Marland Monday: Watch. Write. Lather Rinse Repeat.

Last week I wrote how much I missed Douglas Marland and wondered if his rules for writing soap operas would work for other writing. This week we’re going to look at lesson one. Come with me and let’s learn!

Lesson One:

Watch the show.

As writers we are told television is the enemy of the writing time. It is the boob tube, the idiot box, what have you. Let’s face it, you’re not going to pick up good writing tips from Hee Haw reruns anytime soon.

I digress. Marland’s rule can be applied though to writing. A couple of years ago I was listening to a craft lecture by Connie May Fowler. She gave a recommendation: watch a TV show’s season from beginning to end. Make notes. For instance, a character is told she has to make a layoff.Who will it be? And how will this layoff affect the other characters? Watch how the storyline builds, and how will it reach a conclusion.

Nicholas Mancusi, whose grandmother Claire Labine created the sublime Ryan’s Hope, wrote in 2019 that watching his grandmother and mother write General Hospital he learned how to plot a story: “If a plot is functioning correctly, it’s because of the way that it interacts with the other elements of the story, rather than distracting from them. If you’ve gotten your readers to invest in your characters, plot is how that investment is paid off.”

Marland spoke from expereince. In 1977, he was asked to take over the head writing duties for General Hospital, a show doing poorly in the ratings. In order to get a feel for the show, he had to watch it. Easy peasy. He read the script breakdowns as well. But the show was…so…boring. It was all talking. Talking, talking, and talking. And more talking.He would later say in 1983’s Soap World there was no movement. They sat and talked. Did I mention they talked? Oh how they talked. Marland wasn’t sure how he was going to fix the stories. Pressure was on him; this was only his second headwriting stint after writing for The Doctors. Oh sure, his writing helped James Pritchard (Matt Powers) earn a Daytime Emmy, and Marland won an Emmy for writing scripts for Another World. But The Doctors were doing even worse than General Hospital. He had to prove he wasn’t an one hit wonder.

Now this is something I’ve been guilty of-my characters have always talked way too much. They chatted, they spoke, oh long conversations were the norm. I’ve been watching old episodes of ER because while they talked, they were always doing something. Saving lives, getting meds, preparing for surgeries, they talked but always doing something. That way the viewer can tell sometimes the characters are saying more with their actions than with their words. An extranged couple could bicker about a patient’s treatment, but the viewer gets the feeling this isn’t the patient. It’s about the couple’s problems.

When Marland had lunch with Gloria Monty the new executive producer, he told her about the talking. The show was stuck in the fifties, which was odd because the show wasn’t even around in the fifties. But the show had to join the seventies. There had to be teenagers, because teens watched soaps. She agreed to his ideas, then started to implement them. She would be on a loudspeaker telling the actors “Pick up the pacing! Pick up the pacing!” They picked up the pacing. Many soap opera lovers said Monty ruined the soap opera medium with the picked up pacing. But she did what she thought was right.

Now I am not saying that spend all your time watching TV. The pandemic gave us a good experience in catching up on TV shows, but one has to go out in the world, read, exercise. What I am saying is when you are watching a TV show, take notes. You never know what you can pick up.

Oh yeah: General Hospital went from number nine to number two in one year. Two of the stars were nominated for Daytime Emmys.

Tune in next week…