"
The writer can expect to get £5,000 to 10,000 an episode,
before he is sacked, burnt-out or certified insane."
Please
don't shoot:
The Soap
Writers.
Stan
Hey
The Independent
10 August 2002
If
the soap opera industry is in trouble, don't waste sympathy on those
actors who will get "written out" in violent circumstances
to boost ratings. And don't fret about the producers who will get
the "Friday night summons" from the head of drama, followed
by five minutes to clear their desks.
Actors
who've played soap "characters" can enjoy a new life,
either in pantomimes, or perhaps even in full-length drama if they've
become "iconic", either for their evil persona or "Cockney
sparrer" charm. Sacked soap producers get promoted sideways,
or bunged a "sweetener", to prevent them taking plot-lines
of the show elsewhere.
The
real sufferers in behind-the-scenes bloodbaths will be the writers.
In the production of soap operas, they are at the very end of the
food chain. They are, if you will, the laboratory rats of this high-pressure,
results-orientated industry. Chained to their laptops, they will
be fed on raw plots, which they must shape, no matter how preposterous
they are.
The
real power in the soap-opera world lies with the "story-liners".
Commanded by management to produce several hours of soap a week,
the story-liners must trawl the dark recesses of their psyche, scour
the newspapers, listen to the radio and prowl the internet. They
will scrape up the slimiest off-cuts of low-life to provide stories
for their soap's characters. Having completed this Augean task,
they hand the material to the writers and give them five days to
produce a workable script.
Soap
operas are rigorously planned. Each production office will have
a huge board along one wall, with a list of character names down
the left side and the schedule of episode numbers running across
the top. At the inter-section of these two lines, the "plots"
will be filled in with red pens, so the producers know what is happening
to any given character in any given week.
Thus,
Character "A" may be moving inexorably towards his ex-sniffer
dog's violent death in Week 36, while Character "B" will
need a life-saving liver transplant from his dying Jehovah's Witness
brother, Character "C", in Week 39. Character "D"
will be arrested as an al-Qa'ida suspect in Week 42, and in Week
45, a character called Al-Qa'ida will move into the street, square,
close or village. And at Christmas, anything goes.
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