Soap opera storylines?

Verified answer

The main storylines in soaps centre on:

Affairs - there has to be some reason for it to be clandestine, they are cheating, their families don't get on, they are the same sex, etc.

Revenge - usually a convoluted plan relying on the plotter's anonymity.

Murder - a great opportunity to play the whodunit game.

Stray relatives - doubtful paternity, evil twins, unintentional incest, long lost relatives etc.

Weddings - they never go to plan, in fact most of the time they never happen at all.

Crossed wires - misunderstandings about who's doing what, who said what or who is in love with whom.

If you need inspiration, try checking out Shakespeare, he was writing this sort of stuff centuries ago.

Good luck.

Rubym

Well, everybody has long lost siblings that show up, usually causing trouble, sometimes a person the sibling already hates.

Then there is amnesia, everybody gets it now and then, I forget why (Sorry, couldn't resist). Most people have doubles, either their long lost sibling or just a look alike, or maybe a person who had plastic surgery to look like another (like Patty Williams and Dr. Emily Peterson on Y&R), and there are babies switched at birth, some of them are the long lost siblings found years later.

There is of course infidelity and teen pregnancies, maybe not appropriate. People go into comas as one actor and come out as another and nobody seems to notice (you could do that by having somebody in a hospital bed, closing a curtain and having somebody else get in the bed)

Babies are infants for a few months,then briefly toddlers, then school age a few months after that, a teenager within a year or two and an adult, almost as old as their 'parents' within 10 years. You could just have younger kids walk on stage and say something, walk off and an older kid could walk on a few seconds later as the same character.

I completely agree with every word that you said !! I am also tired of it !.....I have watched wrestling for many years & although wrestling has always been " fixed " dating back even before Georgeous George in the 1950s.....there was still a lot more elements of wrestling ( i.e. Bruno Sammartino ) than there is today. Vince has destroyed a lot of wrestling by relying far too much on acting & " entertainment " instead of wrestling. Thanks to Vince.....I now get to see his son Shane or a wrestler standing in the ring with a microphone for 10 or more minutes " calling out " other wrestlers & after that, if I am really lucky, I get to see Shane chased out of the ring in 2 minutes or maybe a 5 minute wrestling match afterwood. Why can't anybody admit that Vince now gives us MORE TALKING THAN WRESTLING ?? I would really like to be able to watch more wrestling & less talking in the ring. If I wanted a soap opera....I would watch " General Hospital "

Anonymous

There's mostly always marriage and a death quite close together, in soaps, to give the aspect of happiness and sadness. A perfect example of this is Max Cunningham's death on Hollyoaks just after he has been married. Here is a clip : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEV5HaOCZnY