW50]

Considering all the upheaval at AW in those years, I'm not sure if the Ewings were a flop. Blaine was a central character for a number of years, and so was Catlin. Larry also seemed well-received enough.

Edited January 30, 2023 by DRW50

[Faulkner]

That’s the thing too: IMO, one of the things that makes a successful family is a significant presence on the canvas as a unit. Some of these writers can’t think past their short-term story needs, grafting these randoms on to some family in order to gain audience acceptance, but not really thinking past that. These characters sometimes don’t even meet their siblings and other relatives, as those links don’t matter to the one-dimensional stories the writers want to tell.

Family links have become devices for writers to play with in their stories, as opposed to real foundational connections that allows them to explore their characters and their psychology. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons why networks don’t want these characters to be too specific. They can’t suddenly do a “Surprise: Jeremy Stark is Sally Spectra’s dad” story on Y&R if we know too much about Sally.

Then you have all of these weird retconned switched-at-birth stories that impact long-running characters. (Like Jill became a Fenmore on Y&R for what purpose even?) 

Edited January 30, 2023 by Faulkner

[Darn]

Soaps have always been willing to fudge someone's backstory to fit a new plot, someone who once said they had two sisters suddenly has one brother or is an only child. But now they've bypassed even describing something as simple as where a person was born to keep them in this nebulous place where flat characters like Nelle, Willow and Sasha can all be the exact same age (yet somehow younger than another character who was born canonically several years after them). Specificity is lost because they never know when they might have to create an insta-biological connection because two people who hate each other is automatically more entertaining when they share DNA apparently.

Brings me back to, and we discussed this a few weeks ago, Rae Cummings traipsing up and down the eastern seaboard for her long lost child who was anywhere from 18 to 45.

[Faulkner]

Soaps overrate familial connections as plot points yet underrate it as a way of deepening character. I get in theory why a family connection would make the story more compelling, e.g. “They hate each other! Now let’s see them try to survive the family Thanksgiving dinner!” But they’ve lost the fact that it’s that character exploration that allows those insta-connections to actually land with the audience. Due to budgets/guarantees, etc., we barely have any family gatherings anymore.

[j swift]

My hypothesis is that given that there are financial considerations for a writer to create a new family of characters, due to WGA residuals, we should rate the success of a new family not on popularity, but if they survived a new team of writers because the production would still need to compensate the fired staff for the invention of those characters.

To me, that is the difference between ATWT's Snyders vs AW's Halloways.  Kit and Holden may have been equally received in their initial romantic pairings.  However, the Halloways were dismissed after a new writer was installed, but the Snyders continued to thrive.

[MichaelGL]

Successful

ATWT: The Montgomery's from the early 80s. Lyla, Craig, Margo, Cricket. 

[DRW50]

I see your point, but I'd probably still put the Ewings in a success category in that case - Blaine was written out mostly after a misogynist firing of the key actress and then Christopher Rich quitting the show, and Catlin also left due to the actor wanting out (presumably). Larry and Clarice were let go, but a wide swathe of characters were in those years, unfortunately.

[Paul Raven]

 I have read conflicting reports that writers receive payments and residuals for creating new characters on soaps.

I have read flat out denials and discussions like the ones above that indicate otherwise.

Can anyone clear this up?

[j swift]

@Paul Raven From the WGA website on residuals for members (still a little unclear, but straight from the source).

Please register in order to view this content

Residuals for reuse of daytime serial (sometimes called “soap operas”) characters are based on “aggregate” minimums. Aggregate means the writers are employed within a group, often for specific functions, to work for a specified term. This minimum varies depending on when writing services are performed and the length of the program.

The residuals are allocated in the following percentages:

If a breakdown has been written by the head writer, or if no breakdown has been written:
Head Writer Associate Writer	50% 50%
If a writer other than the head writer has written a breakdown:
Head Writer Writer of breakdown Associate Writer	35% 15% 50%
If a writer other than the head writer has written a rewrite or a polish:
Head Writer Associate Writer (of script) Associate Writer (of rewrite or polish)	47.5% 47.5% 5%

Edited January 30, 2023 by j swift

[Paul Raven]

Thanks for the reply but that didn't really make things clearer!

On Search for Tomorrow under the Corringtons, the Tourneur/Sentell family was successfully integrated with Travis, Martin, Mignon, Lee, Renata etc but subsequent writers began dropping most of those characters.

GL

Doug marland introduced the Reardons with Nola and Bea and then slowly added new members Maureen and Tony while leaving others offscreen. Subsequent writers introduced Jim and Chelsea but by this time they were overshadowed and lost their importance as Springfilelds second family.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Paul Raven

[j swift]

So, there are a couple of contextual issues to consider as well.  Daytime writers didn't join the WGA until 1980s, and the ruling on characters was not in place until the 1990s, so anything prior to those dates would not qualify for residuals for character creation.  Also, a writer would have to submit to WGA in order to get the money, and there may be circumstances where a writer would avoid getting into that situation, such as wanting to maintain a relationship with a network or production company.

But, it also accounts for why B&B has maintained it's head writer who is associated with the production given that he is eligible for WGA residuals for overseas replays of his episodes.

[Michael]

I could be wrong here, but I THINK the residuals for characters that a writer created doesn't apply quite as broadly as fans have been led to believe. In primetime, there's something about how the writer who wrote the teleplay in which a recurring character first appears -- NOT the showrunner -- receives residuals any time that character appears in a subsequent episode. But those payments stop if and when the character becomes a series regular. So if episode 5 of season 1 introduces a quirky clown, and that clown is also used in episode 12, the writer of episode 5 gets a residual payment. But if the clown is such a hit that they make him a series regular for season 2, the residual payments no longer apply. I do not think it applies if a new character is brought on as a series regular from the get-go. Don't quote me on that, but I'm fairly certain there's provision of that nature.

Daytime is a different beast, obviously, and there's a head writer, breakdown writer, and script writer all with their hands in the pot for any given episode. And lots of characters are introduced AS series regulars -- i.e., with a long-term contract -- so I'm not sure how that would impact residuals for daytime characters and writers.

I've been both a script coordinator (the person who tracks these appearances and submits the invoices for them) and a writer who has received the payments, and this is as much clarity as I have, which tells you how confusing it all is!

[AMCOLTLLover]

Spectras on B&B was a genius  addition that drove the canvas until Bradley decided they were unworthy of being used.

[dragonflies]

Yeah I'll never understand it, Courtney Hope was casting gold as Sally Jr. 

 

I hope Brad's eating crow now given how well Sally has done on YR

[Paul Raven]

To minimise the Spectras in the first place was bad enough but then to bring back a new generation and do the same thing is crazy!