Always a fan of soap operas, my dream was
to work on one. My neighbor happened to
be a songwriter and he introduced me to his managers. They got me a meeting at ABC and a deal to
write a sample script for General Hospital.
Until they read the script and said I'd
never work in daytime. To ease my
disappointment, I wrote a YA novel about a 17 year old girl who becomes a star
on a soap. This novel, In Real Life I'm Just Kate, now titled Just Kate, got me into daytime
television and I worked in soaps for a number of years.
Having experienced both, I can now compare
the two worlds of writing.If I sit down to write a novel, I'm on my
own with complete autonomy to make all artistic choices without input.
In television, you have no autonomy and
everyone including the guy on the corner of 66th Street and Columbus
Avenue who sells Italian Ices out of a cart has input.
Life is a little dull here when I'm
writing. I'm at the computer and then
for excitement I visit my neighbors.
Life in the television studio is never
dull. It's one crisis after
another. Once I had to write a scene
that was going to be inserted into a show that was taped three weeks earlier
and was airing in two days.
When I was the headwriter for NBC's show, The Doctors, word came from the higher
ups that a character needed to be killed off.
They weren't happy with the actor, or he wasn't happy with them, I'm not
quite sure was the problem was but he had to leave. It was Alec Baldwin and I didn't want to kill
him. He's handsome, he did his job and
he was always nice to me. What more can
you expect?
I thought I would have to come up with a
way to kill him. No, I was told. Two guns would be fired at him from different
directions at the exact same moment. You
know what it looks like. A disembodied
gun coming around a door.I said to the producer
"You can't be
serious. How is the gun being
aimed?"
"Just write the scene."
Okay.
You don't necessarily have to make sense in television. In my world, you have to make sense. I want to know why the characters behave the
way they do and I want it to be in line with reality.
Is writing for television different than
writing a novel? You bet! For years after I left television, I would
catch myself writing or thinking in that soapy way. In television, you have the time pressure
which doesn't give you the luxury of thinking things through. You grab any idea and run with it. Now I think.
I still write fast, but I think slow.
Most writers have a choice to make between
writing for speed or writing for substance.
It's the rare writer who can do both.
I know I can't.
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