I've been going on for a while about how there never could have been an Olivia Spencer, if there hadn't first been a Holly Norris. I have a lot of love for Holly. She paves the way for a completely different type of soap opera woman. Whereas once there were two types of soap opera women - heroines and villainesses - Holly is neither. She is the antiheroine: not malevolent, but not benign, either. Well-meaning, but not above dishonesty or adultry. Not exactly treacherous or conniving, but definitely ambitious and strong. And her ambitions involve a lot more than landing the perfect husband and baking the perfect batch of cookies. She holds her own. She gets ahead in the world of business.  She can be mean. She can also be vulnerable.  Holly is smart, witty, sexy, a little self-loathing, neurotic,  tortured, and secretly tender-hearted. She is loyal. She enjoys sex without being a slut. She doesn't suffer fools. She's learned, early on, that too-nice guys often finish last, and that the only person she can really count on to be there for her is herself. And she rocks the hell out of a well-tailored suit. 

When they made Holly, they didn't break the mold. They kept it as a prototype for a later antiheroine: Olivia Spencer. In building a soap opera heroine such as Holly or Olivia, there are some key steps that must be followed, and vital ingredients that need to be part of the mix, with a certain amount of variation not only allowed, but reccomended.

1. Give her a solid background story. Strong characters don't just drop into town, without any history. They're three-dimensional and they have baggage.

Holly is the only daughter of a a broken home, who never had the benefit of a father's guidance until, straight out of high school, she rejected the idea of college and went to work at her father's company.  Sadly, her father didn't take any great interest in her and encouraged his eager young employee, Roger Thorpe, to keep her out of his hair. Could he have had any idea the series of events that would unfold thanks to his reluctance to be more of a father?

Olivia was raised in an island nation, to working class parents who worried about her dreams being too big and unrealistic, and her ambitions being beyond her ability to acheive. She always wanted more, they always pushed her to settle for less. Could they have guessed that she would one day sit on the Board of Directors at Spaulding, and own a hotel? When Olivia says "I've fought for everything I've ever had", she means it.

2. Every great antiheroine needs an obsession or two, a person or pivotal event that has made an impact and left a lasting impression...so much so that every significant action she takes can be traced back to its roots in her past.

For Holly, all roads lead back to Roger Thorpe. Always. Her pivotal person is Roger, and her pivotal moments are twofold: the moment when, as a teenager, she first meets Roger...and the day, years later, when her rapes her. Everything she does, every inch of the woman she becomes is steeped in this obsession. So much so that, when Roger finally dies, it's as if a part of her has died:   

                 http://www.youtube.com/watchv=MmZOiw6YNsU&feature=related (from 1:20-3:13)

Olivia's primary obsession and prime mover is her tumultuous relationship with her mother, who made sure to let her know that she had less than other people. This reference point comes up again and again for her, even though she rarely mentions it. Her drive to be financially independent, her devotion to and over-indulgence of her children, her relationships with various men - they are all about her trying to prove to herself that she's worthy of grand things and/or rebelling against the mother/daughter relationship that was all about being told that she would never amount to much. Olivia's issues with her mother are compounded by the tragic fact that her mother literally dropped dead in the middle of a mother-daughter argument. 

3. Buy this lady a drink! The antiheroines do everything in a bigger, grander way than other soap women: The Housewives. The Ingenues. The Matriarchs.

Holly is lost without a glass or four of the best white wine. 

Olivia is a firm believer in dry martinis as a panacea.

Latter-day, watered-down Holly (who isn't really Holly, at all, as far as I'm concerned) declares herself an alcoholic. I don't buy it. These aren't drunks - they're just hard-drinking women.  They don't get tipsy.  They get drunk. They get sloppy. They wake up with regrets and hangovers.  The move on.

4. A chance to be one of the guys. The antiheroine doesn't do very well when it comes to devloping and maintaining female friendships. She's at her best in a room full of men, and she's more than capable of rolling up her sleeves and dealing a hand of poker or racking up billiards. Think The Rat Pack meets The He-man Woman Haters Club. 

While Holly eventually forms a bond with Vanessa, her truest friends, her best friends, her life-long friends are Ed and Ross. They form a tidy, little trio. And, really, the truth must be told: Holly has no greater friend (or enemy) than Roger. She hates him. She resents him. It's a completely unhealthy relationship. But she loves him, too and, in a strange way, she trusts him. Time and again, they turn to one another in a twisted sort of friendship. He's the one person in the world who knows her best. When Holly's house has been broken into by a stalker and both Ed and Ross fail to take her fear seriously, she drops the bombshell on them: "Roger would have believed me." She might as well be saying, "At least Roger is a real friend!"

Before fate  throws her a curveball and brings Natalia into her life, Olivia is pretty much a man's woman. Like Holly, she enjoys the company of men - especially men she has had relationships with. Her chief confidants? Josh, Bill, Buzz, and Jeffery - all men she has been married or engaged to. It's with them that she can let loose and relax. Even her relationship with Gus is really about friendship, and not a romance.

Yes, the antiheroine gets married a lot but, most times, she's got enough grace and style to end up good friends with her exes. These guys may not  all want to be married to her, anymore, but they know a good time when they see it. 

5. A worthy female adversary. The antiheroine needs to get into a little girl-on-girl adversarial action now and again.

Holly and Alexandra. Holly and Maureen. Holly and Eve. Holly and Jenna. You haven't experienced the full antiheroine experience if you haven't seen her go toe-to-toe with another strong woman.

As for Olivia, do I even need to say it? Actions speak louder than words. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt8GuMWtzgI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsuperherolunchbox%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded 

6. Ouch! That's some razor sharp wit, right there. The antiheroine is smarter than the average bear, and quicker on the uptake. Her most powerful weapon is her tongue, and it packs a wollop.

Holly has been known to refer to her daughter, Blake, as "Soon Yi" (Blake, does, after all, hop into bed with Holly's boyfriend) and Olivia ribs staunchly Catholic and terminally guilty Natalia that great friendships have been built on a lot less than mutual guilt.

7. A healing relationship with a child (or two.)

Holly and Blake have their ups and downs, but Holly finds unlikely solace - and salvation - in a 'tween-age Michelle Bauer. Michelle has recently lost her mother, found out her father's dirty little secret, and is entering headlong into adolescence, so she's pissed off at the world. And Holly? Holly is just...pissed off at the world, because being pissed off at the world is one of the things she does best. Odd bedfellows but, in Michelle, Holly finds a kindred spirit...someone who likes it just fine that Holly isn't warm and fuzzy.

Olivia's life is changed when Emma is born. It is as a mother that we see the tender side of Olivia, and a brand of humor that is soft and fun, not pointed. She comes to know her other daughter when Ava is already a grown woman, but the mother-daughter bond becomes strong in record time. The love of her children gives Olivia an opportunity to learn that she can be selfless, that she can make the big sacrifices for another person.

8. Secrets. The antiheroine always has a secrets. Lots of them. Big ones.  

Holly, married to good Doctor Ed Bauer, has a secret affair with Roger Thorpe. When She becomes pregnant with and gives birth to Roger's baby, she keeps the baby's paternity a secret and passes little Christina (AKA Blake) off as a Bauer. Years later, she keeps secret Blake's faked pregnancy, and her own night at Cliff House with Roger. 

Olivia's secrets are many. She keeps Edmund's plan to kill Reva a secret. Married to Alan, she harbors a secret desire for his son, Philip. She secretly plies Billy with alcohol, getting him to fall off the wagon. She secretly has Beth's tell-all diary published. She fakes the death of her baby, secretly keeping a very alive baby Emma away from the Spauldings. She tells no one about having been raped as a teen, giving birth to a baby, and giving the baby up for adoption. 

The biggest secret of all? Holly and Olivia are actually pretty nice.

9. A career carved, seemingly, out of thin air. 

Holly, marries a media mogul and makes it her mission to learn about the business from the bottom up. Starting out with a small radio show on a Swiss station, Holly moves up the ranks and, within a few years, owns and manages her own television station and, later, a newspaper. Miraculous.

Olivia, from such humble beginnings, moves up the ranks in the hospitality industry in equally miraculous style. She owns and manages her own upscale hotel before she's 40. 

The antiheroine doesn't need higher education (although one suspects Holly might just have a couple of useless degrees tucked away in the closet, as Roger notes that she reads books only she and the librarian at Oxford have ever finished) because she's graduated top of her class from the school of hard knocks. Having learned that no one is going to just give her a livelihood, she creates one. It's pure antiheroine chutzpah that allows her to pull it off, and pull it off beautifully. 

10. An organ transplant issue.

Holly selflessly gives up a kidney to save the life of little Maureen Reardon.

The flip side? Olivia's life is saved when, in a tragic twist of fate, Gus is killed in a motorcycle accident and she receives his heart.  

 © 2009 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves