Marland Monday: Reach Out and Just Say Hi!
If it’s Monday you know what that means…
It’s Marland Monday!
Yes, this summer I’m remembering Douglas Marland, one of the GOATS of daytime. I decided to examine his famous “How not to Ruin a Soap” rules to see if we can apply it to other forms of writing. You can read past rules here:
rule one
rule two
rule three
rule four
So now we are at Rule 5, which is…
Talk to everyone; writers and actors especially. There may be something in a character’s history that will work beautifully for you, and who would know better than the actor who has been playing the role?
Now you might be thinking: Jennifer, I write about talking goats. Or Hunger Games fanfiction. How is a goat’s history going to help me with writing? Who would I talk to about this?
Well, here’s the deal. I’m going to assume a person might be in a writing group. The writing group probably knows your characters, and they might say something in the vein of Hey, remember when Grumpy Goat had that problem with Farmer Ted down the road? Maybe explore this? Or if you’re writing Hunger Games Fanfic, and you need to have Katniss look vulnerable, maybe remember her history with Primrose, her sister. Write a scene with the two of them looking for edible plants and singing old folk songs.
A couple of years ago I was working on my memoir when I needed more examples of obsession songs from the late 70s, early 80s. I needed some crowdsourcing, so I went on Facebook and asked the question. In minutes, people started responding. Girls in their 20s sang “One Way or Another” in my dorm kitchen. There was a lively debate on my page if “Jesse’s Girl” was obsessing or coveting. Not only did I get enough material, but I also read this chapter at my graduation. It went great.
In 1992, Marland created a storyline for an iconic character. Lisa Miller Hughes Eldridge Shea Coleman McColl Mitchell Grimaldi (I’m not even mentioning the men she dated) had seen some things in her life, let me tell you. Played by Eileen Fulton, Lisa loved life, her son, men, and working. She could belt out “Sentimental Journey” then run her nightclub The Mona Lisa, then get up in the morning and work at her clothes boutique Fashions. Lisa was so popular in the early sixties she was spun off into her own primetime show, Our Private World. For years, Fulton had a clause in her contract that she couldn’t be a grandmother. Once you become a granny, all you were doing was serving coffee in the kitchen. Lisa wasn’t going in the kitchen anytime soon (Although the grandmother clause was dropped in 1988 when long lost granddaughter Lien came from Vietnam, that’s another story for another time)
In her memoir As My World Still Turns, Fulton wrote about how Marland called her one night. Lisa had lost a son in the late sixties early seventies, Chuckie. Could Chuckie be still alive? Nope, Fulton said. There was a funeral. Nancy (the show’s matriarch) was there and when Nancy attended a funeral and buried someone, they stayed dead. However, she had been gone for a year when she married her second husband, John Eldridge. Irna Phillips (the show creator and head writer) never went into the details about the marriage; Lisa came back rich, her son Tom was now a teenager, and she never wanted to talk about her second marriage. Boom. That was all Marland needed.
Lisa was called back to Chicago after getting several mysterious phone calls. Eventually, she went back to Chicago and the audience found out she had an affair. An affair with her brother-in-law. That’s our Lisa! She got pregnant, then had a baby boy, Scott. The Eldridges blackmailed Lisa, telling her to give up the baby or else. In exchange, she got a divorce settlement that made her rich.
The storyline worked because Marland asked Fulton for background, history. In Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Lamott described how she often called people to help her with topics like school lunches, or tennis. “There are an enormous number of people out there with invaluable information to share with you, and all you have to do is pick up the phone.” Or in these days, post on social media.
There are some things you’re not going to know, or you might get stuck. As Lamott wrote, you can count it as part of your writing time for the day. As the old song goes, reach out and touch someone. As long as they want to be touched. Consent, people!
Tune in next week…
