Ever wondered how your favourite soap operas manage to keep you hooked for decades? A seasoned scriptwriter has pulled back the curtain on the industry, revealing the essential tricks of the trade and the harsh realities of the job.
The Never-Ending Story: The First Rule of Soap
Julie Poll, a scriptwriting teacher with credits for major studios like Disney and Universal, explains that the fundamental principle for any soap writer is understanding the format is a continuous story. Unlike other television shows, soaps like the iconic Coronation Street, which has chronicled life in Weatherfield since 1960, have no hiatus and no repeats.
"It's the novel that never ends," Julie stated, highlighting that there are essential plot twists and dramatic devices every writer must learn to employ. This relentless continuity is what builds the deep connection fans have with these long-running programmes.
The Writer's Toolkit: Classic Soap Opera Tropes
Julie detailed some of the most reliable tools in a soap writer's arsenal. For instance, a simple car journey is rarely just a trip. It presents a prime opportunity for drama, and characters often fail to reach their destination, especially if it's raining.
Another staple is the one-night stand, which, in the world of soap, "will likely produce a child." Births themselves are rarely conventional medical events. "Rarely does a woman give birth in a hospital," Julie noted. "Elevators, remote cabins, and the kitchen floor are some favourite places."
She also pointed out the complex web of family connections that typify soaps like Emmerdale and Corrie, and a peculiar phenomenon known as SORAS, or Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome.
This was recently observed by sharp-eyed Emmerdale viewers who noted that actor Kai Assi, aged 15, looked significantly older in his role as Jai Sharma's son, Archie. Julie explained the logic: "A ten-year-old girl goes to boarding school and when she returns home several months later, she’s eighteen, because there are more stories for teenagers than for ten-year-olds."
Drama, Death, and Job Insecurity
Naturally, character deaths come with their own set of rules. A common occurrence is the return of a character presumed dead, especially if a body was never found. This recently played out on Coronation Street when Becky returned from the dead, threatening Swarla's relationship.
Julie shared an extreme example from a story meeting where a new producer wanted to bring back a character who had been killed and turned into a shrunken head seen on air. The producer's directive was simple: "Make it work." And so, they did.
However, this creative freedom comes with a price: brutal job insecurity. Julie revealed that working on a soap can be a short-lived experience. "Painful as it was for me, it was not unusual to be fired when new head writers or executive producers came on board," she said.
This is something she experienced firsthand on the popular US soap As The World Turns. With every 13-week cycle ending, there was a chance a writer would be let go. Thankfully, she persevered, eventually landing a regular role on the show that lasted for years.
She described the writing process as being part of an "assembly line," where the head writer plots long-term stories for up to two years and maps out each week scene by scene. A staff of six to ten associate writers then each writes one episode per week, all contributing to the machine that creates the captivating stories keeping viewers tuning in, time and time again.
