Plotting by committee is SUCH a grand way to write a story. Especially when it appears the committee was never all in the same room at one time.
"What did we do yesterday?"
"I don't remember."
"Never mind...just change it today."
"Works for me!"
Actually, the writers would often hold marathon brainstorming sessions at Sam Hall's kitchen table. But the thing is, the ideas they would come up with had to be run past DC before they could actually make it into storylines. And apparently it wasn't unusual for DC to shoot down almost every one of their ideas and then impose his own...
That having been said, though, it's also true that often the writers couldn't remember exactly what had happened in previous storylines. In fact, they'd sometimes go out to the fans who were seemingly always gathered outside the studio to ask them questions about what had happened. And quite obviously, if it's a case that they relied on what they were told, a few of those fans obviously never remembered correctly either.
Hmmm...maybe it really was true that a lot of the '60s/'70s DS fans had short attention spans...
(But I guess I wasn't one of them because I've recently come across copies of letters that a cousin in Illinois and I used to write to each other, and we would often go on and on in great detail about past DS storylines, with both of us always seeming to have had everthing down pat, even to the smallest detail. Pity we didn't live close enough to NYC to stand outside the studio on those days when the writers needed help jogging their minds.
I only wish I still had that sort of memory for the things I currently do because somedays I can't even remember everything I did the day before, much less what I might have done and/or watched months or even weeks beforehand.
(But I suppose the recent post count problem is more than proof of that, isn't it?
))