by Ted Hansson

Intrigues, struggles for power and passions are what lend meaning to reality for me. Here there is a continuing drama that is as predictable and as unavoidable as the seasons. I do not know whether someone governs the seasons but God certainly exists in the wonderful world of the soap opera.

I know. For I have met him.

His name is Magnus Lind, he is 55 years old and he has been telling stories since the age of six.

TED HANSSON: Hi Magnus, are you God?
MAGNUS LIND: Not quite, really I am an author but as such I generally act a little as God himself.

 T: You have written masses of so-called soap operas such as Varuhuset (Department Store), Destination Nordsjön (Destination North Sea), Storstad (Big City), Rederiet (Shipping Line), and produced scripts for Skilda världar (Different Worlds), Vänner och fiender (Friends and Enemies), Vita lögner (White Lies). And masses of others.
What really is a soap?

M: A soap is a drama in episodes that is, in principle, never ending. The individual temperaments of the characters and the conflicts between them give rise to the action. The characters do not learn from experience and they do not develop as in a normal play. A soap contains characters that one loves and characters that one hates, a milieu that is exciting to move about in, passions and feelings that are out of the ordinary as well as moral dilemmas to reflect on. In a good soap dramatic events are constantly arising.
One event leads on to another. The characters are constantly challenged and exposed. Courage, strong feelings and powerful personalities confront each other all the time. Intrigues and struggles continually push the action forwards but there is also room for goodness.

T: What types of characters should be included?

M: A good variety is needed. Someone good, someone evil, young lovers, an older couple, and so on. Something for all ages. There should be active, exciting characters. Simple, but not one-dimensional. People who live lives that are different from our everyday routine, half-realistic contemporary figures and half fairy-tale figures.

T: You were formerly a journalist, domestic and business editor of Svenska Dagbladet (a leading Swedish daily), for example. Now you write scripts for TV shows. That sounds like completely different worlds. You started by reporting on what is called reality and now you are constructing your own worlds. But perhaps the difference is not so great?

M: Both jobs demand a narrative. A way of summarizing and making events exciting. Reality establishes limits for how exciting a story can be. A news article or newspaper report must have balance. The poetic world is only limited by what seems reasonable and the writer must use his imagination so skilfully that he creates an impression of reality. When I construct an imaginary world I pay great attention to the fictitious consequences. An imaginary company must have annual accounts, a character must have documents like letters, invented trial records or faked newspaper articles that follow the person. This is fundamental and cannot be dispensed with. What actually happens in the narrative I determine myself.
Everything is (hopefully) real but when combined into a picture of Reality every newspaper or TV programme is thoroughly misleading. But it is still all that we have to go on. Something that we can be in reasonable agreement about. Fiction, on the other hand, has much greater ambitions. It wants to show us life as this is understood by its author. In comparison with the newspaper man’s ambitions this is a serious case of hubris. But sometimes fiction hits the spot and then it generates vastly more power than does a collection of facts.

T: Is it not also hubris to claim to be an advocate of so-called reality? Fiction is, at any rate, honest. It does not claim to be other than the author’s imagination. As opposed to journalism which claims to report on what is actually happening but without taking responsibility for the events.

M: Journalists are very conscious of their limits. Few of them see themselves as visionaries or prophets, nor as muckrakers. Every writer of fiction must believe that he can narrate something about what is not directly visible.

T: You have also written soap opera for the Internet. An interactive narrative about a block of flats on Nytorget in Stockholm. How does that compare with writing for TV?

M: Writing for the Internet was a shattering experience. It was reminiscent of performing at a fair with the audience moving about rather than standing still. A situation in which hundreds of sound and light effects compete for attention and in which the public is difficult to attract and not at all respectful. Here it is not a matter of response but of dialogue. The soap audience on the Internet keeps company with the characters, writes to them with admonitions, advice, makes declarations of love or hate. The show is on day and night. The story branches out in new directions. It is a major adventure for an author to be able to enter the story at any time and create. Hidden in the language and temperaments of the characters.

T: On the square in Marrakech there are still storytellers. Surrounded by their audience they narrate stories that are constantly interrupted by comments from listeners. It would seem that the new, interactive media are taking us back to something extremely antique. If I remember rightly, the Internet soap started with an idea that the viewer could choose from various predestinated tracks and, in that way, see the story from different perspectives. But it was not until we gave the various characters their own e-mail addresses that the soap became really popular. You played all the parts, answered all the queries in the name of the characters. How did you manage to keep all the characters separate?

M: I tried to give them their own language and their own way of telling a story. I tried to understand their moods. I withdrew myself to being the person who set up the framework of the story. Sometimes I let one of the characters ask the public what they should do. Asked for advice from friends on the Net. Asked them to tell me if they had experienced anything similar, etc. And so the conversations went on.

T: The Net soap brought you into contact with an audience for whom you had been writing for a long time. Has that altered anything in your narrative technique?

M: Yes, very definitely. It has taught me that really sophisticated intrigues can not compete with simple, universal stories.
Love, generational conflicts and friendship interest everybody and everyone has a story to tell.

T: What story are you telling at the moment?

M: At the moment I am working on Vita lögner (a hospital soap). The scene I am about to write involves young Linda and the director of the hospital who is a middle-aged woman. Linda wants to work at the hospital as much as she can in order to save up for a trip around the world. She feels confined in the little town and is tired of the unreliable men of the district. Now she wants to leave. The hospital director, who thinks that Linda is just fleeing from her problems, tries to get her to change her mind. Their conversation leads to highly unexpected consequences...