Local
couple finds passion in soap operas
By Erin Wiltgen, News of Orange staff writer
[email protected] Dec 21, 2013
Her first day on the job, Nancy Demorest—then Nancy Curlee—walked into the “Guiding Light” writers’ room and looked around at a sea of unfamiliar faces. A young man across the table invited her to the empty chair beside him. Settling in, the newbie turned to start up a conversation with her future husband.
Stephen and Nancy Demorest thrived in the soap opera industry, working up the ladder from scriptwriter to head writer—and loving every minute of it.
“I did it from about 1985 to 1994,” Nancy Demorest said. “We were head writers at ‘Guiding Light’ and then consultants for ABC for ‘All My Children’ and ‘General Hospital’ and their shows. Then when we decide to move down here in 1996, I actually had an offer to do ‘General Hospital’ out in California from here, but I was expecting our third child, so that was the point that I kind of got out. But Stephen staid in it for another 10 long years.”
The journey
While the couple moved up in the soap opera world side by side, they arrived there in completely different ways.
Nancy Demorest went to Hollins University in Virginia, known at the time for its phenomenal writing program. A professor there hooked her up with a contact at publishing company Curtis Brown in New York City.
“It turned out to be a great first job in the city, mainly because it took the intimidation out of writing,” she said. “I was reading manuscripts, and you come out of college, and you’ve been reading James Joyce and Fitzgerald, and you’re so intimidated. When you get into publishing and you’re reading these unsolicited manuscripts that come in, you go, I can do this.”
After a year at Curtis Brown, Nancy Demorest teamed up with a friend to write screenplays. The two sold a pair of romantic comedies for publication, but soon the writer was itching for a steady income. An actress suggested soap operas, putting her in touch with someone at Procter & Gamble, which owned a few programs.
And Nancy Demorest never looked back.
For Stephen Demorest, he got his start more on the writing side of things, working as a freelancer for rock and roll publications “Rolling Stone Magazine” and “Circus” as well as submitting pieces for the Sunday New York Times.
“I sort of learned the business as I went along,” he said. “And what I learned is freelancing is very inefficient in that you write 10 pitches or assignments for every one you get. And then you hand in an assignment for an article, and they pay you on publication, which might be six months later, which is fine when you’re 24 and you’re living alone.
“But as you get older, and you see your friends are getting married and starting families and having houses and stuff like that, and you’re writing for the arts and leisure section of the Times, which is great, and then two months later they send you $200.”
So the writer decided to take his craft into his own hands, penning a mystery series featuring a female protagonist. When that endeavor didn’t pan out the way he had hoped, a friend suggested he check out soap operas. Stephen Demorest, though skeptical, made a few calls; and—like his wife—he found his niche.
Forging a career
When Nancy and Stephen Demorest first met at “Guiding Light,” they discovered their paths had intersected before—though not in person. Nancy Demorest had actually worked at Curtis Brown when the publishing company processed her future husband’s novels. A few moments after the first hellos, the two realized those books had actually crossed Nancy Demorest’s desk.
“She said, ‘Oh my God, I typed your contract five years ago,’ ” Stephen Demorest said. “I said, ‘You’re a terrible typist.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ ”
The couple began as scriptwriters, the bottom of the writers’ food chain. Their job was to take an outline handed down by senior workers and draft dialogue. Some creative leeway exists at this level as long as they stay within the basic plotline, though any changes or additions have to be cleared with the powers that be.
Above scriptwriters come outline writers who break down scene by scene what will happen in each show. Each outline and scriptwriter is assigned an episode by the head writers, who craft the overarching plotline looking out six to 12 months.
“The head writers, which is what we eventually ended up doing, did what Stephen was talking about where you essentially do like a Victorian novel,” Nancy Demorest said. “You do this umbrella story, and you might have three or four subplots. There should be some overarching thing taking you through. … As a head writer, you really had to have an absolute vision and absolute idea of who each of those characters was and what was true. But then the outline writers and the scriptwriters could get more creative.”
Though still working in New York, the Demorests eventually moved to Connecticut in 1990. After a while, though, Nancy Demorest began pining for her native North Carolina. The couple moved down, and Nancy Demorest decided to leave the industry. Her husband, however, realized he could continue the work.
When living in Connecticut, the couple would drive an hour and a half into New York City every Monday morning, go to meetings, spend the night in an apartment they owned in the city and return to the office Tuesday before going home to spend the rest of the week writing.
“It wasn’t a lot different coming from Raleigh Durham airport,” Stephen Demorest said. “So for the first five years we were out here, I’d get up at 5:30 or 6 and catch the dawn plane out of RDU. ... [I’d] catch the 6 plane out of LaGuardia Airport, land at RDU at halftime during the [UNC-Chapel Hill] basketball game, and listen to the second half of the basketball game while I drove home from the airport. I’d almost always come through the door with three minutes left in the basketball game, and she wouldn’t speak to me until the game was over because she’d be rooted to the basketball game.”
Stephen Demorest stayed writing for soaps out of New York and Los Angeles until 2008, using the Internet and conference calls to get the job done.
But while both have now given it up, the Demorests still talk about those days with fondness, outlining the fun, the adventure they had in the writing room.
“You also have this writing team,” Stephen Demorest said. “You meet with five or eight or 10 other writers. You’d talk about where the storyline was going, and then you’d divide up the scripts and maybe go off on our own. … It was a great combination of working independently but with a group of comrades at the same time. And you could see it come back on the screen four weeks later.”
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