Why are daily serials called soaps

Today not only soap powder is sold with soaps; the range of products grew and also the range of buyers, men and women, young and old, people of various status.

To begin with, the production costs are very low, therefore almost every country with own television stations has its own soap. The next important feature is the structure of soap operas. Soaps begin with a hook — here the most important scenes of the previous episode are taken up — , but they also end with a cliffhanger — here several dramatic situations are left open to encourage us to view the following episode to see what happens.

The next characteristical feature is the slow development of the plot — storylines are often developed over several hours of programme time.

It is easier to write for an soap than for series because for the writers there is not the problem to write a particular storyline that lasts exactly 40 or 50 minutes. The emphasis is rather on talk than on action. Emotional situations are tested out, there is an emphasis on reflecting the personal problems.

The organisation of place is an easy one, because there is always the same setting the livingroom, the bar, the hall in school, the shop at the corner The organisation of time depends on the type of soap. Day-time soaps mostly refer to the one day one hour or less scheme. Prime-time soaps build their own kind of calendar to help the audience to orientate themselves. A very important feature of soap operas is that the audience gets familiar with the characters and the settings very quickly.

With soaps you can speak of a certain kind of predictability. As the audience knows the characters as well as their behaviour the plot is predictable. New characters and changing storylines prevent the plot from being too predictable and getting boring. One chapter I want to dedicate to the British soaps. I was amazed to learn how large their supply is. There are soaps for everybody from everywhere.

However, they can also be distinguished in a geographical sense. So there are three different kinds of soaps:. On British TV I came across the whole range described above.

Soap Operas. What is a soap? Term Paper, 13 Pages, Grade: gut. A R Andrea Rieger Author. Pshhhh…blame auto correct like I do. Adam July 5, am. I blame Facebook.

Peggy Tupper September 10, am. Steve Katz October 7, pm. Dave Jones June 13, am. Angus October 12, am. Because women were the primary audience, and the target audience of soap advertisements.

This is wierd at thesame time amazing…. Agnaldo Amaral June 30, am. Debra Huff August 24, am. Dev Kumar. Previous Page Print Page. Next Page. Dashboard Logout.