Writing Soap Operas

One day recently, I left work early. I got home just in time to catch my favorite childhood soap opera:

Okay, I didn't watch much of it, just the very end. Just enough to realize there's a reason most of us go to work every day. We work because we need to avoid daytime dramas.

Every guy on daytime TV looks like this:

All of the actresses look 12. Those who don't are now the parents and grandparents, but THEY were the 12-year-olds when we were watching as teens. They now look pretty much the same, just surgically altered so that they now resemble pod people...

But the worst thing about soaps are the plots.

I imagine it has to be tough, coming up with interesting storylines for a show year after year. When I was sixteen, the pod woman above was one-half of Days of Our Lives' supercouple at the time, Bo and Hope:

In the 15 years they've been on the show, they've survived an assassination attempt, a miscarriage, being marooned on a desert island, an exploding cage above a vat of acid, amnesia (of course), a strange baby switch, the death of a child, Hope's kidnapping, and more... In fact, it seems most soap opera characters endure more than their share of tragedy. There will be miscarriages, deaths, and children who turn out to be murderers. They will at some point suffer from amnesia, temporary insanity, blindness, or demonic possession. You know, things that happen to all of us at one time or another.

Imagine being a soap opera writer. You possibly could be, actually. Cherie Bennett, a top young adult novelist in the 90s, won awards as associate head writer (along with her husband) on The Young and the Restless. Cherie's most successful series:

The conflict we put into our books has a resolution, but could you imagine if your novel had to continue on into infinity? Fifty plus years or more? Sometimes the same characters, growing old, having children, dealing with those children's drama? You would throw in some amnesia and exploding cages on desert islands too. What else are you going to do? If your characters sail through life, happy as can be, people will get bored. So you create drama.

As long as the public is longing to see a couple together, you have an audience. But the second that couple reaches "happily ever after," we get bored. Remember Sam and Diane? Mattie and David? Mulder and Scully? We as an audience aren't sure what to do once Snow White finds her Prince. The movie is supposed to end then...but a soap opera...

Never ends.

Never. Ever.

Can you imagine what a challenge that would be to write? It's probably not nearly as easy as it looks. Plus, day after day of one hundred percent dialogue, spoken on a soundstage. You can't hide behind special effects, as half of Hollywood's movies do. All you have are your words, your actors, and a viewing audience that expects you to keep the drama coming.