The only reason soaps last so long...

11 . 5 . 99

This was posted as a response to the someone stating that they believed that a plot-driven story was more important than a character-driven story.

...is because of the characters that soap fans, over the years, become attached to and begin to care about. If we did not care about the characters, it wouldn't matter if they were put into the most amazingly written SAGA, we wouldn't care. This is the royal "we" I'm referring to. I don't mean to speak for everyone.

This post interested me because I believe it goes against everything integral to a successful soap opera. What are soap operas? The most successful soaps have realistic characters put into unrealistic situations, and the beauty of such a conflict is seeing them be woven into an intricate and fascinating story for everyone to come away from with their jaws open and their mind expanded. This is good storytelling, and soaps are capable of doing it. This is why there are millions of soap fans across the country, because they have a vested interest in the characters that they have come to love.

ANY writer worth their salt will tell you that any good story is character driven. It's essential to driving the rest of the story. And imo there is a distinct difference between "plot" and "story". A plot is a large plan. A story is the more intricate stylings within the plot. Without the history, the small conversations, the "finding out about their pasts", these characters become CARICATURES. And nobody can relate to a caricature.

At the time I related how much those scenes with Frank wanting a "bigger kitchen" for Eleni touched me. They meant the world to me. To me, I felt connected to the show, to the character again, if only for a brief moment. Because it was real. Boring to you, perhaps, and that's fair. If that's what you crave from television or movies, then that's great. But the backbone of soap opera is the character, the flawed character (as has been discussed ad nauseum regarding Manny), and how they work with that aspect of their life. This is why Bill Bell and Douglas Marland had been so successful. They cared about their characters and ensured that the viewers did the same. When we can cry with a character, we will come back the next day. When we throw up our hands and lament at their idiotic behavior, we're more apt to *conveniently* forget to program our VCR.

Now, putting this all into a Manny context. I will respectfully disagree like crazy that Manny and the Santos' are plot driven and NOT character driven. If it had been that way all along, I don't believe we'd all be here. There's a reason why hundreds of people on this board can recite vintage scenes verbatim and why those same people now have actually said "I think I'll tape over that episode". The care that was put into these two early on is gone. In the last five months we've seen Manny thrown into 2 (almost 3) plots that have very little to actually do with THEM. And during this time, we've lost their characters, hence we've lost their character driven story, and as a result, there are many disgruntled viewers.

I realize I don't speak for everyone, but I most definitely am not only speaking for myself.

Candy