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Hey Fans: Be Careful What You Wish For Because Getting What You Want Could Be Worse   Soap Opera Digest April 27, 1999   Here's the deal: When it comes to soap fans and their beloved characters, more is better. Period. That's why fans are forever begging the powers-that-be to keep their favorites front and center. Unfortunately, though, fans don't always like the way the soaps choose to showcase their faves. So it's possible to win the battle.....but lose the war.   "This is what happend." explains Hillary B. Smith, who came thisclose to leaving the role of Nora on ONE LIFE TO LIVE a few months back for this very reason. "You want your character to be frontburner. You want to work. So the show comes up with [a storyline] that does that." In Smith's case, the story involved Nora sleeping with Sam, which nuked her marriage to Bo, and fans didn't like it. (Okay, they hated it.) But in order to keep Smith on the show, OLTL had to give her something meaty to play.   "It may not have been the way I would have done it, and it may not have been something Nora would have done," concedes Smith. "But you know what? It's done. Now, let's take these characters you love, put them in an untenable situation and see if they can work their way out of it. Bo and Nora's breakup is unfortunate. The audience feels what Bo feels. They're horrified. That's the one thing I said to Jill[Farren Phelps, executive producer], 'When this goes down, Nora should be really punished. and that's the way it should be. Now, let her rise from the ashes[as]another person, having to earn her own respect back. She's got to find the person that she respects in herself before she can ask someone else to love her."   "Everybody knows that when you domesticate couples on soaps, it does tend to make them soft," agrees Phelps, who used Nora's downfall to keep Smith around. "It's wonderful to say,'I want to see my favorite characters feel good,' because we all want to visit Llanview and have a good time. But there comes a point you want to stir up the pot and make [fans] really care. Sometimes that means we have to make them angry, although, God knows, that's not the goal. But, as is the case with Bo and Nora, we needed to do something to blow them up."   And that's a story Smith was happy to stick around for? "You got it, baby," the actress confirms.