Days of Our Lives - MESSAGE BOARDS

Quote Str8tButEqual:

• Learn the history of the show. You would be surprised at the ideas that you can get from the back story of your characters

Doing research on the show is essential & the soap shouldn’t deviate from what the viewers have already seen unless there’s evidence stating otherwise that’s believable.

An example: There were people wondering why it wasn’t acknowledged that Stefano & John were brothers. Some posters were glad this matter was dropped & forgotten. Unless the show provides some proof for the public that states they’re not brothers then they’re still brothers. Hatred can run deep in families that they don’t even want to be related so they just don’t mention it.

Quote Str8tButEqual:

• Read the fan mail. The very characters that are not thrilling to you may be the audience's favorites

Do they really listen to the fans or do they get off by pitting one fan base against another by dragging things out. TPTB need to do extensive research to find out what characters the audience likes. Perhaps they could have some kind of survey on their site people can fill out and also put a message scrolling on the bottom of the TV screen while DOOL is on for those people who don’t use the internet often.

I hope everyone who is reading this thread is sending letters, emails, twitter, facebook or phoning & letting TPTB know what you want to see on the show. Time is of the essence & we need to keep being persistent until September 2013.

Quote Str8tButEqual: ….follow the list?


SOD has an old online article that featured an interview from soap legend Douglas Marland who presents a list of things of how not to wreak a show that's been copied all over the Internet. Marland who passed away on March 6, 1993 was a former actor that loved daytime and was head writer of As The World Turns, Guiding Light, and General Hospital. He worked as a writer on Another World and co-created Loving. He won multiple Emmy awards and Soap Opera Digest awards.

How Not To Wreck A Show
By Douglas Marland

• Watch the show
• Learn the history of the show. You would be surprised at the ideas that you can get from the back story of your characters
• Read the fan mail. The very characters that are not thrilling to you may be the audience's favorites
• Be objective. When I came in to ATWT, the first thing I said was, what is pleasing the audience? You have to put your own personal likes and dislikes aside and develop the characters that the audience wants to see
• 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?
• Don't change a core character. You can certainly give them edges they didn't have before, or give them a logical reason to change their behavior. But when the audience says, "He would never do that," then you have failed
• Build new characters slowly. Everyone knows that it takes six months to a year for an audience to care about a new character. Tie them in to existing characters. Don't shove them down the viewers' throats
• If you feel staff changes are in order, look within the organization first. P&G [Procter & Gamble] does a lot of promoting from within. Almost all of our producers worked their way up from staff positions, and that means they know the show.
• Don't fire anyone for six months. I feel very deeply that you should look at the show's canvas before you do anything
• Good soap opera is good storytelling. It's very simple.

• Be objective. When I came in to ATWT, the first thing I said was, what is pleasing the audience? You have to put your own personal likes and dislikes aside and develop the characters that the audience wants to see

Whenever there’s a regime change certain characters appear more prominent than the rest. The other characters tend to be tossed aside into the forgotten zone which is unfortunate for their fans. An example would be to refer to my first post on the lack of utilization of characters which highlight a few of my favorites that got tossed. Balance is the key so everyone can see the characters they like.

****************End list

DOOL fails with this checklist and I plan to send this to TPTB as often as possible as a reminder of what should be done.

Quote allmylovingdays:

Did you send it? I hope you did I agree that there should be some sort of history of the show that keeps the writers aware of what happened in the past and what was recently said even a day or two ago. I get whiplash from the change in the characters from one day to the next when they are with one person they act this way and then the next day it's as if we are on another soap opera all together. Chad & his about face about his family and then his reaction after seeing his father's death to the scene at HTS my head was spinning. And so far neither brother or her mother and Cameron too has even gone to see Lexie about Stefano's death.

I want better story telling. I want something so wonderful and exciting and not predictable.

Quote Str8tButEqual:

• Be objective. When I came in to ATWT, the first thing I said was, what is pleasing the audience? You have to put your own personal likes and dislikes aside and develop the characters that the audience wants to see

Whenever there’s a regime change certain characters appear more prominent than the rest. The other characters tend to be tossed aside into the forgotten zone which is unfortunate for their fans. An example would be to refer to my first post on the lack of utilization of characters which highlight a few of my favorites that got tossed. Balance is the key so everyone can see the characters they like.

Quote Str8tButEqual:

• 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?

An idea that I got for DOOL to do is something that I heard SNL does which is that they do table reads of script but they also brainstorm ideas for their skits. Of course doing a skit is completely different than a soap but the basic idea I think would be good for them to try something like that where everyone comes together.

Quote Str8tButEqual:

• Don't change a core character. You can certainly give them edges they didn't have before, or give them a logical reason to change their behavior. But when the audience says, "He would never do that," then you have failed

I’m just going to give a couple of examples of this:

A more recent example of this is Stefano. As stated by HouseTops in this thread, JM had an interview in the latest issue of SOD stating how unhappy he was with the way DOOL was changing his character, the father/son relationship with EJ & Stefano and the relationship between Stefano & Kate.

Another example would be Jennifer many posters believe that this hasn’t been the real Jen but a pod and her lack of caring in the return of Jack struggling through PTSD.

Quote Str8tButEqual:

• Build new characters slowly. Everyone knows that it takes six months to a year for an audience to care about a new character. Tie them in to existing characters. Don't shove them down the viewers' throats

There used to be a time when this show took things slowly, we got to know the characters, what made them tick, how they got the way they are, the layers of their personality, etc… but now it seems TPTB like to rush everything. I’ll site an example even though there’s many.

DOOL brings in Madison, at first I thought it could be promising she seemed like a strong willed woman who owned a business and was ready to be a cut throat competitor for Kate. About 1 month later she and Brady are going to bed 24/7 declaring undying love with not a whole lot of backstory or character depth other than she’s afraid of her “husband”. I don’t recall a lot of interaction with the majority of other characters in Salem only a select few. It could’ve been interesting to see if she had any chemistry with any other male characters besides Brady. I remember that there was something going on between Madison & Quinn awhile ago that could’ve been delved deeper but he left. Instead of the recycled Sami vs. Carrie in terms of taking one’s man, the show could’ve had Madison get involved with Rafe which would throw the Madison & Sami business relationship into a different direction. Daniel another possibility but we’ll never know because this soap is failing in the slow build.

Quote HouseTops: Wow, St8t, you have been really thinking about this show, probably, more than TPTB.
With all the characters leaving, they can put some half decent s/l together for the ones that are left.
Very, very interesting. I like the round table discussions idea. They may do that, already.
Looking forward to core families and their day to day stuff. The odd character coming and going is great.