How My Love of Soap Operas Inspired My Career as a Romance Novelist

Hanging out with my mom in the summer when I was six years old, we did what many moms and daughters do. We played in the yard and swam in the pool. We went to the library and checked out fun stories to read. And we watched Days of Our Lives, which gave me my first real taste of romantic suspense and spurred a love that would last a lifetime.

My mom’s favorite couple on Days was Jack and Jennifer, and in the summer of 1989 their romance was just getting started. Jennifer Horton, the innocent, family-oriented girl with tremendous zeal and determination falls for Jack Deveraux, a man haunted by his past wrong-doings as well as those of his adoptive and biological fathers. They are an unlikely couple for certain but fans of Days of Our Lives loved the pair and we were at the top of that list. A brand-newbie to soap operas (and adult TV of any kind) I was on the edge of my seat as Jack staged a fire and posed as a fireman in order to keep Jennifer from marrying another man, Emilio Ramirez. And, it only got crazier from there. In the infamous Cruise of Deception storyline, an evil man sets out to extract revenge on his enemies and unbeknownst to the fact, several of the show’s most beloved couples embark on a cruise, including Jack and Jennifer. A seemingly romantic event quickly turns deadly as a bomb goes off, leaving everyone to wash ashore on an island. I remember running in and out of the room with my swimming tube wrapped around my arms, pretending it was a lifejacket. Years later, I looked back thinking I must have been nuts. Years later still, I realized this was where my love of romantic suspense began.

I didn’t follow the Days of Our Lives storylines particularly closely when I was a kid. Like most kids, I went to school during the day and with the exception of half days and vacations, I wasn’t really keeping up. In spite of the joke that says you can miss 6 months of a soap opera and easily find your place (which is true, to an extent) you do miss a lot. Nevertheless, I continued to watch Days through high school and eventually began watching Passions as well, a then-new soap opera which aired during the time slot that directly followed Days. Though the writing quality for the show was seriously lacking and the people who produced it seemed to have an incredibly skewed idea of what a soap opera was, I became endeared to certain couples and continued to watch the show until it was taken off of NBC in 2007 and caught the final episodes online. Many of the couples I loved didn’t end up together in the end. It left me thinking hard about what I would have done differently, had I been head writer for the show.

The summer of my college graduation, I sat down to write my first romance novel. I worked strictly off of real-life inspiration, creating a sort of real-life fan-fiction piece, if you will. After having decided my first attempt was awful and burying it under my mattress, I tried again, this time using a mix of real life as well as fictitious inspiration. Though I wasn’t entirely aware of what I was doing, I essentially used actors from TV shows I enjoyed to play the parts of my characters in my mind. The characters and story were all mine but having a face and a voice (even if I tweaked it some) was incredibly helpful, especially when it came to crushing on the hero. As romance novelists, it’s essential that we fall for our hero. I found envisioning soap hunks I’d crushed on over the years key in making this happen.

I think for many of us as writers, we have much to work out of our systems when we’re writing our first story and then for our second, maybe not as much. Perhaps this is why a great many people write just one book and then stop writing. My own story is a little different. Since I was able to pull a five book series out of my initial idea, it wasn’t until my second series (and sixth book) that I had to begin stretching my imagination a bit. During the years in which I was completing the Pinnacles of Power Series, I’d made only a few brief notes regarding my ideas for the first story of what would be my next series, and I had little else. I loved Phantom of the Opera and wanted to create some sort of romantic suspense series revolving around the theater but I really didn’t know where to begin. I started thinking about some of the soap couples I’d enjoyed over the years, some of which stayed together, most of which did not, about what I would have done differently had I been the one writing their stories. One of the things I’d come to love about romance novels was that, unlike soap operas, they always have a happy ending. The hero and heroine get together and they stay together, living happily as a couple, presumably, forever. Oh, how I longed to give every couple I loved that same chance. In the years prior, I’d been inserting actors into the roles of characters in my mind as I read other authors’ stories. It was time to consciously do the same with mine.

As I reflected over some of my favorite soap couples, I considered what made them interesting, and what made them work as a pair. It was then that I began to look at these characters, and the ones I would create for myself, as archetypes. Characters (and real people) possess an individual mix of traits that make them unique. It was an idea that I was familiar with from writing workshops and study but concepts like this ring much truer when you can apply them to something you love. Bearing archetypes in mind, I quickly developed 5 new couples, working with actors I loved and seeking to have closure as I gave each one the “happily ever after” I had been longing for.

I’ve found that a great many authors have little interest in soap operas. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I believe at least a few who presumably don’t watch them consider them to be dribble for the mind, in comparison to books. As a true life-long soap fan, I can definitely say I’ve seen my share of bad storylines. I currently follow Days of Our Lives and The Young & the Restless, and at any given point in time, I consider myself lucky if there are one or maybe 2 storylines on either show that I’m excited about. As you might imagine, with regard to a show that airs 5 times a week, every week, there is a lot of time when things are moving slowly. Similar storylines get repeated. Most are relatively predictable. Still, soap operas inspire me. They keep dialogue running constantly through my mind. Actors come and go, providing me with a revolving rolodex of faces and voices to select from when “casting” my own characters. They’ve sparked countless story ideas, encouraged me to mix suspense with romance and urged me to attempt some larger than life ideas the average romance novelist probably would not. As authors, we need to draw our inspiration from somewhere. I’m thankful to have taken a good bit of mine from something I love.