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Mr Malone,I loved the story of Todd and Blair, they took me by suprise though. I was there before I even knew it. I read somewhere that you sort of based them on Rhett and Scarlett in Gone With The Wind. That might explain my obsession with them as it is one of my favorite books. Now for the question, was Todd always Rhett or was this story actually going to be about Max and Blair, but switched around a bit because Todd Manning was going to be hanging around as the Lord Heir and he needed a mate that he couldn't destroy before she humaned him up a bit? I could see Blair being Scarlett(ah, she still is, I love that) Max being Rhett and Cord being sort of an Ashley type character? I always did see Luna as sort of a Melanie type. After Todd and Blair were put together, I still saw Cord as sort of the Ashley character but I saw a lot of Melanie in Marty Saybrooke as well as in Luna. Was this your intention?
One more question, I write quite a bit myself. I always find it necessary to have a voice in my stories that reflects my own. One of my favorite characters was Andrew Carpenter, he was so wonderfully human and so much more than what a minister usually is in a soap opera. Was he your voice?
One more thing, you are without a doubt my favorite HW of all time. I'm a soap fan from way back and you really knew how to tug at my heartstrings.
Thank you for your time,
Liz Conklin
. Dear Liz Conklin,
First, thank you very much for your kind words about my years at One Life. I remember them with affection and pride. I'm glad you recall the tugs at the heart with such warmth.
For a direct answer to your first question, please look at a Q&A I did for the website in which I talk in some detail about the pairing of Todd and Blair.
Gone With The Wind analogies became something of a joke at One Life and later at Another World because I used the novel as a paradigm so often. It wasn't however because I'm southern but because GWTW is a familiar source from popular culture of classic romance: it is built on a structure popular since the middle ages, in a tradition Margaret Mitchell was using very self-consciously. For instance, her Scarlett is modeled on Becky Sharp and her Melanie on Amelia from Thackery's Vanity Fair.
Romance is often based on triangles because its erotic power depends upon obstacles and a triangle (usually adulterous) poses an inevitable obstacle. (Other obstacles might be religious or class barriers, incest or racial taboos and so on: One is rich, one is poor; one is noble, one is a commoner; one is black, one is white; one is Catholic, one is Jewish, etc).
There are two core triangles:
In the first, a woman is the pivot:
Strong "dangerous" man.../...strong woman (vixen)..../.....idealistic man
Max .................../.........Blair............../.........Cord
Rhett................../........Scarlett............/.........Ashley
Classic examples would be:
Lancelot................/.......Guinivere............/.........Arthur
Heathcliff............./.........Cathy............../..........Edgar
Another example from One Life:
Jake................../..........Megan............../..........Andrew
In the second triangle, a man is the pivot:
"dangerous" woman....../......conflicted man......./.......Idealistic woman
Scarlett............../.........Ashley............./........Melanie
Blair................./..........Max.............../........Luna
(This is the classic Madonna/Whore split that appears in Westerns as the saloon girl vs the schoolmarm choice. In daytime the split may be done with twins (one good, one bad) or even a split personality (Viki/Niki)
So yes, in a sense the original pairing of Max and Blair used a Rhett/Scarlett dynamic. The Todd/Blair scenario came much later, of course,and evolved from its own story development: At first Blair wanted Todd because she knew (before he did) that he was the Lord heir. She thought she could get control of him and his money (as she'd done with Asa when she first came to town). Todd proved hard to handle.
As for your question about "voice," I think that different parts of any writer find their ways into different characters in different works, but perhaps some more than others. And so yes, Andrew Carpenter probably spoke my heart most fully in the early days of One Life. He was however more directly modeled (the bird-watching, the musical ability, etc.) on a combination of two close friends of mine--one a young married Episcopal priest and the other a young professor at a divinity school.
Again thanks for your generous praise. Best of luck with your own writing.
Michael Malone