A Writer's Look at Writing for Soaps

I watch daytime dramas. I don’t watch the same ones year after year. I watch a show that catches my interest and I will follow it until whatever caught my attention resolves, dissolves, or evolves into something I can’t stand to watch. I watch as a writer. How did the writers construct this storyline? How did they coordinate the intertwining storylines so that two disparate characters are going through the same kinds of problems without being repetitive? How did such a fresh, innovative idea go so wrong?

To my knowledge, daytime dramas have a head writer, an on-site writing staff, and off-site freelance writers. The head writer meets with the on-site writing staff to share ideas for future storylines. The head writer chooses witch storylines to use and writes an outline for the next 6-12 months. The on-site writing staffs flesh out the outline to a detailed synopsis and timeline. Once the synopsis is approved, the writers then develop expanded summaries for each storyline and decide who writes what storyline. Once the assignments are handed out, the writers work on scripts for each day their story will be on the air. A lot of writers are touching each script before the show airs. Unsurprisingly, mistakes happen.

As a writer, I look at the stories played out and I think of what is wrong and how to fix it. All good stories are character-driven. No exceptions. If someone is acting out of character, there must be a reason and the reader or viewer must know what it is, or at least have that fact acknowledged. Readers and writers have a contract; the reader agrees to suspend disbelief and the writer promises to present a good story with consistent rules. These rules govern character, plot, setting, and genre. If you promise your reader a love story and your main character kills his love interest, you have broken the contract. If your main character is the chair of her local chapter of PETA and she wears a fur coat to dinner at a steakhouse, you have broken the contract.

Writing for soaps must be challenging, in that the daily scriptwriters have incredibly tight restrictions on what they can or can’t write in order to not contradict previous and future scripts. Soap audiences appear to be more lenient and accepting of these restrictions. The problem is leniency should not be a loophole in the contract. Shows have bibles, books that give complete histories of each set and character, past and present, as well as complete detailed storylines from the show’s inception to present day. Each bible should be accurate and up-to-date. Each writer should own a copy, as should each actor. Take a weekend and read it. Use it as a reference. The writer responsible for making sure the scripts work together should also make sure they don’t contradict the show’s bible, like newspaper fact-checkers do before a story goes to press.

A writer lies for a living. The contract states the lie has to be believable.