A. Some might say that the only difference is that soap operas are continuing stories, while other dramas usually wrap things up in an episode. There is more than that.

A soap opera, or simply a soap, is a serial drama on television or radio that features related storylines dealing with the lives of multiple characters. The stories in these series typically focus heavily on emotional relationships.

"Painted Dreamss," which debuted Oct. 20, 1930, on Chicago's WGN is considered the first soap.

The first national radio soap opera was "Claire, Lu and Em" which aired on the NBC Blue Network at 10:30 pm on Tuesday, January 27, 1931. The show which centered around three room mates whose favorite hobby was gossiping. The show ended in 1946 when one of the leading ladies died. The stars met while attending Northwestern University

One of the defining features that makes a television program a soap opera, according to Albert Moran, is that it is a "form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode" In 2012, Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times wrote of daily dramas, "Although melodramatically eventful, soap operas such as this also have a luxury of space that makes them seem more naturalistic; indeed, the economics of the form demand long scenes, and conversations that a 22-episodes-per-season weekly series might dispense with in half a dozen lines of dialogue may be drawn out, as here, for pages. You spend more time even with the minor characters; the apparent villains grow less apparently villainous."

Soap opera storylines run concurrently, intersect and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent narrative threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines, but not always all of them. Especially in daytime serials and those that are screened each weekday, there is some rotation of both storyline and actors, so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely bring all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends, there are several other story threads at differing stages of development.

The main characteristics that define soap operas are "an emphasis on family life, personal relationships, sexual dramas, emotional and moral conflicts; some coverage of topical issues; set in familiar domestic interiors with only occasional excursions into new locations "Fitting in with these characteristics, most soap operas follow the lives of a group of characters who live or work in a particular place, or focus on a large extended family. The storylines follow the day-to-day activities and personal relationships of these characters." Soap narratives, like those of film melodramas, are marked by what Steve Neale has described as 'chance happenings, coincidences, missed meetings, sudden conversions, last-minute tragedies.That is what makes viewers "tune in tomorrow."

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