Douglas Marland

Douglas Marland
Profile
Born	Marland Messner May 5, 1934 West Sand Lake, NY
Died	March 6, 1993 New York City, NY
Age	57 (at death)
General Hospital
Position	Head Writer
Duration	1977-79

Douglas Marland (May 5, 1934-Mar 6, 1993) was an American writer, who served as Co-Head Writer and Head Writer for the ABC daytime soap opera General Hospital.

Biography

After his job on The Doctors, Marland was hired by ABC Daytime in 1977 to work with Gloria Monty on their serial General Hospital. At that time, the show was near cancellation. Marland's writing, along with Monty's extensive production changes, helped the show rise in the ratings. Marland was instrumental in pairing the iconic of Luke Spencer and Laura Webber, as well as creating vixen nurse Bobbie Spencer, and the Quartermaine family. Although the changes at General Hospital were a success, Marland was not interested in moving to Los Angeles, where the show was produced, and didn't like the show's increased pacing by Monty. Marland left the show a year later.

Rules

During his tenure at As the World Turns, Marland gave an interview to a soap magazine with his rules on "how NOT to ruin a soap". In the years that followed, and since his death, the rules have been much discussed in the serial press and by Internet soap opera fans.

Rules for How Not to Ruin a Soap (1970s)

• Watch the show.
• Learn the history of the show. You would be surprised at the ideas that you can get from the back story of your characters.
• Read the fan mail. The very characters that are not thrilling to you may be the audience's favorites.
• Be objective. When I came in to ATWT, the first thing I said was, what is pleasing the audience? You have to put your own personal likes and dislikes aside and develop the characters that the audience wants to see.
• Talk to everyone; writers and actors especially. There may be something in a character's history that will work beautifully for you, and who would know better than the actor who has been playing the role?
• Don't change a core character. You can certainly give them edges they didn't have before, or give them a logical reason to change their behavior. But when the audience says, He would never do that, then you have failed.
• Build new characters slowly. Everyone knows that it takes six months to a year for an audience to care about a new character. Tie them in to existing characters. Don't shove them down the viewers' throats.
• If you feel staff changes are in order, look within the organization first. P&G (Procter & Gamble) does a lot of promoting from within. Almost all of our producers worked their way up from staff positions, and that means they know the show.
• Don't fire anyone for six months. I feel very deeply that you should look at the show's canvas before you do anything.
• Good soap opera is good storytelling. It's very simple.

Head writing history

Predecessor	General Hospital	Successor
Douglas Marland (1977-1978)	Douglas Marland Frank Salisbury (1978-1979)	Pat Falken Smith Margaret DePriest (1979-1981)
Irving Tex Elman (1977)	Douglas Marland (1977-1978)	Douglas Marland Frank Salisbury (1978-1979)

See also

• Characters created by Douglas Marland

Outside Links

• IMDb
• Wikipedia