Epic Fantasy Soap Opera Story

[MadPrinceLegion]

Okay... I have this HUGE novel idea that im currently working on and need input on it. It's very confusing to fully explain but ill try.

So my novel follows 6 POV characters. The story is set in a far out future version of earth. But its not futuristic.

The own novel theme is to replicate a soap opera as far as story scope. Like in soap opera its SO many characters and storylines to follow that may and may not connect. Thats what im aiming for.

So each of POV characters all have they own separate story that may or may not connect.

There is NO plot but more so storylines. What i mean by there is no plot is, For example, The overall story plot for Harry Potter is facing and defeating Voldermont. Where as in my novel, my characters will come across a voldermont like character and might defeat him way before the end of the book (middle or even beginning) and than a NEW villian like voldermont appears in the same book.

Basically its like the story continues on and anything can happen. Its always drama/villains/conflicts etc. I knw it sound confusing.

So like ill have a character who runs into a villian who is trying to destroy the world.

Than ill have another character who is on an adventure to finding out more about himself.

Than ill have a character who is built on protecting the city from killers so he/she will take MULTIPLE murder cases within the book to solve.

Like a soap opera. Many stories to follow. Also there are your typical soap opera element storylines like rape, who the father, who killed who etc. .

An another example of what its going to happen is, One of my pov characters takes a murder case for a husband about his dead wife and than i have another character struggling with solving the case to a murder of a kid. So the POV CHaracter who is trying to solve the kid murder case will ask the POV character who is trying to solve the dead wife case for help. So now he put his murder case of the dead wife in the background and eventually will come back to it.

lol i know this may sound so confusing but if you understand what im trying to create advice/input would be great. WOuld someone find this book off putting?

 

[The Judge]

In two words, very likely.

I can't help thinking you'd be better concentrating on one plot per book, and spread all this cast of characters out in a series, so you might see all of them in every book, but each novel is focussed on one or two of them with just the one main story.

In any event, this is really a writing matter, I think, so I'll move it to GWD.


And by the way, do NOT use rape merely as a pot-boiler to add a frisson of fear and excitement or to give your hero a reason to do what he does, or to empower/punish or otherwise stereotype women. We get rather annoyed when people do that.

 

[Hex]

It's a little hard to see what you mean, from your description, MPL, and of course that's a central part of how to sell a book. Is it like anything else out there (novel-like, not soap operas)?

And what binds it together? I don't know much about soap operas (unless Buffy counts) but I get the impression they all centre on one place -- like a pub or a street or a school -- so maybe you need to identify the thing that connects the stories so there is some sort of coherent journey for the reader (even if the characters don't see it). Does that make sense?

And I'd like to second TJ's point about rape as an easy plot device. Also child murder.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Oh dear. I did both in one story... But! It was thought about, fretted over and betaed to death before I was happy to let the themes stay - to use them to spice things up the way soaps do would turn me off a book - soaps are frothy throwaway entertainment, a book goes deeper and closer making the choice of theme critical.
I think Hex is on the money here - what links them? Soaps present interlinked stories which Don't standalone. If that's what you're writing (and from your post it sounds that way) that's not a soap.
Off the top of my head, worth looking at might be Jack Glass (Roberts, I think) and Annie Proux's Accordian Crimes (non sff).
The challenge is keeping interest - each time you switch pov to a new story you need to reengage the reader in it. Which is very hard. I stopped both the above when one pov fell flat for me.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

A story of ordinary folk ... though it sounds like the current Archers Editor has lost the Plot and needs the help of Thursday Next. So careful which soap you listen/watch to see how a soap works.

You do need interesting characters, lots of character interaction. I think soaps are non-school "boarding school" stories for Adults. All tied to a single well known to characters locale (Payton Place, Crossroads, Coronation St, Dr Finlay's Casebook, Heartbeat, Archers etc).

Historically Theatre Drama was done over phone lines, before Radio, and they wanted to keep recycling the same characters hence the epsodic events typical of 1840s to 1970s British School Stories that had no real plot. When Commercial Radio started in the 1920s the format then was sponsored often by soap companies (hence Soaps). A new series with new places and people was a risk. Like the 62 Chalet School stories (1926 to 1970!) the advertisers and listeners simply wanted more of the same. Hence no real plot and importance of the almost fixed cast of characters tied to one place.

If you get the recipe right your readers will keep buying them even if there isn't really a plot, or very little, "44 Scotland St" is a good example. Of course a plot per book is even better and needed for Detective Genre (Campion, Peter Whimsy, Inspector Grant, Poirot, Holmes (which was a serial too) and very many more). So either have a plot per book or else each chapter an engaging story that would work serialised.

 

[Brian G Turner]

i know this may sound so confusing but if you understand what im trying to create advice/input would be great.

You could really benefit from reading about different story structures, so that you have a serious understanding of what you're writing. Successful soap operas are very carefully structured in a very specific way, but they use specialised elements from screenwriting, as well as principles from general story structure.

Unless you have a very clear understanding of story structure, the danger is that you'll end up pushing yourself into rewrite after rewrite, just to try and refine your story elements.

Save the Cat deals with character development arcs for individual characters, while The Writer's Journey applies more specifically to epic myth structure.

Ultimately, you should make an effort to read widely - general strong books, SFF classics, and works in your subgenre published over the past decade or so. That will all put you in so much stead to understand what you are trying to write - even better when you apply writing theory to what you read, as you see it.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Successful soap operas are very carefully structured in a very specific way, but they use specialised elements from screenwriting, as well as principles from general story structure

Very clever actually, in a dumb kind of way ...

 

[ZombieWife]

Yeah, soaps are long long long storylines that seem to never wrap up--but just kind of go on. I can see this being a series of books in a sense, but each story will build on the one prior to it. With lots of twists and turns. Lots of redemption. Soaps love the redemptive angle.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Also, if you want examples of multiple and continuous storylines, look to the longer epic fantasy cycles for comparison - Steven Eriksson's Malazan books, George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time

Yes, closest Fantasy series I ever read to a Soap. Is that why I found Book 7 to 12 a struggle, and abandoned 13 about half way through?!