Patrick Mulcahey interview
Oct. 8th, 2007 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynnegaI just read a terrific interview with soap scribe Patrick Mulcahey, who has written for such soaps as Santa Barbara, GH, and Guiding Light. A few of my favorite quotes:
"every character must be both faithful to himself and able to surprise you. That's what people are like. If your character can't do those two things at the same time, he's not a character, he's a construct, and something's gravely wrong with how you conceived him. I would say though that creating that sort of character is not a matter of skill but of heart."
About his writing routine: "I fret, and then I write and stop fretting. Then I finish and start fretting again."
"The soaps can be good or bad, coherent or not. Each has its own personality, quirks, attracts its own audience, has its moments of glory and its bumpy rides. And the page-turning quality – What will happen next? – of the stories we tell cannot be underestimated. I felt a little bereft, for instance, when I finished Trollope's Palliser novels. They weren’t all wonderful, there were certainly longueurs, but the highs were higher than any two-hour movie or any single novel in the series could have afforded."
"every character must be both faithful to himself and able to surprise you. That's what people are like. If your character can't do those two things at the same time, he's not a character, he's a construct, and something's gravely wrong with how you conceived him. I would say though that creating that sort of character is not a matter of skill but of heart."
About his writing routine: "I fret, and then I write and stop fretting. Then I finish and start fretting again."
"The soaps can be good or bad, coherent or not. Each has its own personality, quirks, attracts its own audience, has its moments of glory and its bumpy rides. And the page-turning quality – What will happen next? – of the stories we tell cannot be underestimated. I felt a little bereft, for instance, when I finished Trollope's Palliser novels. They weren’t all wonderful, there were certainly longueurs, but the highs were higher than any two-hour movie or any single novel in the series could have afforded."
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Date: 2007-10-08 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 08:51 pm (UTC)Patrick Mulcahey is one of my writing heroes -- I say that without irony. The way he handled character and dialogue on Santa Barbara was inspirational: he acknowledged and honoured the story and character-work which had gone before, but every time he wrote, he wrote freshly and individually. I could tell a "Mulcahey day" within the first few minutes of an episode -- metaphor, allusion, subtlety.
[genuflects before him]
[hugs you, once I'm back up]
no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 08:59 pm (UTC)::hugs::