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| Jerome & Bridget Dobson in 2008 |
The
SANTA BARBARA Blog is currently running an interview with longtime soap opera writer Bridget Dobson, who wrote for GENERAL HOSPITAL, GUIDING LIGHT and AS THE WORLD TURNS before creating SANTA BARBARA (with her husband, Jerome). She had quite an interesting perspective on soaps.
There are so many scenes over a career that involved writing (and in many cases producing) more than 6000 scripts, that it seems excessive to go into detail about any one scene or dramatic sequence.
In general, as I have already written, the writer's passion must prevail in an on-going drama.
I don't want to comment on specific GL storylines. However, I can say that whatever the storyline, it was not conceived or written for the audience. We wrote to please ourselves. We were very selfish. We wrote what interested us. There is too much work to be accomplished. Time can't be spent gauging the audience's reaction. Also, I think hoping to please an audience distracts from the passion of the writer. "Group-think" does not work. Writing by committee does not work. The intensity of the writer's creative fervour can't be diluted. (The networks and the sponsors might disagree, but that doesn't change the ferocity with which I hold this conviction.)
Bridget Dobson is the daughter of GENERAL HOSPITAL creators Frank and Doris Hursley. She married Jerome in 1961.
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