Soap Operas, Films, and Novels

A key secret of the soap opera

is to take one storyline to a crisis (an ambiguity),

then as your audience waits with bated breath, fade and turn to another storyline.

Either hide it with this other storyline, or with the end of the episode –

and the credits, and the admonition to tune in next week.

And if one wants to get viewers to tune in

to a forthcoming film or programme,

tease with short clips snipped from an arousing moment.

Agatha Christie understood it also – her novels were packed with ’clues’ ,

often carefully disguised to place the finger of suspicion in the wrong place,

setting up a future surprise (clues were another ambiguity).