Even with just nine soaps left on the air, there will be approximately 2,200 total hours of daytime drama produced in 2004. The oldest soap, GUIDING LIGHT, clocks in at 67 years of broadcast history -- that's roughly 16,000 episodes. Compare it to prime-time's current longest-running show, LAW & ORDER, which has done just around 325 hours in 14 years, and you'll get an idea of just how many plot twists, characters and cliffhangers we're talking about. It's the nature of the genre that sudsers devour story at an unparalleled rate, which means writers must constantly come up with new ideas. But where? Perhaps most importantly, after all this time, is there anything new?

"It's the job of the writers and network executives who keep interjecting themselves into the writers' process to come up with something fresh," says TV Guide Soap Columnist Michael Logan. "Unfortunately, I think people confuse freshness with 'Let's do The Towering Inferno.' What we're really looking for are the twists on the form, taking us in new directions, emotionally speaking. Look at what the best movies do -- like many that get nominated for Oscars -- and you see the different inroads they make in the human experience. If we can get beyond the serial killings, stolen babies and people coming back from the dead and really get into the human condition, these shows would be better off."

Author and former AS THE WORLD TURNS Writer Julie Poll believes that to achieve that level of realism, writers should look at themselves for inspiration. "First and foremost, the best source is life," she says. "When you inform storylines with your own experience, even if the story might be totally outrageous, it makes a kind of emotional sense that people can relate to. One of the things that made SEX AND THE CITY so good was that it was all based on experiences that [the writers] had. And when you're on a staff, a head writer might say, 'So-and-so is breaking up, and you need to write the breakup scene.' So, if you go back to your experience, the scene will ring true." As an associate writer at ATWT, it was Poll's job to translate a piece of the head writer's story arc into a day's script. That's what Candace Kirby, a writer for BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL who pens about two shows a week and attends weekly brainstorming meetings with Executive Producer/Head Writer Bradley Bell, does, as well. "It's inevitable, as a writer, that certain pieces of your life find their way into the scripts. But hopefully, you don't find that your life parallels the lives of the people on the soap opera," she laughs.

So yes, sometimes it's necessary to look elsewhere for ideas. "Mostly, it comes out of characters, too," adds GENERAL HOSPITAL Head Writer Robert Guza, Jr. "We try to give them massive dilemmas with which they have to deal. We don't impose a movie or a real story on characters. We go the opposite way. We start from the characters, then figure out what they want and what they would do to get it, always. Then, if it ties in with something bigger than themselves, that's fine."

That "something bigger" can come from the nightly news, movies, books and classic lore. "Eavesdropping is an art for a writer. You can get a lot of story ideas from eavesdropping," grins Poll. "A lot of soaps get stories that were ripped from the headlines, like Reva's cloning [on GL] or Lucy [being the victim of a] date-rape drug [on ATWT]. ANOTHER WORLD had a sexual-discrimination story that was right around the time of the Anita Hill hearings. There always seems to be a Romeo and Juliet construction going on."

"You get it from everywhere," says GH Head Writer Charles Pratt, Jr. "With the Mary story, the idea of having a war widow came right out of the headlines. Sometimes, they come out of great, old movie plots. Usually, you can't recognize the movie plots because it's only one little portion of the idea."

But what happens when you do recognize the movie? After all, Digest did a special feature on recent soap plots that seem to mirror movies. "They're already copycatting themselves. Better that they copy from the great work than crap," shrugs Logan. "We want new spins on the mythic themes. The success of Lord of the Rings speaks to the fact that we never OD on the good vs. evil thing. It isn't always possible [to be completely fresh] because you are talking about a fairly limited range of experiences that these shows allow. But I still think there's so much more that they can do. they certainly can stop relying on the old tricks that really don't work anymore."

Still, it's not easy to maneuver within the genre. "One thing they never do is get political. They really stay away from that. And there are certain guidelines," notes Poll. "There are places soaps can't go because of standards and practices; the medium is not as loose." Network interference is at an all-time high, which some argue further narrows the creativity field -- so it doesn't much matter where writers get their ideas if they're never allowed to bring them to the screen. "That's why when you have a situation like with Doug [Marland, late ATWT head writer], it was great because the network left them alone," says Poll.

The only person with that kind of control these days is DAYS OF OUR LIVES and PASSIONS Head Writer James E. Reilly, whose supreme confidence in his storytelling ability sets him apart, according to Logan. "Going back to the days when Doug Marland was around, and [ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE Creator] Agnes Nixon in her heyday and [B&B and YOUNG AND RESTLESS Creator] Bill Bell in his heyday -- these were people of great confidence and belief in their own convictions; they stuck to them and, right or wrong, saw them through. That's what a few select people who started this business did for years. That's the way visionaries work," says Logan. "You can't go into it like, 'Will the focus groups like it? Will my boss fire me if I try this?' You have to make art and trust that if you like it, the audience will respond."