SOAP BOX: When did you start writing "The Edge of Night?"

SLESAR: 1968. Actually, I was on the show working with its writer Lou Scofield, who was then the headwriter back in 1966. It seems incredible it was that long ago, but it was. I decided after a few weeks that I could never collaborate with anybody. It's too difficult a process, and you have to be very close to someone to work that way. So I left the show. Then they fired Lou Scofield and hired someone else-- it's musical chairs business writing for the soaps-- and I finally became headwriter. I started in March of 1968.

SOAP BOX: While you were writing "Edge," you spent two years writing for "Somerset"-- when that serial was basically a mystery story. How did your writing for that show differ from "Edge?"

SLESAR: "Somerset" didn't start out as a mystery. The first year I took over, it was an expansion of NBC's "Another World," a domestic drama. When I took over, they said, "We'd like you to make "Somerset" into another "Edge of Night." It was a slow process: it took almost two years to make it a melodrama, but we did improve the show's ratings.

SOAP BOX: How would you compare "Edge of Night" with other serials?

SLESAR: It is impossible for me to watch the other soaps with any consistency. So I read summaries of their storylines to see that there's not an embarrassing duplication going on. In terms of basic plots, though, there are very few. Plots don't differ that much, only the people involved in them. I tend to agree with whoever said there are only 32 plots. Every plot is a conflict: man against man, man against nature, man against himself. So plotting isn't really what makes the story what it is; it's how the story is told. It's the construction-- construction, believability, and characterization.

SOAP BOX: Is your storyline created around your characters or are the characters created for a particular storyline?

SLESAR: In one sense, characters have to be created for the storyline. If you are telling a specific story that brings in new characters, you have to ask yourself who these people are that are affecting the core characters. The family of Draper Scott now is part of the storyline-- they're created for the sake of the story. I don't think it's any more possible to separate story and character than to separate body and mind. It's the same interaction.

SOAP BOX: Are there any characters you have a special fondness for?

SLESAR: No, I have no favorites.

SOAP BOX: How many cases have you handled over the years on "Edge?"

SLESAR: I would say probably about six major cases in the way of crime melodrama. There have been two stories which I've been most intrigued about. The first was the original Whitney story, with a political family embroiled in intrigue-- two brothers, one of whom was being groomed for the Presidency by his political-minded mother. The crime was introduced as a catalyst. Ask yourself this question: What if someone already in intense conflict used murder as a way out? What would the effect be on the people involved? The second story on "Edge of Night" that intrigues me most is certainly the most complex one. It grew out of an external complication-- the return of Nicole into Adam's life. Out of that germ of an idea grew the present story. It's something out of James Bond. And, it has so many ramifications, so many people involved. I've always loved the stories best where everybody in the cast is involved. It's the most difficult thing in the world to do-- not to have any parallel plots going, but to have all the characters involved in a single major one.

SOAP BOX: Would you say the central plot now is Nicole and Adam?

SLESAR: It's certainly the main plot, but it's affecting everyone even now, in ways not yet known to the audience. The threads are there. They're not yet connected, but the connections are all on the way. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, waiting for the finished picture to emerge.

SOAP BOX: What kind of audience reaction are you getting to this story and its characters?

SLESAR: There are several kinds of ways a writer can handle a story, particularly a mystery. You can let the audience know who the killer and villains are while the characters in the story are kept in the dark. Or, you can use a viewpoint character like Adam, who doesn't know what is going on and keep the viewers baffled. People have theories about "Edge of Night" storylines-- I get letters about their theories. No matter who I bring in, people say the character's involved with the mob. The idea of everybody being linked to the mob is ludicrous. But they all will be involved with the crime melodrama somehow.

SOAP BOX: The present storyline has so many Gothic elements, even the suggestion of black magic and voodoo. Is the audience being mislead by this?

SLESAR: No black magic is involved, just from a personal conviction of mine that there is no such thing as black magic. But, clues have been deliberately sown. Of course, you can't have too many mysterious elements or the audience becomes confused. You have to clear up some of the mysteries before you introduce new ones. I do hope this story won't peak for a long time, though. There will be a bit of slaughter, I'm afraid, going on here. There's nothing trivial about the problem Nicole's involved in-- there is so much at stake.

SOAP BOX: With so many mysteries introduced, how do you decide how much recapitulation to do for viewers who might have missed some of the plot twists?

SLESAR: I do think it's necessary sometimes to recapitulate. I think it's a terrible problem when you don't and when you do. The only possible way to do it is when the audience wants to see the recap: how will it affect so-and-so when they find out?

SOAP BOX: You write about so many professions, from lawyers to doctors to policemen to reporters to psychiatrists. Where do you do you research on these different workers?

SLESAR: Books on law and criminals and police procedure. Also, when I'm handling police procedures, I've gone to local precincts.

SOAP BOX: In terms of psychiatric information, "The Edge of Night" was perhaps the first TV drama to make a clear distinction between schizophrenia and multiple personality. How did you research the story on Serena Faraday?

SLESAR: This case was heavily researched. We consulted a psychiatrist who dealt with multiple personality cases. He sent us his articles and papers and gave us personal advice. As far as we know, the whole Serena Faraday story was true to life, in that she acted consistent with the nature of the illness. In most cases it's the typical Freudian truth that severe personality change almost always stems from very early childhood. Child abuse, like in Serena's case, is the most common reason for extreme behavior of this kind, where an escape defense is required. This was another story with the premise of asking yourself what happens by adding crime to a situation that's already dramatic. What happens when multiple personality commits murder? Who is to blame? That question struck me as very interesting. And there's just been a real case in the courts that parallels Serena's, where a man got off from a murder rap by pleading multiple personality. It's the case again of truth being stranger than fiction.

SOAP BOX: Do you remember the first storyline you worked on for the show?

SLESAR: I inherited the first story. When I worked with Lou Scofield, we introduced a new character-- Adam Drake. At that time they were doing a spy story that I, myself, found ludicrous. Here was a case where the head of a spy ring was married to the head of the C.I.A.-- that's not my idea of a good story. But I had originally plotted a story where Orin Hillyer's first wife Laura could return from the dead by having Orin see a woman who reminded him of Laura. When I returned to the serial, I brought that story to a conclusion and then introduced the character of Nicole. Nicole was at first a villainess, a bad girl who was just getting a divorce-- it seems like ages ago. Part of a very rich family from Capital City, she was quite unhappy and had a father who was a crooked senator, a man named Ben Travis. Nicole was introduced as a threat to Mike and Nancy Karr, but she wasn't much of a threat because the Karrs are invulnerable. The audience will not accept their vulnerability. At one point, Lou Scofield's story had the C.I.A. requesting Nancy to pretend to have an affair with Adam for reasons of blackmail. What was really wrong with the spy story was that the writers were asking Nancy to behave in a manner which she would never, ever behave in-- according to what the viewers sincerely believed about her. As a result, "Edge" received the highest rate of mail in the history of the show-- like a thousand letters a week, and all negative. So the producers ended that story very quickly... Now I am expecting a similar angry barrage from the viewers. What they were protesting before was that Nancy would agree to such a scheme. They don't like her to be untruthful, of course, but the protest was that she would never say "yes" to such nonsense, and the C.I.A. would never ask this type of personal thing to happen in order to achieve a very vague end. However, I am anticipating a great deal of viewer flack from some behavior on the part of Nancy soon. They're not going to like it-- they're going to hate it.

SOAP BOX: As the sponsor, does Procter and Gamble ever restrict or censor your material or do you have a free hand?

SLESAR: I would say I'm 99.99% free to develop the story as I want. It would be very rare for the sponsor to interfere. We have story meetings where we sometimes disagree-- and sometimes I'd appreciate it if they would disagree. There are times when someone has got to interfere and not let you wander too far away from common sense, especially in a serial. It's just not like any other art form. There is so much work involved and so many details that you must have some sort of check-and-balance. You can make terrible tracking errors, if nothing else. You could have things happen that couldn't possibly occur, because something else happened a month ago. Someone has got to react to it-- you can't work in a vacumn. I don't believe in infallibility on a serial. But most of the time, the sponsors are very trusting.

SOAP BOX: What is the process of turning a story outline into the finished script? How many steps do you go through?

SLESAR: First, there's a story projection that may cover six to eight months. From that point on, I go into daily breakdowns of the story, a page per day, and that is then expanded into the script. Periodically, perhaps every two to three months, I may have a meeting with Procter and Gamble to discuss what has been accomplished so far in the projection and any new ideas I've had. But the basic story will be very much the way it's been projected, because after all, this is a mystery we're doing and we cannot make it up as we go along. That's a privilege every other soap may have, in that they can change with the wind.

SOAP BOX: So that would be a difference in the writing requirements for "Edge of Night?"

SLESAR: That's an extreme difference. I know where I have to go. I have a mechanism that I must keep operating to reach a certain point, like in a long mystery novel. You can't let the characters take you where they will. That's sort of an advantage, but it can also be a penalty. Life is a continuous process and I know soap opera is a very organic type of drama. Nevertheless, "Edge" is a mystery story and, as such, it must be true to itself. It must be worked out the same way you would carefully work out an elaborate mystery novel. So I know "who-done-it." And I know where the story has to go in order to maintain the integrity of the solutions as they finally emerge. That does not mean, however, that if the story has a strong enough skeleton-- if it's well constructed-- that all kinds of things can't be happening: interior struggles, fights, misunderstandings, love affairs. But "Edge" is a much more structured serial, I'm sure, than anyone else's.

SOAP BOX: What about the story of Nicole's return, though? At the point she left, did you have any idea about how she would be worked back in when and if she did return?

SLESAR: I had a vague idea, yes. Maeve McGuire wanted to try her luck at other work in Los Angeles. Her character was lost at sea deliberately, so she could be restored if she ever changed her mind about returning. Nicole was a beloved character, very popular with the audience. The Adam/Nicole romance was one of the strongest on daytime TV. Theirs was purely a Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn relationship, which people seemed to like very much. And it was a romance a long time in the working out. We did not want to recast Nicole-- the audience never would have accepted that. There are certain charcaters that can never be recast.

SOAP BOX: Ever since Nicole's return, the story has been so interesting in that there is no villain or villainess in the Nicole/Adam/Brandy triangle. This was just the result of coincidence or fate?

SLESAR: It was destiny, which I thought was far more dramatic than having one of the women be bad and the other good. And yet, for me, it has been one of the biggest struggles I've had with the people connected with the show and the viewers. There has been such a struggle to force me to have Adam throw over Brandy very quickly and go back to Nicole, because people remember that was the big romance. But that would have been a total denial of the reality of the last year and a half. Some viewers really wanted to ignore the past and have Adam change his mind and go back to his wife. First of all, that's not dramatic, and secondly, it's not true. It just would not have been real for him to abandon Brandy completely.

SOAP BOX: On most other soaps you can almost immediately type new characters as being good or bad. But on "Edge," no one seems all good or all bad. Why?

SLESAR: Isn't that true of real life? When you first meet someone, you can't tell if they're good or bad. And some of the worst villains seem like the nicest, most affable people. It is the action that determines character.

SOAP BOX: What about the new emergence of Nancy Karr? She began as a writer, then became involved with her family, and now she is turning to the professional life of a reporter.

SLESAR: That's common. It's a natural part of the human process, and it happened to work in perfectly with the storyline. It's the result of her sudden feeling of loss. Nancy's husband is terribly involved with his own world and career, which does happen. Her children are gone, and the emptiness, the vacuum, that looms before her is so great.

SOAP BOX: How complex do you like to make your characters?

SLESAR: Serials are the ideal basis for characterization. You eventually believe that these people are real. They take on solidity by being on every day, if nothing else. You also have the benefit of the actors themselves, who portray a lot of their own personality traits since they're on so often. And I try to write the characters as close to the real person as possible.

SOAP BOX: Do you believe serials should be educational as well as entertaining?

SLESAR: "Edge" leans more toward entertainment. I cannot bring myself to the premise "I will now educate." What is educational in any drama is seeing parallel experiences in terms of your own problems. That's the sense in which drama educates: by giving true examples of human behavior. We're not that different from each other. Drama demonstrates it, and therefore you feel more relaxed about your own reactions.

SOAP BOX: What future directions do you feel daytime serials should take?

SLESAR: I don't consider myself an expert on all soaps, but I do feel that they are too homogenous. There are other forms for soaps to take and I do hope they will-- departures like "Ryan's Hope" was originally supposed to be. Daytime serials should not just serve as an excuse to fill air time.

SOAP BOX: What are your rewards as a daytime writer? How long do you want to continue in daytime tv.

SLESAR: As long as I can hold a pencil or use a typewriter. If you like to write, and I do very much, the serial is ideal. You work inside a framework that already exists, and I enjoy working out plots within that framework with interesting characters. That's why I enjoy "The Edge of Night."