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* . *

HOW TO WRITE FOR
MOVING PICTURES
By MARGUERITE BERTSCH
By courtesy of the Famous Players-Paramount Studios
STAGING A SCENE
Note the care as to detail in both setting and costume to
keep it historically true to the period in which the photo-
play is laid. Note also the placing of the lights, the
camera-man at work, the director outside the camera
lines directing the scene through a megaphone.

HOW TO WIRITE FOR
MOVING PICTURES
A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION
AND INFORMATION
BY
MARGUERITE BERTSCH
DIRECTOR AND EDITOR FOR THE VITAGRAPH COMPANY
AND THE FAMOUS PLAYERS FILMI COMPANY
ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

30 3.2%
T}552 hº
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
EY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . II
II. THE MARKET . tº e o e g
THE MARKET GOVERNED BY THE PUBLIC . . . . Ig
I.
III.
IV. GETTING ONE'S STORY . . . . . . . . . 23
V. STORIES THAT “GET AcRoss” . . . . . . . 27
WRITING THE PHOTOPLAY
VI. A FORM MODEL . . . . . . . . . . . 32
VII. THE “PICTURE EYE” . . . . . . . . . 42
VIII. THE “PoſNT” of A STORY. . . . . . . . 46
IX. MoRE ABOUT THE “PoſNT” of A STORY.'s. . . . 5o
X. THE “TELLING” SCENES . . . . . . . . 54
XI. THE “BUILDING” SCENEs . . . . . . . . 59
XII. TERSENESS . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
XIII. TERSENESS vs. BALDNESS . . . . . . . . 69
XIV. SUBTITLES . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
XV. SUBTITLING AS AN ART. . . . . . . . . 79
XVI. CUTTING Down of SUBTITLEs . . . . . . 84
XVII. LONG AND SHORT SCENES . . . . . . . . 89
XVIII. THE “CUT BACK” . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
XIX. THE “DIssolve” AND THE “Double Exposure” . 97
XX. THE “CLOSE UP” . . . . . . . . . . Io2
& XXI. THE CAMERA “STAGE”—ITS RANGE. . . . . Ioë
XXII. PoſNTERS ON THE “ForM” OF A MANUSCRIPT . . III
XXIII. THE TITLE . . . . . . . . . . . . II6
XXIV. THE SYNOPSIS . . . . . . . . . . . I2I
XXV. THE CAST . . . . . . . . . . . . I26
PRODUCTION OF THE PHOTOPLAY -
XXVI. PRODUCTION OF THE PHOTOPLAY . . . . . . 131
XXVII. ECONOMY IN SETTINGS . . . . . . . . . I37
XXVIII. RELATIVE VALUE OF IDEA AND FORM . . . . . I42
XXIX. THE Novice AND THE WRITER OF REPUTE . . . 147
XXX. PLAGIARISM-THE NEw TWIST . . . . . . . 151
XXXI, ORIGINALITY DETERMINED BY WHAT Is Hackneyed 56
V
VI
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
XXXII.
XXXIII.
XXXVI.
XXXVII.
XXXVIII.
XLI.
XLII.
XLIII.
XLIV.
XLVI.
XLVII.
XLVIII.
XLIX.
L.
LI.
LII.
LIII.
LIV.
LV.]
P
HACKNEYED THEMES IN THREE GROUPS
GROUPI . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
GROUP 2 " . . . . . . . . . . .
GROUP 2 (continued) . . . . . . . . .
GROUP 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Novel THEMES AND WHERE TO SEEK THEM . . .
THEMES BASED ON MAN’S THREEFOLD
CONFLICT -
MAN's THREEFOLD ConFLICT WITH LIFE: THE BASIS
OF ALL PoSSIBLE THEMES .
THEMES BASED ON MAN's CoNFLICT WITH THE So-
CIAL ORDER
THEMES BASED ON MAN's CoNFLICT WITH NATURE
THEMES BASED ON MAN's INNER ConFLICT WITH
HIMSELF .
THEMES BASED ON MAN'S SOCIAL CONFLICT
THE FAMILY tº gº tº º tº tº º
HIS RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE THE FAMILY .
PUBLIC OPINION, IDEALs . tº º º
WHAT CONFLICT MEANS TO A PLAY OR STORY
. ConFLICT AND BIG DRAMATIC SCENES .
CoNFLICT SIMPLE AND COMPOUND .
HEART INTEREST .
DIVIDED INTEREST
DIVIDED INTEREST. tº tº tº
INCONSISTENCIES AND ANACHRONISMS
THE Too-THIN PLOT-THE HALF-BAKED PLOT-
THE NON-APPEALING PLOT-USE OF ACCIDENT—
CHARACTERISATION .
UNFORTUNATE CHOICE OF COMEDY SUBJECT-PAR-
TISANSHIP-FALSE VIEWPOINT—RELIGIOUS
HISTORICAL SUBJECTS . . . . i
THE OPTIMISTIC VIEWPOINT—SATIRE—PHILOSOPHY
—FAULTY EXPOSITION.—THE PRODUCTION
THE ENDING OF THE PHOTOPLAY
CENSORSHIP
WHAT CONSTITUTES MORALITY IN PHOTOPLAYS
THE POWER OF MENTAL SUGGESTION
LVI. THE EDUCATIONAL STORY * c e º ºs
LVII. MoTION PICTURES,--THE GREATEST EDUCATIONAL
FoRCE OF ALL TIMES . . . . . .
AGE
I61
I66
171
176
I8I
185
189
I93
I97
2O2
206
2IO
2I4
2I9
223
227
23I
236
24I
246
25I
256
26o
264
268
272
ILLUSTRATIONS
STAGING ASCENE . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece
PAGE
STAGE CARPENTERS AND PAINTERS AT WORK ON A LARGE STAIRCASE
FOR AN ELABORATE SET . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
TAKING A PANORAMA OF TRAFFIC FROM AN ELEVATED CAMERA . 44
DYNAMO CAR PROVIDING A PORTABLE LIGHTING SYSTEM FOR Mo-
TION PICTURE PHOTOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . 44
WORKING IN SUNLIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7o
“MAKE-UP” FOR THE CAMERA . . . . . . . . . . . 94
DRESSMAKING FOR THE SCREEN . . . . . . . . . . it.
A BUsy CoRNER IN THE UPHOLSTERY DEPARTMENT . . . . II 2
AN ExtERIOR SET IN PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION . . . . . 134
MoDEL of A CoAL MINE USED TO SHow ExPLOSION EFFECT . . 158
PREPARING A FIELD FOR A BATTLE SCENE . . . . . . . 178
THE PLANTING OF ExPLOSIONS FOR SPECTACULAR EFFECTs . . 204
A STAFF of CAMERA-MEN BELONGING TO ONE COMPANY . . . 232
THE TRIMMING OF A FILM . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
HOW TO WRITE FOR
MOWING PICTURES
HOW TO WRITE FOR
MOVING PICTURES
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
IN a series of lessons on the writing of the
photoplay, as comprehensive as we have endeav-
oured to make those herewith appended, perhaps
the best introduction to what they will cover is
a consideration of the lines along which they will
most logically develop. During the past six years
that we have served as an editor we have man-
aged to become acquainted with many promising
writers and have turned their talent to valuable
account toward Photoplay Writing;-also we
have considered the work of thousands with
whom it was impossible for us to come into such
contact. It is in the realisation that there will
always be countless numbers who cannot hope for
any word of personal criticism to make their
work more valuable to themselves and to the mov-
ing picture manufacturer, that we have compiled
in this book what a rather lengthy experience
II
12 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
may have given us, in the hope that it may serve
them as a guide and an encouragement.
As we progress, no point that can in any way
bear on the sale of your manuscript will be left
untouched, and it is our hope that no question
that may now perplex will remain unanswered.
Here's to you for a time when you shall have,
as they say of a writer, “arrived,”—a time when
you shall not need to wonder why a manuscript
was returned to you, or to grope painfully for
what is wrong with it, La time when you shall
know to a certainty the strength or weakness
of every turn in your story, even as it shapes
itself in your mind. It is this moment of “arrival”
that is one’s introduction into the writer’s heaven.
It is the moment, financially, when a field that
has long been barren begins to yield a goodly
harvest. It is for this moment that we mean
to work with you, pointing out what the mar-
ket will demand of you, and dealing with those
stumbling-blocks in your path, the besetting
faults of the novice.
This being our object, it is needless to say
that the wealth of material before us shall, with
all its ramifications, follow two lines only,–the
script and the market, and that it shall be our
persistent effort to make these lines meet.
Any adverse opinion to the contrary, there
is no one who would be so happy to find avail-
able to this market the scenario you submit,
INTRODUCTORY I3
as the long-suffering editor or the company he
serves. When you stop to think that the larger
concerns receive from one hundred to two hun-
dred photoplays or scenarios a day for considera-
tion, and that out of this number they are for-
tunate if they find as many as two or three
that are at all worthy of production, you will
realise how like an oasis in a desert is a really
good script.
It is toward this mastery of your art that
the lessons herewith introduced are intended,
and a lengthy and uncommon experience en-
ables us to say that they will set to rights many
who are floundering far nearer to the goal than
they now dream. It is these who are so near
the goal and yet so far away that lend their
touch of sadness to the busy hours of an editor's
life; for it is always sad to contemplate the tons
of effort that have gone astray for the want
of perhaps but a few words of individual gui-
dance. But “Art is long, and time is fleeting,”
and an editor cannot give the individual help
and encouragement he would like to, except where
he can, as in the present case, meet his friends
through a far-reaching medium.
As we advance, we aim that you will learn to
judge a photoplay so capably that you your-
selves could decide fairly on the acceptance or
rejection of a manuscript, and also that you will
learn to know the ramifications of the market,
I4 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
in accordance with which you will have to work
if you would write successfully.
It is to be hoped that each and every one of
you will dig out from his trunk that favourite
story or photoplay that somehow has never found
a market, and that he will work with it, guiding
it by the light we hope to shed, past the breakers
that once wrecked it, into the harbour of suc-
cessful landing. Toward this end we have en-
deavoured to omit nothing that will lay open pos-
sibilities in a field that has not even as yet sug-
gested its farthest limit.
CHAPTER II
THE MARKET
IF the market is, as has been stated, to be our
goal, let us keep our minds fixed thereon from
the start, and take no step from the inception
of our idea to its complete expression, that is
not in the direct line leading thereto. It is the
more important that we firmly establish our goal,
for ideas are legion and devious are the ways
by which they may be conveyed. The market
remains the one fixed point to guide us.
Perhaps the finest single line of advice to a
writer is, “Do not write until you have some-
thing worth writing about.” Your having some-
thing to say presupposes a some one to whom
it shall be said. The more worth while your idea,
the more eager are you that a great number
shall share in it. Wherefore the greater the
writer, the more it behooves him to study that
market which shall be found to be not nearly
So restricting as is generally supposed, and not
in any sense discouraging to good work.
How the requirements of the market tend to
promote rather than to stand in the way of ex-
I5
16 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
cellence, will be shown in the following classi-
fication. Roughly speaking, the vast multitude
of unmarketable scripts can be divided into two
groups;–those that have failed to achieve a mar-
ket through inherent inferiority of idea or treat-
ment, and those that have failed, despite their
better qualities, because they have violated in one
or another of those points that would render even
a good photoplay unmarketable.
Under the heading of those photoplays that
have failed through inferiority there are no divi-
sions so well represented as those of the thread-
bare plot, the plot that is found too thin, the story
that is built on incident, and the plot that turns
on accident. Then there is the half-baked plot
that might have become a well-baked plot if it
had been allowed to remain a little longer in the
oven of the writer’s mind,-and there is the
cheap plot that could never have become anything
else, because it was cheaply conceived. Lastly,
let us not forget the comedy that fails through
an unfortunate choice of subject. We have
chosen to class this among those that fail because
they are poor, rather than among those that fail
through some other violation; for it follows that
a subject unfortunate for comedy will kill any
laugh the comedy might otherwise have called
forth, and a comedy that gets no laugh is a bad
comedy.
While we must leave to following chapters the
THE MARKET 17
enlarging on these points, we have mentioned
them here to destroy at the start the bogey of an
arbitrary market that decapitates all nobler ef-
forts through inappreciation, and exalts the gross
and commonplace through ignorance.
This brings us to the second big division of
our subject, the consideration of those photo-
plays of merit which fall short of a sale through
their violation of one or more of those principles
that restrict the market.
What these principles are it behooves every
photoplaywright to know, and no branch of our
subject is of greater interest, for it involves prac-
tically a study of our audience. No one who has
not surrendered himself to those for whom he
writes with a devotion second only to the fer-
vour he feels for his ideal, can conceive of the
absorbing interest of such a study. We do not
imagine a great musician as ignorant of that in-
strument from which he is to draw his vibrant
chords and wondrous harmonies, how then can
we conceive of a photoplaywright as without a
knowledge of that audience on whose minds and
emotions he is to play as on the strings of an
instrument.
Then, too, the photoplaywright's audience is
compound and gigantic beyond the public of
dramatist or novelist, and falls, because of its
extensiveness, into three great classes. The vivid,
visualising nature of the photoplay makes it
18 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
equally intelligible to the ignorant and the most
enlightened, each taking from it what their vary-
ing degrees of intelligence will permit them to
absorb. This gives us two of the three great
classes that constitute the photoplaywright's audi-
ence,—those to whom he must write up, and
those to whom he must write down. How both
of these extremes can be met in one and the same
picture will be brought out in the following chap-
ters. For the third class, we must look to the
widespread area of this earth's territory that is
covered by the releases of the foremost motion
picture manufacturing plants. The larger con-
cerns, reaching every corner of the habitable
globe, are bound to consider, as must those writ-
ers who supply them, a foreign market. This
giyes us the third great division of the photo-
playwright's public, namely, the foreign market.
Under this last heading, we must include also
those far-off sections of the home country that
are governed by industrial and social conditions
different from our own.
CHAPTER III
THE MARKET Gover NED BY THE PUBLIc
WHAT is common to all audiences will be found
to lie very close to those principles and ideals
which actuate a people in the affairs of every-
day life.
Regardless of those successes that have had
their day through a risqué element which the
author and producer handled with a delicacy that
brought it just this side of the offensive, there
is perhaps no factor in the public mind which can
be so banked upon as its response to what is
pure and elevating. Realising that the human
soul is so constructed that goodness attracts it
like a magnet while evil repels, and that those
individuals in whom this is not true are classed
by all others as abnormal, we have the basis of
the first great requirement, a wholesome atmos-
phere.
By this we do not mean that the audience pre-
fers to be fed upon a milk and sugar diet, and
that it has not a deep and abiding interest in all
those phases of life which it knows to exist,
whether of good or evil. On the contrary, the
I9
20 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
darker side of life, the mistakes, the soul up-
heavals, present a light and shade to an audi-
ence that is fraught with the keenest dramatic
interest. It is only in the manner in which he
handles such a theme that an author can offend.
So long as the author's point of view regarding
his subject coincides with that of the audience,
his work will be a serious, wholesome exposition
of life's facts, be they dark or light. Too often,
however, an author gets the notion that an audi-
ence's clamouring after knowledge is a hanker-
ing after vice. Working under this misguided
judgment, he presents vice to the audience, lov-
ing it; crime, excusing it, and the dark, unpleas-
ant side of life, bringing out no larger truths to
justify its introduction.
Nothing is more quickly detected, nor more
keenly resented by an audience than such an at-
tempt to set at defiance those principles on which
their beings are founded, and in opposition to
which there is no life.
Among those deep-seated feelings that no au-
thor can afford to violate is that great “third
law of nature,” a love for children. Any picture
that treats lightly or flippantly “one of the least
of these,” fills with a sickening revolt any audi-
ence, regardless of time, place or condition.
Outside of these points which morally offend
there are requirements brought to bear upon an
author by the general psychology of his pub-
º, CAREENTERs AND PAINTERs. At WORK ON A LARGE Pu courtesy of the Morosco-paramount sº
STAIRCAsº For AN ELABorº" ºr
The white screens standing on the floor ar
e used during the taking of scenes
to reflect the light, throwing it on harsh sh
adows to soften or remove them.







MARKET GOVERNED BY PUBLIC 21
lic. Among these requirements none will be
found of greater interest to the student than
that which deals with the sadness of an ending,
or with the pessimism or optimism of a subject.
Between the public to whom an author must
write up and the public to whom the author must
write down, there is suspended the troublesome
question of satire. How this telling branch of
literature can be made sufficiently delicate for
the one class without causing it to sweep far
over the heads of the second class, is a study in
itself. This, too, is true of subjects incorporat-
ing a profound philosophy, or any thought suf-
ficiently deep or delicate to effect a strain on
the nether element of one's audience. The con-
sideration of these points will require the space
of subsequent chapters.
The third class of our audience, arising out
of the far-reaching area that constitutes the
market of our largest concerns, imposes those
limitations that arise out of sectional difficulties
and needs, political, social and religious, calling
for, as in the case of the foreign market, the en-
tire elimination of matters pertaining to the
church, and demanding in our home markets the
avoidance of subjects that give offence to a large
class of patrons, or that tend toward industrial
or social strife in certain sections.
Outside the jurisdiction of the audience, yet
still somewhat conditioned by it, falls the ruling
22 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
out of scenarios that demand too great an ex-
penditure of money in their production for the
amount they will return to the producer. This
last point must be especially kept in mind by
writers submitting their work to the smaller com-
panies. In writing for the larger concerns that
can expend upon their productions an unlimited
capital, the question of expense is not likely to
occur; yet even here it would be only business-
like for an author to consider whether the im-
portance of his story is such as to warrant the
expenditure it will call for. This caution is
especially necessary in the case of historical or
costume subjects, which, while expensive to put
on properly, are so little called for by the public.
Outside of the public's ruling on the acceptance
or rejection of your manuscript, there are the de-
mands made by the producing firm. These are
largely ascertained by watching the films of the
various companies, in order to find which con-
cern is in the market for the particular kind of
script you intend to submit. This study, also,
will include a consideration as to how one can
be most helpful in observing seasons and vari-
ous other conditions which lighten or make dif-
ficult the production of a picture.
CHAPTER IV
GETTING ONE'S STORY
HAVING considered the market limitations in
accordance with which all scenarios must be writ-
ten, it may seem to sundry discouraged readers
that very little remains for the market to accept.
Numerous as the restrictions may be, we must
not lose sight of the fact that in a field so gigantic
they shrink to a proportion not at all alarming.
How much material they still leave at our dis-
posal can be somewhat surmised when it is con-
sidered that we have in mind one of the larger
single companies which, alone, produces ten
photoplays, feature and otherwise, per week.
In watching these plots as they are spun off
before an audience, the writer gets his most valu-
able lesson in not only what themes the market
calls for, but also in the response of the audience
to parts within the theme.
It is this response rightly utilised that gives
one the key to next month's successes, for it
points out two things; it marks what an audi-
ence is pleased at having gotten and what an
audience is groping for and did not get.
23
24 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
If we supply a second time to an audience
what it was previously pleased at having gotten,
provided we put it in a new guise, we have a
second success, if but a slight one. If, however,
we give to an audience what it has been groping
for and did not get heretofore, we have a much
rarer thing, a great success.
The studying of those tendencies in an audi-
ence and those desires that have not hitherto
been played up to, is productive at once of the
greatest success and of the gravest danger. The
danger lies in an inability to understand sym-
pathetically and to analyse correctly the symp-
toms we see before us. Should we make a mis-
take in our calculations and give to an audience
what we have wrongly conjectured they are crav-
ing for, it stands to reason that we are striking
out into an untried field, that will yield us not
even that moderate success that comes through
the repetition of what has previously been
weighed and found satisfactory.
To work within the safer if not so brilliant
field of that which has already been tried, is a
simpler matter, and calls for but one precau-
tion;–the scenario may take its colour from the
market, but it must be original even within its
inoriginality. In the achieving of this result,
nothing is so essential as the saturating of one's
self with the work of the leading companies. I
say “leading companies” because it is they only
GETTING ONE'S STORY 25
who can be relied upon to be strictly up to the
minute of the present demand. You will see
in following their work, not only the demand of
the moment but also the gradual dropping out
of that which has been overdone and outworn.
Bearing in mind that what you see was written
by the public and represents what the public feels
and holds of vital import, it will become second
nature to feel with them and to calculate what
they will want to see to-morrow. In this way
the market, through those pictures which it has
accepted, unconsciously influences its writers in
the supplying of its demands.
Then, too, following with an audience the de-
velopment of an idea, feeling the tension that
holds a house, the relief of laughter, the chagrin
that demands a retribution, will teach one the
fallacy of many stock phrases that have hitherto
been given the novice as unconditional truths.
One of the most prevalent of these errors is that
which attributes the failure of a plot to the lofti-
ness of its theme. How often have we seen a
superb idea fail of success, only to hear producers
and others say, “See, the public does not care for
anything fine.” The real solution is that the pub-
lic does not wish to be bored.
The greatest truths in this world are the facts
of most absorbing interest. Why, then, must
they be told with a dryness that is mistakenly
called art? Why cannot the profoundest facts
26 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
of this life be told with colour equal to the vivid-
ness with which they are true? There is noth-
ing so deep in life but that he who understands
it clearly enough can make it clear and attrac-
tive, even unto a child.
When looking for your subject and keeping
within the demands of the market, let not that
which you see, nor the advice which you hear,
deter you from presenting with life and fervour
that which is most vitally real to yourself. And
rest assured that any deep meaning in life that,
you see clearly and richly, cannot be beyond the
understanding of your public, nor yet outside
their warmest interest.
CHAPTER V
STORIES THAT “GET ACROSS”
WHEN we speak of seeking in high places for
our material, or of sounding the depths, we do
not mean contour as of the earth's surface, but
rather the heights and depths of life as the human
soul can conceive them. It is the deep hidden
places in the soul of man and the soaring heights
to which he aspires that must respond and vi-
brate to one’s theme if it is to be alive with the
sublime touch of greatness.
Before an author can aspire to what will thrill
his audience with exaltation, or turn their glances
inward on the deep hidden springs of their be-
ings, he must first learn to get across to them
through one of those avenues whereby they are
most easily reached. Tired, worn with the strain
of life, they come to him of an evening for relief
and a change of outlook. How grateful to them
is the laugh or the optimistic outlook on those
self-same points that have distressed them
through the day. Get the laughter that comes
from the heart, and you have won that heart to
where you can do with it as you please. Bub-
27
28 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
bling, trusting, irradiating, it has revealed itself
to you, and what you want to do with it will be
as much in keeping with what it will ask of you,
as your yielding to the confident demands of a
child. Such comedy comes clear, unadulterated
by any serious thought. Its prime object is a
medicinal one,—the relaxation of mind and heart.
Not so buoyant, though perhaps of more far-
reaching influence in the spreading of optimism,
is the comedy drama. Treating some subject
that is as a rule taken too seriously, and that
results only too often in tragedy, it points out
the ludicrous phases of the same so that it can
never again thoroughly oppress. Then, too, it
trains one in the optimistic angle of vision; for
it proves there is no situation in life so hope-
less but that it loses much in depression through
the way. in which it is viewed.
Just as deep as is the call for humour and
optimism, just so pervading is the demand for
that spirit of romance which the sordidness of
every-day life does not reveal. Under this spirit
of romance we include everything poetical, richly
coloured, aspiring, and also that love and sur-
render of one being to another which does not
stop at figures or calculations;–that emotion,
in short, which looms gigantic through being un-
trammelled by any of those check reins that would
hold it down in life.
The same psychology that is back of the de-
STORIES THAT “GET ACROSS” 29
sire for romance accounts also for the wonder-
ful appeal of the thrill. Just as romance pre-
sents a freer life than that which an audience
has known, just so the thrill gives to them a
moment when they are more intensely and more
vividly alive. Far from despising the thrill as
an indication of the cheapness of a people’s taste,
we should look upon it as dignified through the
sources from which it springs, and as translatable
into that which carries the same satisfaction
without the cheapness, according to the powers
of the photoplaywright to make this transition.
Every day presents to those who think prob-
lems that baffle. An answer to those questions
that perturb, another man's solution of what per-
plexes, the outcome of situations that we our-
selves might be tempted into, are of too vital an
interest to an audience ever to find them indif-
ferent.
Allied with such subjects is the great question
of retributive justice. There is not any one in
one’s audience who has not at some time or other
felt the injustice of life or of conditions, and
frantic, though unconscious, is the desire to prove
that this injustice is the exception rather than
the rule. It is readily seen, therefore, why pic-
tures that represent right as coming out trium-
phant, always effect such a general appeal; for
it is man’s belief in the victory of right that
makes life worth living, and black indeed is his
30 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
outlook when for a moment, perhaps for hours,
he loses this faith.
Another great dispeller of gloom is man’s
conviction that faithful effort must bring suc-
cess. Out before him in the audience the play-
wright finds the great army of those who have
failed, yet who nevertheless cherish, sometimes
hopefully but more often despairingly, their be-
lief in the ultimate reward of persistent effort.
Take from them this hope and we annihilate;
fan it into newer courage, and we satisfy the
great cry of their souls, achieving a reward
therein greater than the success of our film.
Outside of those films that take one out into
a life larger and more vivid than that in which
we live, and outside of those films that clear up
the perplexities and discouragements of every-
day existence, we come to the third great avenue
of approach to the hearts of an audience. We all
know the attraction a mirror has to the child
mind, and would have to the maturer understand-
ing were it not that it presents to us always the
same face. We love to see ourselves as we are.
Those films that hold up to us a mirror, as it
were, on our intimate thoughts, actions and
foibles, have a never-ending fascination. When
each member in an audience can see in your film
his neighbour or himself, you have won him by
a most intimate bond. We do not mean that
you are to present to an audience what every
STORIES THAT “GET ACROSS” 31
member therein knows, and knows that he
knows, for by that path we arrive at boredom.
What we must aim for is the portrayal of those
phases of life and character that every one can
recognise at once, yet no one has previously
thought of in that light. This conscious realisa-
tion of what we have always known gives us
the thrill we feel when we suddenly see in a
dear friend a beauty and meaning that we have
not discovered there in all our years of looking.
CHAPTER VI
A ForM MoDEL
APPROACHING now the actual writing of the
photoplay, our readers will not be able intelli-
gently to pursue what follows without the aid of
a sample scenario. The one herewith appended
was chosen as a form model, not because of
superior qualities, but because its length makes
it adjustable to a small space, more than which
we can not afford to expend upon it here.
HIS SILVER BACHELORHOOD
SYNOPSIS
Grace Dare, a fallen woman, follows up in devilment
a letter from her girlhood lover, calling on him. There
she comes face to face with a photograph of herself as
she was and as she has lived in this man's idea of her.
The shock sends her quietly from the house without his
knowledge of her having been there. She meets the is-
sue in her own suicide.
George Carsten..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .The Bachelor
Billy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Other Man
A FORM MODEL 33
Grace Dare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carsten's Ideal
John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Butler
A Messenger Waiter Maid
Club Fellows Chauffeur
Men and Women at Whist Party
Boys and Girls at College
SCENES INTERIOR
Carsten library, I, 5, 7, II, I3, 15, 17, 22, 25.
Drawing room, hotel, 8,
Hotel dining room, 9,
Hallway, Carsten home, I6,
Grace's room, hotel, 21, 24,
Club room, 23, 26, 27,
Interior taxi, 19.
SCENES EXTERIOR
College wall, 2,
College campus, 3,
College tennis court, 4,
Railroad station, 6, 12,
Ext. fashionable hotel, Io, 20,
Ext. Carsten home, I4, 18.
PROPS
Picture of Grace, text books, tennis rackets, suitcases,
writing paper, playing cards, wines, etc., cigars and
cigarettes, telegraph blank, stiletto paper knife.
34 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
HIS SILVER BACHELORHOOD
SCENE I
Carsten Dreams of How He Planned His Future, Years
Ago, with the Only Woman. He Ever Loved.
Library, Carsten home. Handsome. Carsten, bachelor
of fifty, seated at table dreaming, hand resting across
table as he gazes at photo in frame before him. His
expression is that of one whose waning health brings into
sharper relief a poignant sorrow. Dissolve into:
SCENE II
Low college wall. College boys and girls on campus.
Carsten and Grace seated on wall. Former explaining
lesson that puzzles her, gently closes book in her hand,
says: “Let’s talk about our future.” With youth’s en-
thusiasm they plan together. Get down, exit.
SCENE III
Gravel path of campus. Tennis court, distance. Car-
sten and Grace enter. Grace stops suddenly as she sees
Billy coming. Carsten winces at interest she takes in
Billy; feels the approach of a rival. Billy invites her to
play. Grace enthusiastic, urges Carsten to join them.
He refuses, looks after them saddened; follows slowly.
SCENE IV
Tennis court. Court deserted. Grace and Billy enter.
He withholds racket. She struggles, succeeds in getting
it, stands back coquettishly encouraging him. He watches
her, fascinated; suddenly kisses her repeatedly. Carsten
A FORM MODEL 35
enters, throws him to ground. Billy rises ready for fight.
Grace places herself between the two, shielding Billy.
Carsten amazed, drops hands, stiffens, exits. Grace,
pathetic, thinks of calling him, shows pride, turns to
Billy: “Come on and play.” Dissolve into:
SCENE V
Carsten library. Carsten dreaming, tender sadness.
Cut in :
The Parting After the College Graduation.
Pained, as, dissolve into:
SCENE VI
Railroad station. College boys and girls leaving after
graduation. A send-off. Grace and Carsten meet.
Realisation of parting, long to speak; both governed by
pride, stiffen. Train pulls in. Boys and girls enter cars
waving good-byes. Grace, assisted by Billy, enters end
coach, eyes following Carsten, who enters adjoining one.
Train pulls out. Dissolve into:
SCENE VII
Carsten library. Carsten gazing at picture, registers
cut in : -
“She Could Never Have Married Him! She Was Too
Fine a Woman. Perhaps If I Write, She Might
Get My Letter.”
Held by idea, quiet intensity of what it means to him
registered on his face, hurries to table as if afraid of
changing mind. Sits and writes. SCREEN :
. . . I do not even know if you are alive, or if you
36 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
will ever get this letter, yet, though I have reached my
silver bachelorhood, you are still my one thought. . . .
Carsten rings for butler, sends letter. Alone, sits back
in chair, wondering.
SCENE VIII
The Letter Finally Reaches Grace, Fallen From
Carsten's Ideal.
Drawing room, Grace's suite, hotel. Bohemian. Whist
party in progress, men and women smoking and drink-
ing. (Keep within ruling of Censors here, yet show the
life of coarseness and empty mirth.) Grace and Billy at
table with couple. Butler serving. Grace about to cut
cards, blasé, forced gaiety. Billy suddenly remembers
letter, says to Grace, cut in :
“Oh, By the Way, I Brought Up a Letter for You When
I Came Through the Lobby.”
He asks butler to bring letter, telling him where it is.
Grace does not care to have it now, but Billy knows he
will forget it again. Butler goes to fetch it. Grace has
cut cards. Billy deals. Butler brings letter, Grace looks
at it, puts it down. Friends want her to read, as they
feel the strange momentary attraction the letter has for
her. She hesitates, apologises, reads while Billy deals
cards. Puzzled. Screen letter of Scene VII. Re-
reads. Laughs out as at a rich joke. Party curious.
She extends letter—her hand contracts, closing over
letter. Laugh fades. Impulsively tucks it into waist.
Tells them it is nothing. Billy wondering. They start
game. She plays absently. Is recalled by others; laughs
lightly, plays. Billy looks queerly at her, joins in game.
A FORM MODEL 37
SCENE Ix
Haunted by Carsten's Letter, Grace, in Reckless Mood,
Resolves to Answer It.
Dining room, hotel. Billy and Grace at table, fore-
ground. Latter, reckless mood, drinking. Answers
Billy in monosyllables. Billy puzzled. She calls waiter,
asks for messenger. Latter enters, gives her telegraph
blank. She writes. Billy questions her. She tosses
head, says: “Oh, nothing!” Reads. ScREEN :
George Carsten, IOI Troy Street, Boston, Mass.
I am coming. GRACE.
Boy exits with message. Billy sotted, tells her she's
queer to-night. She laughs, rises. Billy gets up intoxi-
cated. (Suggest this in face and attitude rather than in
walk.) Exit.
SCENE X
Ext. hotel. Enter Grace and Billy. Attendant ad-
vances. Billy nods for taxi. Grace gives destination.
Billy astonished. She does not care to explain. He
consents. They enter taxi.
SCENE XI
The Message Arrives.
Carsten library. Carsten enters from side as butler
comes on with telegram. Carsten opens, reads. SCREEN
telegram of Scene IX. Overcome, he turns from butler.
Emotion controlled, tells him, cut in :
“John, a Lady is Coming. Show Her in Without
Announcing.” *
38 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
Butler, surprised, bows, exits. Carsten, alone, quietly
intense: “She is coming!” Cut to:
SCENE XII
Depot. Billy and Grace enter toward taxi, former
puzzled. Grace gives address to chauffeur in low tone,
turns to Billy, coaxes him into entering taxi. Taxi exits.
SCENE XIII
Carsten's library. Carsten seated in expectant atti-
tude of XI, waiting. Hand clutches arm of chair. Cut
to :
SCENE XIV
Ext. Carsten home. Taxi stops. Grace and Billy
alight. Latter looks at house, turns to Grace, question-
ing. She smiles, tells him to wait. Runs up steps, rings.
Cut to:
SCENE XV
Carsten library. Carsten hears bell, hands tightening
their clutch on arms of chair. Half rises. Something
snaps. He breathes heavily, sinks slowly down into
chair. Cut to :
SCENE XVI
Hallway, Carsten home. Butler admits Grace, looks
her over, surprised that her type of woman should enter
here. Grace, with toss of head, exclaims: “Well!” But-
ler bows, indicates library. Grace nods haughtily, passes
QI],
A FORM MODEL 39
SCENE XVII
Carsten library. Carsten seated, arms hanging limply
over arms of chair, head on chest. Grace advances slowly
to surprise him, touches him on shoulder, laughing, put-
ting on a brave front. He does not move. She glances
to table, gaze held by picture. ScREEN her photo.
Realisation of the girl she used to be. Glance slowly
turns to mirror, then back to picture. With revulsion
of feeling, realises herself as contrasted with Carsten's
ideal. Slowly and fearfully retreats from room, eyes
fixed on figure in chair, to get away before he wakes.
Cut to :
SCENE XVIII
Ext. Carsten home as XIV. Grace runs down steps.
Billy questions her but she tells him to come home.
Jealous, he follows her into taxi.
SCENE XIX
Int. taxi. Billy questions Grace jealously. She
scarcely answers, staring into space. Billy gives cut-in :
“You’re So Queer To-night! Let's Go Somewhere and
Cheer Up!”
Grace refuses, wishes to go home. With shrug, he
sinks back.
SCENE XX
Home
Ext. fashionable hotel as X. Taxi drives up, stops.
Billy and Grace alight. Billy about to follow her but
she wishes to be alone. Exits into hotel. Billy, with
shrug, gives address to chauffeur, enters taxi.
40 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
SCENE XXI
Grace’s suite. Near view desk and chair, back of it a
mirror. Enter Grace dazed; turns on light. Gaze fixes
on reflection in mirror. Weariness has changed to a
strange, awful look of realisation. Hold scene. Begins
to toy nervously, unconsciously, with stiletto paper knife.
Laughs, unstrung. Becomes aware of knife in hand,
drops it, gazing as it lies pointing at her. Fascinated,
picks it up. Afraid, yet powerless to drop it. Her other
hand slowly creeping along wall, presses electric button
which leaves her in darkness. Stiletto scintillating in ray
of light that illumines face, still holds her by a charm
she cannot break. Cut to :
SCENE XXII
Carsten library. Butler enters; calls softly; draws
back, slightly alarmed. Peers into Carsten's face.
Realisation that he is dead. Cut to :
SCENE XXIII
Club room. Number of fashionable men drinking.
Billy enters, is hailed as an old pal. He drinks. Is
relieved to be in old element again. Cut to:
SCENE XXIV
Grace's suite as XXI. Grace swaying, hand to throat
as though covering wound. Falls across desk. Ray of
light across head and arm, stiletto dropped. Cut to:
SCENE XXV
Carsten library. Carsten in chair, butler sobbing be-
side him. Cut to:
A FORM MODEL 41
SCENE XXVI
Club rooms as XXIII. Billy proposing toast to all
good fellows, eyes half closed, gives a final puff at his
cigar; sets up a ring of smoke; raises his glass. Cut to:
SCENE XXVII
Large ring of smoke into which there enters Billy's
shaking hand with glass, spilling wine. Glass slowly
sinks from screen with the movement as if to be taken
to lips. The ring of smoke fades out. Cut before the
hand leaves the ring.
The End.
CHAPTER VII
THE “PICTURE EYE”
THE novice aspiring to become a photoplay-
wright is bound to encounter along the way the
well-meant advice that he can never hope to
achieve his ambition unless he have that magic
gift of the picture eye. They will tell you that
unless you can see your scenes enacted before
your mind's eye as they will appear on the screen,
you are of those who are disqualified as photo-
playwrights. How little truth there is in this
to scare off the beginner will appear when we
realise that the picture eye belongs to the human
mind of whatever degree of intelligence, and,
I believe, also to animals.
There is, as we know, such a thing as fear
of the dark which troubles very often not only
small children but also those whose reason might
be depended upon to overcome a riotous fancy.
This fear resolves itself into nothing else than
the persistent tendency of the human mind to
visualise, to people space with mental images
wherever such space appears to it as a void. Lie
alone in the dark and see how long you can so
42
THE “PICTURE EYE” 43
rest before some faint sound will make you see
scenes as vivid as any you will find portrayed
on the screen; doors will open stealthily; figures
will glide in; perhaps they will creep along the
bed, bending over very close to you. How real
all this is can be appreciated by the cold sweat
into which it throws one. So clutching a fright
must result from the picture eye working far
more nimbly than in the case of even the most
successful photoplaywrights. Let us not, there-
fore, discourage any one by the dictum that one
must have the picture eye or abandon all hope,
for the same constitutes a universal attribute of
mind.
We cannot read a line in fiction such as tells
us it was a bleak day in January, the snow swirl-
ing in sheets, without conjuring up at least the
snow, the desolation, even the feeling of bleak-
ness, and very often an entire landscape in the
atmosphere of the same, setting it off. As we
go down the printed page we no longer read
words, we actually see the meeting of the hero
and heroine. We have the feel, the colour, the
very smell of things, until they are more real
to us than reality itself. We are they, they are
we, so hopelessly intermingled that we have lost
ourselves and exist again in those who have ab-
sorbed us. All this is the work of the picture
eye. It belongs to the ignorant even as to the
man of genius, and is more potent in its vivid-
44 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
ness than are the facts appearing to the senses.
It is this that we mean when we say that scenes
and people in literature live.
We all have our favourite characters who stand
with us, sit with us and walk beside us. Cin-
derella weeps in the mind of a child. The tears
that fall are real, real enough to wet and turn
muddy the ashes they fall on. Her amazement
at the sight of her fairy godmother makes her
eyes to glisten even as do the eyes of the little
one who sees her as he hears her story. Al-
ways one might run his fingers through her hair,
or pinch her cheeks and find them flesh and blood.
Try to recall after listening to some vivid nar-
ration the identical words of the speaker. You
will find, then, that you have not been listen-
ing to words, but rather that you have been fol-
lowing scenes that were to you so real and en-
grossing as to have blotted out even the con-
sciousness of your immediate surroundings. In-
deed, so prevalent is this forming of mental pic-
tures that it is impossible to surprise the mind
at any one moment when it is not thinking in
the sequence of innumerable pictures following
one after the other.
The picture eye coming to us as a birthright,
we must look to some other source for the rul-
ing of that line which marks off success from
failure in the writing of photoplays. It is not
the question of seeing thought in pantomime but
By courtesy of the Lasky-Paramount Studios
TARING A PANORAMA OF TRAFFIC FROM AN
ELEVATED CAMERA
The above is a clever device for getting the effect of
traffic passing underneath and at the same time conceal-
ing the camera-man so that passers-by will not look di-
rectly at the camera, spoiling the picture.
* |Hºl
By courtesy ºf the Greater Vitagraph Studios
DYNAMO CAR PROVIDING A PORTABLE LIGHTING
SYSTEM FOR MOTION PICTURE PHOTOGRAPHY
The car provides a current for lights in taking outdoor
locations at night where no lighting is available.


THE “PICTURE EYE” 45
rather a matter of discernment as to how much
of what we see we shall set down in our scenario.
This involves all those manifold difficulties en-
countered by the dramatist, the surmounting of
which implies the achievement of a master grasp
on his work. For the dignity of the photoplay-
wright's art, let us, therefore, refrain from speak-
ing again of the picture eye as being perhaps the
one prime requisite. The picture eye belongs
to the photoplaywright no more than to the
dramatist, and the triumphs of the screen are
achieved by the employment of principles no other
than those on which a stage success is founded.
Toward a working knowledge of such principles
the succeeding chapters will in one guise or an-
other be devoted. It is not the picture eye but
the check reins to be placed upon it that need
interest us, and of these there is none so im-
portant as the continual questioning of how these
manifold pictures that run through the mind will
look to an audience, which of them should be
eliminated and which altered, in order to get
over the effect we are aiming at. Everywhere
the pictures must be so arranged as to make clear
how, and why, each step is taken, and to give
also the thrill of interest piled upon interest to-
ward a climax.
CHAPTER VIII
THE “PoſNT” OF A STORY
WHILE it is true that the picturising of a story
does not carry with it to a producer the same
importance that he attaches to the idea of the
story, and while it is true that an exceptionally
fine idea will sell in synopsis form, and a com-
monplace idea will not sell in any form, we must
guard against underestimating the power that ac-
crues to an idea through proper picturisation.
We all know what style and handling mean to
a writer of short stories or novels. We all know
how an exceptional idea can be elevated into the
sublime by a masterful treatment, or almost ob-
“cured by a bungling presentation. So it is with
the photoplay.
Given the plot and pondering on it toward its
picturisation, one thing stands out in prime im-
portance,—the point of that particular story.
One caution has always been given to writers
of fiction:—“Until your story warms into life,
do not begin to write,” and here we add to those
who would write scenarios that: “Until you have
fully gotten a story and see clearly its point, do
not begin to picturise.”
46
THE “POINT* OF A STORY 47
If your story is one of retributive justice, you
may look for its point either in the overwhelm-
ing strength of that agency in opposition to which
the criminal has been striving to operate, or you
may seek its point in the unhappiness of such a
struggle, or in the remorse of conscience, or in
the strange, thrilling squareness with which the
retributive justice is meted out.
Should the point of your particular story lie in
the overwhelming strength of that power which
opposes evil, it stands to reason that this point
can be only brought out by representing your
heavy, or villain, as some one of well-nigh in-
vincible strength, for the opposition will take on
magnitude in proportion to the skill of the fight
he puts up.
If you wish to show, as the point of your
story, how small a trifle it is that will ultimately
undo a villain, you will have to show that villain.
successful to the point where it seems it has gone
beyond human power to overthrow him. At this
point, sundry elements that we had almost lost
sight of, begin to work together for his undoing.
The slighter these elements, provided they op-
erate plausibly, the better has the point of your
story been brought out. s
Should the unhappiness of the wrongdoer be-
come the point of your story, you will work along
the lines of a character study, your heavy suffer-
48 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
ing intensely yet all the while powerless to resist
the call of crime.
That suffering which a life of crime inflicts on
those who are dependent upon, or who love, a
criminal, is best brought out by setting sharply
in juxtaposition, conditions as they might have
been or might still be if vice were to give place
to virtue. The treatment of the point of your
story in this way will make it fall outside of
retributive punishment unless it is the evil-doer
who feels sharply this contrast.
If the point of your story is the retributive
power of conscience, build up to it by showing
that while the offender could in his strength es-
Cape all other punishment, he succumbs finally to
the persistent action of that “still, small voice.”
The squareness with which retribution is
meted out is best developed through bringing
out clearly those points in the recoil of the deed
on the doer, which returns to him just what he
had planned for another.
Stories that deal with problems that perplex
in every-day life would have their points in
angles of vision from which your leading char-
acter views the problem, and in the happiness or
wretchedness brought him by his particular view.
Problems that bear not on the well-being of
the individual, but of the masses, will find their
point in the exposition of the case as the writer
THE “POINT* OF A STORY 49
sees it, and are best treated by showing the ulti-
mate result to the masses in the continuation of
an existent evil or in the introduction of a pro-
posed reform.
CHAPTER IX
MoRE ABOUT THE “PoſNT’ of A STORY
IN the chapter preceding we have roughly cov-
ered what would constitute the point of stories
dealing with individual and mass problems of
the day, or treating the great question of retribu-
tive justice.
Among those subjects that are of the day there
are none more absorbing or prevalent than those
that hold up the mirror to life.
It stands to reason that in treating one of
these we will find the point somewhere along
the line of its truth to what we have seen or lived
actually. Such subjects when not comedy are
generally spoken of as “touching,” which char-
acteristic accrues to them in proportion to the
degree in which the point is brought out. Their
point, as we have seen, is truth to life.
From the subjects that deal with life as we
know it we pass on to those that deal with life
as we vaguely hope it might be. All stories fall-
ing under this general classification will have
their points somewhere along the line of their
departure from life as it is.
50
MORE ABOUT THE “POINT* OF A STORY 51
For example; what is known as the thriller has
its point in an extreme departure from the hum-
drum quality of existence, to the extent of arriv-
ing at the ultra-vital and vivid. It is best brought
out by so building up the sympathy around the
character subjected to these experiences, as to
make each in the audience feel that it is he him-
self, through his heart interest, who is living
them. Treated in this way, an audience absorbed
in a thriller lives through more in five minutes
than would ordinarily intensify a man's entire
life. This is true, also, of romance.
The point in a story of romance will always lie
somewhere within its bold deviation from life as
we know it. If the romance consists of a virile
love story, its point will lie in love's defiance of
all those calculations that might govern it in
reality.
There are times when the romantic element
of a story will not centre about a love theme, but
finds its point in the general unusualness of the
situation. While such a story may have a love
theme interwoven, we bring out its point best
by playing up to its situations of strangeness and
mystery.
At times the spirit of romance carries one out
into that spiritual plane lying just beyond the
sphere of material existence. In such cases the
point of one’s story lies in the aspiring nature of
life so viewed, and building it up will give us that
52 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
thrill and awe that comes through a realisation
of an unearthly significance. Such stories are
well illustrated in the treatment of all those
themes that represent a mysterious character,
suggestive of the Christ, reincarnated, living and
moving among us to-day.
Between life as it is and life as it might be
there is the plane of life as we may learn to see
it. Under this heading come all subjects that
treat with optimistic vision those things that
more narrowly viewed would present nothing but
misery.
The point of such a story will always lie in
the unique and uncommon way of regarding the
old-established subject. It is best developed by
presenting those situations which would ordi-
narily affect characters in certain ways, and
then show the characters through a saner vision,
making a different and saner response to them
than was expected by the audience. This “new
way of looking at it” presents a thrill not only
in stories and pictures, but also in life, and is
the main point to be developed in this type of
story. Having once established this clearer angle
of vision, it follows that it will be of absorbing
interest to an audience to see the working out of
such a view from situation to situation.
In a quest for the point of one's story, to be
brought out in a picturisation, nothing presents
so interesting a study as comedy. If there is
MORE ABOUT THE “POINT* OF A STORY 53
one classification of story in the treatment of
which it is most fatal to lose sight of the point,
that classification is comedy. Every one knows
what is meant by the point of a joke. If you
don’t see the point of a joke, you can’t laugh; if
you can’t make your neighbour see the point, you
can’t make him laugh.
Certain situations in life, certain characters
and idiosyncrasies, have been found to get a
laugh, and so are classed as “funny.”
If a writer has a normal sense of humour, he
need have no surer guide to the point of a humor-
ous story than his own emotion of keen, joyous
appreciation.
In subjects that are best suited for farces, such
as those that deal with an innocent deception of
wife or husband, prompted by devilment, the
point would consist in the “devil” getting away
with it by the skin of his teeth, or in the turning
of the tables upon him by the deceived party,
who, unknown to himself, has been “on to him”
from the start. -
For the general class of what is called straight
comedy and also for comedy drama no other rule
can be given as to what constitutes the point
thereof than this: your own appreciation of hu-
mour will lead you to feel instinctively the com-
edy element as you would feel the point of a joke.
If you have not this instinctive appreciation of
humour, leave comedy alone; it is not your field.
CHAPTER X
THE “TELLING” Scenes
WE have laid a stress on the story and on its
significance,—in other words, its point, the force
of which will now appear. The more thoroughly
we realise values in a story, the more surely will
certain parts stand out beyond others.
These points that stand out beyond the others
give us at once our big scenes to play up to. All
those stories so popular, for instance, that repre-
sent a change of heart in a leading character fall
naturally into two big scenes. The first of these
two scenes represents the character's complete
surrender to evil ways, either through some great
dramatic crash in his life or through natural pro-
pensities, and the second big scene represents the
elements of the story so come together that the
character goes through an upheaval equal to, or
greater than, the first, which sets him again into
harmony with the world.
We do not mean that in setting out to write a
story of a reclaimed life, you are to begin by
arranging for these two scenes aforementioned,
and then build up your story from them.
54
THE “TELLING” SCENES 55
That would be defeating our entire purpose in
leading up as we have to the subject of picturisa-
tion. Stories, it is true, are occasionally built up
from scenes or situations, but it is only when such
a story has been built complete that we can pro-
ceed to tell it in those scenes into which it natu-
rally falls. We presuppose, therefore, that you
have your story completely and clearly in mind
and that as you ponder over it, these two scenes
aforementioned gradually rise up to the surface
more vividly than the rest, with all their attend-
ant characters, circumstances and situations.
All stories that represent man's struggle with
his fellows and with circumstances fall natu-
rally, also, into two scenes of prime importance.
The first of these is the scene that repre-
sents most forcibly the stand your character
has resolved to take. And the second presents
his triumph or failure, in accordance with
whether the stand he took was just or unjust.
The first of these sets a definite problem before
an audience; the second presents its solution.
The two types of stories mentioned above,
namely, that which represents the inner conflict
resulting in a change of heart or mind, and those
presenting the outer conflict of man with envi-
ronment, cover the entire field of what is dramat-
ically available to us. -
There are times, however, when the inner or
56 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
outer conflict does not develop so simple or so di-
rect a story. In such cases, the plot will resolve
itself into as many scenes of prime importance as
there are telling points in the conflict.
For instance, in the common story of the girl
who has gone wrong and is won back to a better
life, there might be, according to the develop-
ment, as many scenes of first importance as we
will here point out. There might be, to start
with, the scene of the first shock with the under-
world, bringing out the girl's finer nature. Then
there would stand out the scene of the first appeal
of the gayer life to the senses; perhaps a conflict
scene between the two natures, and a scene of sur-
render to the mire. In the depths of degradation
there would come the shock of an encounter with
the reclaiming influence, after which there might
be a scene of revulsion of feeling against the life
of gaiety and shame. This revulsion might in-
clude a conflict again between the two natures,
or another scene might be called up to cover that.
And then there would inevitably be the scene of
the ultimate triumph of the one nature over the
other.
Most pictures that run through more than two
reels have a plot that resolves itself at first
glance into numerous telling scenes; for, unless
there are various turns in the plot, the structure
follows an upward slant so direct as to allow of
no climax to the reel. Then, too, the story that
THE “TELLING” SCENES 57
follows one direct crescendo without surprising
or interesting fluctuations would make tedious
material for a multiple reel entertainment. At
times, such a subject, when delicately handled,
will carry successfully through as many as two
reels.
As a rule, however, stories falling under this
class build up the market of one-reel subjects.
In a story of an optimistic viewpoint the tell-
ing scenes that first stand out to an author’s
mind are those that most strongly bring out the
uncommon angle of vision on a trying situation.
Telling scenes are not sought for, but appear
of themselves as we warmly appreciate the story,
and form with almost no effort on our part the
basis of our picturisation.
How readily they will glow and stand out from
the rest of the story is best seen in the thriller.
In this type of photoplay the scenes into which
the story at once resolves itself are the so-called
“punch” scenes, which include the particular me-
chanical thrills to which the story plays up. Very
often, in fact, a story is constructed with these
very thrills in mind, which form thus the core
of the action subsequently built around them.
The romantic story does not resolve itself so
readily into its telling scenes as does the thril-
ler; for it requires a holding of one's subject in
one's heart until certain elements thereof glow
through one’s being with a tender thrill. These
58 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
will then, of themselves, form into those scenes
that are the very heart of one's romance.
In a comedy, telling one's story briefly as one
would tell a joke, we arrive at once at those
scenes which are its life; for brevity is the soul of
wit.
More difficult to handle and to arrive at than
these telling scenes of a story, are those
scenes that play up to them and give them their
value. Because of their function we will call
them here the building scenes.
CHAPTER XI
THE “BUILDING” Scenes
HAVING seen how a story, once its point is
appreciated, falls naturally into its telling scenes,
we come now to what is the making of these
main scenes, namely, the building scenes.
Every one knows that the biggest scene of a
picture or play, cut out from the same and viewed
by itself, holds no force whatever and is very
often ludicrous. Whence, then, does it accumu-
late that power which makes it get over as the
great climax of the story?
That scene which shows a character broken
on the wheel of life or succumbing to overwhelm-
ing odds is tremendous or farcical according to
that which went before. If, in the scenes that
precede, we show the pathos and the courage of
an unequal struggle; if, in addition to this, we
work up a heart interest in the character, we
build a dam across the emotions of our audience
in which the same will swell and rise until we
sweep into our big scene, where the dam will
break and the emotions will carry the scene. In
this the photoplay is no different from the stage
59
60 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
play, and no different from the drama of our
own lives.
All of us have had moments when, in intense
and righteous anger, we have set out to carry a
point, only to find that we have let ourselves be
carried away by our emotions into the missing
of the point we wished to carry. If, instead of
bursting in on the minds of our auditors with the
main issue, we had coldly and deliberately intro-
duced the same by steps so subtle as to be unfelt,
we would have had them unconsciously in a
frame of mind where they themselves would have
carried our point.
All of this goes to show the power of the build-
ing scenes, and what a matter of shrewd calcula-
tion and dramatic instinct they are!
Dividing all stories into their three classes:
comedy, drama and melodrama, we will see how
this building of scene on scene is the very mak-
ing of excellence.
Taking as the most successful comedy the so-
called “scream,” we will find that the climax of
screeching laughter is achieved after the follow-
ing plan:
The first comedy incident or situation is cal-
culated to get anywhere from a smile to a broad
grin, or even a laugh. The next may not get
more than this, but the mind of the audience is re-
laxing to the theme, and if the next laugh comes
on before the first has faded away, it will be ac-
THE “BUILDING” SCENES 61
centuated, as is a wave when it combines with an-
other to form a roller. If the third laugh comes
on while the big laugh is in full sway, we give
the audience no chance to recover itself, and get
what may be called a breathless period. If other
laughs come on thick and fast here, preventing
the gasp for breath, we emerge into that discom-
fiture that is known as the “laughing cramp.”
Once an audience has arrived at this stage of
partial hysteria, a comedy may slow down a little;
for from this point on anything will make them
laugh. Such a lull, or a rest, may be followed
then by a comedy crescendo to the finish. We do
not recommend this lull in a comedy to a softer
kind of laugh, save in cases where, as in the
above, it serves as a relief. Looking into the
making of a screaming farce as we have outlined
it above, it becomes plain that the great laugh in
the comedy gets its force from the accumulated
smaller laughs preceding it. This accumulation
of laughter is the work of the building scenes.
The question of drama resolves itself into its
two great classes: the drama of life's realities
and the drama of life’s ideals.
If a story deals with the big problems of life
as we live it to-day, it stands to reason that it
will evolve upon the building scenes to set forth
the issue more and more clearly with each suc-
ceeding scene. The more vividly we feel this
issue, the more absorbing and intense will become
62 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
those telling scenes in which the problem is
threshed out; for it follows that the big scene
which pronounces the victory or defeat of one
principle over another will draw its thrill from
the clearness with which we have been made to
realise what the two ideas stand for.
In the drama of life as it might be, which is
largely represented by romance, we get some of
the most delicate work of the building scenes.
Stretching reality as it does in its main issues, it
becomes the work of the building scenes to subtly
introduce us into that atmosphere in which what
is scarcely plausible becomes vividly real. Then,
too, the big, fervid situations which carry a ro-
mantic love story, are apt to appear somewhat
overdone unless so built up to, that our apprecia-
tion of the lovers carries us beyond the word
“bosh!” For it is these little scenes, building up
the sympathy, that makes our hero's love story
our very own, and our own love story is some-
how never foolish and never by any chance
“bosh ſ”
This brings us to the subject of melodrama,
our third division. Melodrama implies a villain.
We must hate him, hate the very eyes in his head;
the more intensely we hate him, the more grip-
ping our story. Here, then, is where the building
scenes put in some of their fine work. Little by
little they build up the sum total of the heavy's
iniquity. They show those thousand and one lit-
THE “BUILDING” SCENES 63 .
tle sidelights on his character, his brutal ingrat-
itude to parents, his abandonment of the woman
who trusted him, his cruelty to children or to ani-
mals, and all those attributes which, while they
bear but slightly on the plot, boil the caldron of
hate into which we drop our villain in the end.
If the melodrama exploits, as it often does, a
central thrill, it becomes the work of the build-
ing scenes to enhance that thrill, and in most
cases, even to produce it. We all know that a
train wreck becomes a thrilling catastrophe
through the human lives involved. If we realise
that there is aboard that train a some one we
know or love, the thrill rises to an anxious strain.
This strain becomes awful in proportion to the
amount that the building scenes have done to-
ward heightening our love for the characters
involved. The more pathos and heart interest
that the building scenes have woven into our
story, and the more tightly and tersely they have
progressed toward the climax, the greater is that
tension in the audience which the wreck will
break with a shock equal to that of the collision
itself. Unless an audience is worked up to that
nervous tension where a thrill can be felt clear
through, the thrill has miscarried because of in-
ferior handling of the building scenes.
CHAPTER XII
TERSENESS
BETWEEN the telling scenes and the building
scenes that constitute our scenario falls the vital
question of Terseness.
Few of us have failed, at some time in life, to
realise how maddening it is to follow a story as
told by an untrained mind. We know how some
good soul will tell us how she met Annabelle on
the road coming down from the Kerkmans’
whose second son married a Tumtum, whereupon
she will forget all about the Kerkmans and go on
with the Tumtums. All through we have a fran-
tic desire to draw her back to the main theme,
not because we are not interested in the Kerk-
mans or the Tumtums, but because the human
mind is so constructed that when trained to
efficiency it must follow a direct line. Finally,
after much hedging on our part, the story returns
to Annabelle. Were we to tell this same story to
a third party, everything would drop away save
that which deals with the main theme of Anna-
belle. It would drop away, not designedly on our
part, but because it does not belong to the story
64
TERSENESS 65
of Annabelle and we do not recall even having
heard of it in connection with her.
The above illustration, so familiar to all of us,
gives us our first step toward terseness. Drop
from your story everything that does not belong
thereto; or, better still, ponder on your story un-
til, in appreciation of its point, everything ex-
traneous shall, of itself, fall away.
Any one who realises the stress of activity and
the pressure of time as we feel it to-day will see
at once how important the matter of terseness be-
comes. Everywhere in the business world we
must say what we have to say as briefly as possi-
ble. Our minds become attuned to that concise-
ness of thought that is expected from us and that
we, in turn, expect from others. We cannot take
that same mind trained in conciseness in the hard
school of daily life, and force it through the me-
andering structure of an evening's entertain-
ment. Such an operation is felt by the audience
as an attempt to make the wheels of their mental
machinery revolve with a jerky, strained or back-
ward motion, which, being unnatural to them, is
fraught with the keenest discomfiture.
Outside of the avoidance of the irrelevant,
which is the first step toward terseness, we come
to that second step which is somewhat harder to
get. When we have gotten our scenario down to
where each scene pertains to the theme we are
handling, we come to the following test. In how
66 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
far does any given scene further the plot to which
it pertains?
We may, for instance, find it necessary to show
that Annabelle is loved by Tim Bucktoo. Where-
upon it enters into our poetic souls that a moon-
light stroll along the lake would be just the thing
to set this forth. So it is, so it is! After the
moonlight stroll we insert a scene where Anna-
belle sits on the stump of an old willow tree with
plenty of moonlight sifting down through the wil-
low branches. The scene is merely a continuation
of the lake scene, but we couldn’t leave it out, just
couldn’t, because it's so picturesque. At this
point, it enters the inventive mind of Annabelle,
or of the author, that a skim across the lake in a
canoe will be quite the most beautiful thing that
has ever been done in pictures. Then, too, there
may be a perfectly fairy-like grotto at the other
side of the lake. Who knows? Who knows?
All through this we must not forget the love be-
tween Annabelle and Tim Bucktoo, for that is
plainly the object of these scenes toward our
story. But let us go back, gentle authors, and it
will appear that we have said all that we have
to say on the love of Annabelle and Tim Bucktoo
on the moonlight shore along the lake. Since
then we have wasted perfectly good workman-
ship and some first-class film on a half dozen
scenes, each of which repeats the one idea. If
any director were to take that manuscript with
TERSENESS 67
those seven scenes of repetition, the chances are
that the same would be cut out of the film before
the picture is released for market. Should they
not be cut, they will live to add to the general
boredom of the public.
There is no argument against the acknowl-
edged fact that beautiful scenery strikes that ar-
tistic chord in an audience, which, when stirred, is
the making of a film. Appreciating this and real-
ising that it is probably your reason for the pro-
fusion of moonlit scenery, we ask why? Why
should settings, or scenery, just because they are
beautiful, not serve as the locale of vital action?
Why are they so often used to tide over, by grati-
fying the eye, the meagreness of the action?
This brings out our second great point in the
pursuit of terseness. Do not indulge in even a
single one of those scenes that read so well but
serve only to re-establish what is already known.
The third point in the quest of terseness deals
with that rich inner content of a scene that makes
the one scene equivalent in substance to what
might have been carried by five others.
For example: if it is necessary to our story
to show that a character has a cynical disbelief
in all those things that normally we find beautiful
and worth while, it is not necessary that we show
him in one scene scoffing at the garland that is
sent him by friends, congratulating him on his
triumph; nor is it necessary to set forth in a
68 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
second scene the distress of his wife at his pecu-
liar outlook and at his disbelief in even her own
affection for him. We need not consign to a third
scene how this attitude on the part of the hus-
band is turning his wife to the sympathy of his
more normal friend. Nor need we make a fourth
scene indicating the husband's jealousy; nor a
fifth scene showing how greater than jealousy
and all human passion is the cynical turn of his
mind.
All this can be well set forth in one and the
same scene. The cynical scoffing of the man is
seen to grate upon his wife and friends. In her
love for her husband she brightens as she re-
ceives that which she knows must give him pleas-
ure, a token from his friends. His disbelief in
something so tender as the disinterested friend-
ship of his fellows, strikes that bewilderment
into the simpler heart of his wife that makes her
turn to the some one she can understand, his
friend. The attitude of the two toward each
other is not lost on the husband who fills with
jealousy. At the very height of his sudden jeal-
ousy we see the tenseness of the muscles Sud-
denly relax and the normal anger give place to
that unhealthy cynicism in which the man feels
that nothing is worth while, not even that. All this
constitutes a scene rich not only in what it gives
toward the advancement of the story, but also
in what it suggests in side lights on the theme.
CHAPTER XIII
TERSENESs vs. BALDNESS
HAVING emphasised the virtue of terseness in
picturising, we come to that evil which results
from the virtue overdone, namely, baldness.
Cutting down our scenes to those which are
absolutely necessary, may give us but the bare
skeleton of a plot. It all depends on what we find
necessary to the full development of our story.
There are few stories of any real value that do
not convey a sincere study of life or character.
In such stories the plot is merely the vehicle
whereby the characters convey the truth in-
tended, and cutting down our scenes to the bare
plot would not give us anything of that which
makes the story worth while. The longer we
ponder on the philosophy pervading our story,
the more business and situations will arise, set-
ting forth the same, and colouring the plot by the
life of the idea underlying. Thus it becomes clear
how the vivifying of a story, or the bringing out
of its life-giving elements, will add to the num-
ber of its scenes.
If, for example, we wish to show how a char-
69
70 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
acter so impractical as to be apparently good-for-
nothing completes a life rich in accomplishment
through the power of a kindly heart, it becomes
clear that we have a story which in its bare plot
is nothing, but in its theme everything. As we
hold that story in our hearts, warming it into life,
we feel the thousand and one little ways in which
a matter-of-fact world would try to pound into
shape and stamp with its own image an imprac-
tical member. We feel all the heartaches and the
failures, all the reproaches that somehow never
embitter the kindly simplicity of our character.
We see him in all humility, in all consciousness
of being good-for-nothing, going on through
a life of kindly deeds which, though he may not
know it, loom up big beside the deeds of those
lives that are called “great” in the hour. It is
the pathos of his ignorance as to the real fineness
and success of his life that is the making of the
story.
Under the heading of terseness we have ad-
vised the cutting of unnecessary scenes. But who
could find unnecessary one of those scenes that
bring out the friction between industry and the
impractical, the courage of those lives that some-
how don’t fit in, the children who never grew up,
the kindliness of a heart that no adversity can em-
bitter, and the success that is greater than the
success of this world? None of these scenes
-
Tº ºvº ºf
º
WORKING IN SUNLIGHT
sunlight is always best for photography. Where skies are clear and light is
little interrupted by floating clouds, studio space is economized by the build-
ing of sets outdoors. The white sheet overhead is a diffuser to soften shadows.
By courtesy of the Metro Studios




TERSENESS VS. BALDNESS 71
need be like our moonlight scenes of the preced-
ing chapter, a dead repetition of one another.
Each one, while carrying the same theme or one
of the theme's variations, can open new and more
sacred chambers in the hidden recesses of our
character's being. Each of them can build upon
the other, working up the theme in a crescendo
toward the crowning glory at the finish.
This brings us back to the question of terse-
ness; for of the numberless scenes at our disposal
in the exposition of such a theme we must choose
with calculation those that serve toward this en-
dearing insight into character, or toward the
crescendo working up to the finish.
Between the preceding chapter and the present
one we bring out the two great avenues to vivid-
ness in a story. The first of these is terseness,
and the second is life-giving detail. It would
seem at first that these two avenues, being so dia-
metrically opposed, could not lead to the same
end. It is true that in one and the same case they
would lead to opposite results; that, if the former
is the proper method of treatment for the story
in hand, the second must inevitably be its destruc-
tion. Yet both are the vitalising element in fic-
tion when employed each in the development of
the particular story that calls for it. In all those
dramatic or melodramatic subjects that sweep
one along with accumulating force, and that de-
72 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
pend for their thrill on the tension of the nerves
of an audience, terseness is the prime demand.
It can readily be seen how the action of such a
play, or photoplay, is like a through express, stop-
ping for no detail by the way and skipping from
one station to another, many stations beyond.
Consciously or unconsciously the mind builds in
the intervening stations in the infinitesimally
small amount of time allowed for such construc-
tion. The speed at which the minds in the audi-
ence are compelled to work in this collaboration
with an author gives us the sweeping tightness
that is the holding power of this sort of story,
and is the achievement of a terse construction.
In stories of psychological, philosophical, or,
as we have stated before, character appeal, we
have what is called a subjective interest. In
other words, the interest lies not in what is ex-
ternally manifest, but in the inner workings of
the mind or of life issues. It is clear that a con-
flict waged deep within the inner being of our
characters will require much of detail to make it
apparent at the surface.
If, for instance, our story is the character
study of a hypocrite, it will call for much subtle
detail work, bringing out not only the character's
hypocrisy but his inability to realise the same.
The work will be subtle; the details will be of an
almost sardonic humour, and the better chosen
TERSENESS VS. BALDNESS 73
these details are, the richer will be the insight
into the character they unfold.
This type of story represents the highest
achievement in expression,-the power of detail
governed by the limiting force of terseness.
CHAPTER XIV
SUBTITLES
HAVING developed our story through its point
into its telling and building scenes, having seen
it grow through detail and strengthen through
terseness, we come now to that part of a photo-
play which, while not scenic, is, nevertheless, of
vital importance,—the subtitles.
The subtitle, leader or insert as it is sometimes
called, is that printed matter which is flashed
upon the screen before scenes, for definite reasons
which will appear in this chapter. These reasons
may be called the rules that govern the placing
of subtitles, and will constitute part of the more
mechanical end of photoplay technique. Let it
not be supposed that these rules shall present an
arbitrary arrangement whereby it will be con-
sidered good form to use a subtitle in one place
and poor form to use it in another. The photo-
play, like all other forms of art, is governed by
no laws save such as grow out of the psychology
of those who are to be reached by it as a medium,
and the material limitations of the medium itself.
Those of you who have seen, close at hand, a
74
SUBTITLES 75
reel of film, and who have looked through it for
that succession of numberless little pictures
which, projected on the screen, give you your
evening's entertainment, will appreciate the
material limitations of the medium as we now
point them out.
Say that you describe in your photoplay a big
banquet scene in which your hero is the centre of
gaiety. This scene will be acted out in the studio
and rehearsed until it meets with the director's
approval. It will then be acted once more with
the camera-man turning the crank of his camera
at the rate of one foot of film a second. When
the scene has been enacted to a finish, the camera-
man stops turning and the scene is contained,
photographically reproduced, in the box of his
camera. It may be that it required sixty feet of
film to reproduce for the screen this banquet
scene. In each foot of film there would be about
sixteen little pictures of the banquet scene, each
one advancing the action to a scarcely percepti-
ble degree. The speed with which these little pic-
tures flash by the projecting lantern makes the
transition from one to the other instantaneous.
If, then, the last little picture of the sixty feet of
banquet scene shows our hero radiant in the act
of toasting, we cannot show him. in the very next
little picture, beginning the following scene, as
knocking on a door, for instance. Realising that
the transition from the upraised glass of the toast
76 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
to the position before the door knocking would be
instantaneous, we can see that there would be
quite a disagreeable and unnatural jerk in the ac-
tion. Our hero could not possibly be standing
before the door knocking unless through number-
less little pictures we had shown him rising from
the table, taking leave of his friends, securing
his wraps, leaving the house; and then through
other little pictures had shown him coming into
the following scene until he stood before the door
and knocked. All this intermediary action be-
tween the two scenes having been omitted, we
must cover the “jump” by a subtitle to achieve
smoothness.
It will be seen in following the above how the
material limitations imposed upon the photoplay
by its film medium are responsible for the rule
that: “jumps in time and space must be covered
by a subtitle.”
If, for instance, we see through a number of lit-
tle pictures a man boarding a train in Chicago,
and then immediately following it a number of
pictures showing the man getting off the train in
New York, it becomes evident that he would be
getting off the train immediately after boarding
it, unless we separate the two parts of the action
by a subtitle: “In New York.”
Harking back always to our roll of film as
the basis of the mechanical end of technique, it
becomes plain that the question of subtitles is
SUBTITLES 77
largely one of common sense. There are times
when, in a film, it is perfectly clear that the ven-
erable gentlemen seated about a table are seri-
ously intent upon some question of profound in-
terest. We may surmise from their appearance
and their common interest that they are the mem-
bers of some board, but whether it be a charity
board, a board of trustees or the board of some
propaganda, will not appear from the scene as
enacted. In such cases it will be necessary to tell
in subtitle what the scene could not possibly con-
vey. This, also, resolves itself into a question
of common sense. The same rules hold good for
the so-called “cut ins” or inserts that set forth
in quotations the words of a character as he
speaks them, or that introduce explanatory mat-
ter where it is needed in the body of a scene to
clarify the action.
If, for instance, two young men are seen pon-
dering upon some problem that troubles them, it
can be shown quite clearly in the action that an
idea occurs to one of them and that he communi-
cates it with enthusiasm to the other. What this
idea is, however, we have no way of telling. It
will be necessary in such a case to use the quoted
“cut in” where it is spoken, as: “I say, John, let’s
try . . .” etc., or to use the non-quoted explana-
tion, as: Bill advises John to try . . . etc. Of
the two forms of “cut in,” it need not be pointed
out that the quoted form, inserted where spoken,
78 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
is the more vivid and interesting. One other use
of the “cut in” is the breaking of a scene. If it is
necessary to show both the beginning and end of
a meal and no other scenes can be inserted be-
tween the two for lapse of time, it will be neces-
sary to cover this jump with a subtitle, as it is
plainly impossible to show an entire meal which
would take longer than the whole reel requires in
the running. Then, too, in scenes that show the
undressing of a character, or any other intimate
action that cannot be shown on the screen, the
part omitted must be covered by a subtitle or by
flashing to other business, returning to the
former scene when the danger is past.
Outside of subtitles and “cut ins” there is the
letter or newspaper item screened where read, or,
in the case of a letter, screened where written.
A screened letter or newspaper item has been
found to be more appreciated by an audience than
the explanatory subtitle or “cut in,” and to be
second only to the quoted insert, in interest.
CHAPTER XV
SUBTITLING AS AN ART
IN the preceding chapter we considered the
matter of the why and wherefore of subtitles or
“cut ins,” covering the rules that govern their
placing. This was the consideration of the matter
from its purely mechanical side. Deeper and
more important is the service that inserts render
a picture artistically. While it is preferable, as
a rule, to reduce subtitles to a minimum, giving
in their place self-explanatory action, there is no
doubt that a picture is very often made by its
subtitles. We say “made.” We do not mean
“saved”; for we do not refer to those pictures
of miscarried production in which subtitles are
necessary to explain away the vagaries of the ac-
tion in order to get something of the idea across.
In no class of films is the constructive, also the
destructive, power of subtitles so apparent as in
comedy. We have all seen comedies that amble
on pleasantly enough, but owe every laugh they
get to a witty, slangy or characteristic subtitle.
On the other hand, none of us have failed at some
time to see a really good comedy which bubbled
79
80 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
along, and, just when it had arrived at a well
earned laugh, found itself killed by some wooden
title.
If a character in a comedy is what we call a
“scream,” what he says in the quoted “cut ins”
must be in line with what we imagine him saying
where our minds fill in the dialogue. Should such
a character, apparently rich in racy sayings, be
suddenly quoted in a “cut in” as voicing some-
thing utterly dry, commonplace, and pedantic, we
can easily realise the shock to our keyed-up ex-
pectations. The effect would be equivalent to that
disappointment we feel when we meet with some
one who looks interesting, only to find him utterly
stupid.
So it is with our romantic stories. The hero-
ine is beautiful; the love element is ideal. We
follow up her words as we imagine them, and find
that we are transported into the realms of poesy.
We pour into the love of these two people all
the romance of our poor starved beings. We
surround them with all that airy, fairy froth that
dreams are made of, when suddenly the heroine
shocks us, crashes us to earth, with one little line
of blatant stupidity;-the subtitle gets a laugh.
Why shouldn't it? It has done enough damage
to get something worse. -
All such matters are, as these chapters will
try to show, referable to common sense. How
often in life, in the parks, in the cars, have we
SUBTITLING AS AN ART 81
seen two perfectly charming lovers! They quite
bewitched us with their flitting, fleeting expres-
sions, and we drew nearer and nearer until we
could hear the first flat asinine remark. Oh! Oh!
Oh! The feeling that chills up and down one's
spine is in proportion to the strength of one's ex-
pectations. So it is in pictures. We are thank-
ful for the romantic silence of the screen, and
when we must break this silence by a line, let us
be careful that the same shall enter delicately,
unobtrusively, into the atmosphere of the mo-
ment.
Much in line with this, yet still somewhat in a
class by itself, is that “cut in” spoken by a char-
acter which reveals in an instant that char-
acter's personality. How it thrills one in life
when some one we meet makes one clear state-
ment, or even drops a word, that lays bare whole
chapters on his character' How thrilling it is,
too, when, having once learned to know a charac-
ter, we find him expressing himself in ideas that
are, “oh, so characteristic!” Why should it be
otherwise in films or in stories, and who would
omit such a title, even where it is not needed,
when it can bring out more quickly and clearly
than action an illuminating fact?
There are times when a “cut in” reveals not a
whole character, but merely a mood in which the
character may be immersed at the moment. A
few words may express this mood, but a cleverly
82 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
turned arrangement of these words would make
us not only understand the attitude, but feel the
thrill or despondency of the mood itself in sym-
pathy with the character. It is not otherwise in
fiction or in life, and so we come to see that sub-
titles are to a picture what literary style is to a
story.
We must seek in subtitles that harmony with
our picture which causes them to heighten the
action, bring out or express its underlying mean-
ing or atmosphere;—all in that unobtrusive way.
which makes them part and parcel of the effect
in toto. When they do not do this they are dead,
wearisome facts, grating like so many rusty
hinges between the scenes they connect.
Much of what we have taken up above is
classed under the heading of “tempo” in subtitles.
We say that a title is in “tempo” when it is met-
rically in harmony with the action of the scene.
The “cut ins” that represent the words of a char-
acter in violent, mental agitation, must carry that
agitation within themselves. The words that
come of the pondering mind must carry that hesi-
tation or that long, rolling metre with which such
words would come. &
The same principle holds true in non-quoted,
explanatory titles. Escaping from the author in
the moment when he feels the rhythm of his
scene, they dance, snap or lull in harmony with
SUBTITLING AS AN ART 83
the same, and give us that which is felt though
scarcely perceived, the subtitle in “tempo.”
So, while we are to have no more subtitles than
is absolutely necessary, it follows that we must
think twice before eliminating those titles that
enhance a story artistically; for what elevates
a story advances its market value, and cannot,
therefore, be called unnecessary.
CHAPTER XVI
CUTTING Down of SUBTITLES
HAVING given our readers some appreciation
of the merits that lie in subtitles, we feel that they
will not ruthlessly set to work now that we advo-
cate the cutting down of the same.
Since those titles must be retained that are me-
chanically needed, and since others should be
retained that are of artistic value, it becomes
plain that we aim our crusade against those titles,
uninteresting in themselves, that are necessitated
through clumsy structure in our photoplay man-
uscript. The peculiar structure that is perhaps
most largely responsible for that abundance of
the dry and obvious subtitle is what may be
called the childish form of exposition. We have
all heard children tell stories at some time or
other, and we have noticed how their little minds
follow a purely time sequence:—“and then, and
then, and then.” The various details of the
happening do not group themselves as they be-
long together, but follow each other much as a
string of sausages. The little membranes that
connect the sausages are the subtitles which must
84
CUTTING DOWN OF SUBTITLES 85
inevitably appear in this form of structure, as a
binding force where parts themselves are discon-
nected. Such subtitles have no artistic value, are
obvious and wearisome, yet cannot be avoided
once we have allowed ourselves to blunder into
that structure which calls them into being.
We will find, however, that even a child will,
when vividly realising a subject, depart from this
formation. We all know how one event in a
happening will so excite a boy or girl that it will
stand out, causing his mind to revolve about the
one exciting incident, repeating and repeating it,
until he grows bewildered and cannot tell his
story.
This situation, while unfortunate in the under-
developed mind of the child, is the making of a
story, play or picture, when occurring in a mind
sufficiently mature to cope with it. Once vividly
alive to our theme and excited by it, the incidents
form themselves as they did in the mind of the
child, into one central group of supreme interest.
The scenes of this group, belonging together,
glide one into another, giving that smoothness of
action which requires no subtitles for the cover-
ing of jumps in time and space. Having minds
that are developed beyond the minds of children,
we are not bewildered by this whirling of thought
into relative position, but set masterfully to work,
grouping in similar way what may precede or fol-
low this central action.
86 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
This structure is well illustrated in the novel.
Each chapter represents that grouping of inci-
dents which belong together, such as we have
spoken of above, as lending smoothness and
roundness to the telling of our story. The tedium
of a novel not so grouped into chapters, but told
in an endless chain of incidents after the man-
ner of a child’s procedure, cannot well be im-
agined.
Outside of this rearrangement of scenes so
that they run along in smooth, continuous action,
we come to the second important rule in the cut-
ting down of subtitles, namely, “never use a sub-
title to carry what can be shown in action.” If
your story will not be clear unless the audience
understand what has gone before it, show this in
action, though it necessitates a prologue. Noth-
ing is more tedious to an audience, and nothing
makes them feel more keenly that they have been
cheated of what is due them, than the wading
through a long explanatory title of what might
so much more agreeably have been shown in ac-
tion.
In considering the stage which has its limita-
tion of one set perhaps to an act, we find that this
same limitation has trained an audience to over-
look what it would not tolerate in pictures. It
has caused an audience to follow with patience,
even with interest, that part of the action which
does not appear before it, and is merely spoken
CUTTING DOWN OF SUBTITLES 87
of as having happened. Arriving at the more
plastic medium of the photoplay, the public, come
into its own, demands that it be shown every-
thing.
Very close to the above rule is the warning
against telling too much in a subtitle; giving
away, in short, what the scene will contain, thus
making the action a dead repetition.
A third great rule for the cutting down of sub-
titles falls under the heading of “characterisa-
tion.” It is not necessary to state in subtitles
throughout a picture what John Smith thinks,
feels, suffers, or why he does that which he does.
Having adroitly exposed the character of John
Smith in cleverly selected action, the audience will
understand to a nicety why he suffers, why he is
repelled, why he is attracted, and just why he
responds in that particular way. The merits of
this handling of character hold good in fiction
even as they do in pictures; for it is always indic-
ative of a higher art in the writer when his char-
acters reveal themselves through their actions
rather than through what he may say about them.
The fourth important method for the elimina-
tion of subtitles is the reduction of one’s action to
a unity of time and place. How many stories
jump repeatedly from one day to another, from
one week to the next, from months to years,
when a little thought on the part of the writer
would get that action down to perhaps the hap-
88 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
penings continuous through one day, or necessi-
tating at most a single jump in time or space to
be covered by a subtitle. Where such continuity
of action seems bound to be broken, we can still
avoid the subtitle by flashing to a little scene of
what is happening in the meantime. All of this
eliminates the merely necessary subtitle, leaving
space for the title of artistic value.
CHAPTER XVII
LoNG AND SHORT SCENES
JUST as the tempo of a scene determines the
tempo of the subtitle that supplements it, so the
tempo of an idea determines the tempo of the
scenes that shall convey it. In this the parallel-
ism between pantomime and printed thought be-
comes strangely evident.
In writing the printed story, when we come to
a part of intense excitement, our minds keeping
pace with the action fall naturally into express-
ing themselves in short terse sentences. These
brisk, snappy sentences in turn acting upon the
minds of our readers arouse them to a tempo
similar to that excitement which first called forth
the printed words. *
So it is in pictures. A lively, bubbling comedy
that dances and skips along does so because it
is telling itself in those short tripping scenes that
are in perfect keeping with the tempo of the idea.
So, too, the drama that draws its intensity from
the excitement of its action will get across in that
snap-bang spirit that results from scenes that are
short and brisk.
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90 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
Watching a picture, our minds get to working
at a tempo prompted by the nature of the idea
conveyed. If the scenes are, in length and ac-
tion, in perfect harmony with this tempo, we are
carried along, yielding ourselves to the subject
until our very pulse beats in time with the move-
ment. Should any one scene be not perfectly
timed to the spirit of the play, it would throw out
our count, breaking up the metrical response of
mind and heart and causing us that discomfiture
which comes with a “drag” in the action. Such
a “drag,” as it is called, occurs not only in photo-
plays of swift action, but even in such as are car-
ried by the very slightest movement. For even
where the story develops through a slow, me-
andering process, our minds adjust themselves
so finely to its scarcely perceptible metre that we
feel almost as keenly as in the above a departure
from the same.
Reverting again to the parallelism between pan-
tomime and word expression, we come to those
ideas, majestic, stately in action, which call for
the dignity of rolling phrases, building compound
and complex sentences. Such an idea, expressed
in pantomime, develops into the complex and
compound scene as distinguished from the sim-
ple, short scene of snappy action. How much
more in keeping is it with the rolling dignity of a
theme to have the king welcome back his son,
present him to his new, young mother, and then,
4.
LONG AND SHORT SCENES 91
supposedly engrossed by the affairs of state,
watch the young people with growing jealousy as
they get on together, the queen presenting her
son with a rose from her bodice. The king, dis-
missing his minister, joins the two; opens to his
son the subject of the latter’s marriage with a
princess selected for him. He watches the faces
of both, shows the queen out fondly, and feign-
ing disinterestedness, takes from his son the rose.
The action of the youth in trying to regain the
rose which the father, grimly playful, crushes,
and his opposition to the suitable marriage ar-
ranged for him, work up a dangerous jealousy in
the heart of the king. How much more does
such a scene add, we repeat, to the dignity of a
theme than the same business carried out in
seven or eight short scenes following one
another!
From the above it is clear that simple and com-
plex structure in scenes is very like the corre-
sponding structure in writing. The simple sen-
tence tells one thing only; so also does the simple
scene. As it flashes on, we get promptly that bit
of advancement to our story that the scene con-
tains; after which the flashing off of the scene is
just as prompt, for it has nothing more to do, and
so may not loiter.
How the parts of the complex scene, like the
clauses in a complex sentence, will introduce into
the same a multitude of ideas and suggestions, is
92 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
clear in the above example, needing no further il-
lustration.
While there are stories that are best carried out
in the rapid action of short, snappy scenes, and
while there are themes that require the longer
scenes, few stories can be told to advantage by
the use of one or the other exclusively. How
tedious would be our conversation, or how weari-
Some the pages of a story, given entirely in long,
sonorous sentences! How maddening, too,
would be the incessant pound of short, terse sen-
tences! It is in the use of both of these, deli-
cately playing one upon the other, that we get an
artistry in style like that wonderful variation in
landscape, of sharp elevations and rolling plains.
So in pictures the long, stirring scenes create a .
mood from which we turn to brisker action, only
to revert again to the long, low harmony.
Such a structure holds the fascination of those
fleeting expressions that cross a speaking face,
making it alight for a moment and then clouding
it in a shadow of sadness.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE “CUT BACK’”
WE have shown how the short, snappy scene
can be used to advantage in working up the ex-
citement of rapid action. We will now show that
method whereby we achieve the excitement of
suspense.
In a novel one chapter will carry the affairs
of our hero to that point where he is within sight
of an achievement for which he has heroically
toiled. The subsequent chapter will show us
what is happening in the meantime, and will make
clear those machinations of the villain that are
about to foil our hero on the eve of a hard fought
fight. How breathless we are as we come back
to our hero, hoping and praying that his next
turn will be such as will outwit the heavy. In the
photoplay the method of securing suspense is
also an “in the meantime” method which is tech-
nically called the “cut back.”
Perhaps the simplest example of the working
of this method is found in those rescue episodes
where we heighten the suspense by showing;-
a little of our victim struggling in the quicksand;
93
94 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
—a little of the progress of those who have been
summoned to the rescue;—some more of the vic-
tim slowly sinking;-some more of the race to
the rescue, until finally, just as the struggle seems
hopeless, the rescue party with ropes, etc., dash
in and set to work. It is plain that throughout
this episode, simple as it is, there is the suspense
of, “Will they get there in time?” This suspense
is plainly secured by cutting from one part of the
action to the other, showing what is happening in
the meantime.
There are times when the “cut back” shows us
no exciting race for life, and yet somehow it cre-
ates the same suspense of, “Will it happen?” A
good example of this is found in all those stories
that deal with a great, self-sacrificing love, either
of mother, wife, sister or brother, for another,
unworthy of this devotion. From the scenes that
show the fears, the hopes, or the simple faith of
the self-sacrificing one, we cut to the scenes that
show the temptation that the unworthy object of
this love is facing. As we cut from one to the
other, the wealth of love of the fine, noble charac-
ter on the one hand makes us earnestly hope that
the weakling shall not fail them on the other
hand. Between the two we get the suspense of,
“Will he do it?—Will he crush the heart that be-
lieves in him?” This suspense, it is clear, is the
work of the “cut back.”
The happiness of an individual or of a home
*
-
-º
“MAKE-UP!” FOR THE CAMERA By courtesy of the Greater Vitagraph Studios
A section of department where questions in “make-up” are being decided by
an expert who adds the finishing touches.

THE “CUT BACK22 95
that has won our sympathy makes an excellent
field for the “cut back,” when the same is threat-
ened with danger. Whether it be a flood that is
to sweep down upon them, or whether it be the
evil operations of an enemy closing in on them, it
is the cutting from the unsuspecting happiness to
that which threatens it more and more darkly,
that gives us again the suspense of, “Will they
escape it?”
This power of suspense wielded by the “cut
back” is equally effective in comedy or drama.
Comedy is often the good-natured play of wit on
wit; wherefore it can readily be surmised how the
suspense of, “Will it happen?” is the very making
of the fun.
Less clearly perceived as suspense, yet surely
contributing this element to the plot, is that car-
rying of several threads of a story at one and the
same time, showing how they are touching upon
one another, working up to a climax. This struc-
ture is present in all stories of complicated plot,
and is gotten over with tightness and suspense
by means of the “cut back.” Switching from the
one plot element to another, we get that suspense
of watching several threads at once, as they
tangle, snarl and threaten to break.
More subtle than the work of the “cut back”
as set forth above, is its raising of another ques-
tion, “How will such things turn out?” Always,
where two lives are shown, the one steadfast and
96 How To WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
ambitious, the other reckless, it is the cutting
from those scenes which show how the former
employs his time, to the scenes that mark how the
latter squanders his, that rouses a feeling of sus-
pense as to where the two paths, so divergent,
will end.
This is true, too, of all themes that set forth
two differing views of life, or two varying con-
ditions influencing the lives of any two charac-
ters; any theme, in short, that deals with the es-
tablishing of one ideal over another will be made
by the “cut backs” that set the two ideals sharply
in juxtaposition and create the suspense of,
“Which will win out?”
This brings us to perhaps the most delicate
work done by the “cut back”;—the building of a
subconscious suspense through satire. Always
when we can cut from the hypocritical virtue of a
character to those conditions that he allows to
continue in his life, we get that realisation of the
matter confronting us, that gives us the suspense
of, “Will his hypocrisy be brought home to him so
that he may see it as we do? How will this be
brought about?”
CHAPTER XIX
THE “DIssolve” AND THE “Double Exposure”
So much of the action of any story, play or
photoplay is subjective, that that medium which
offers the best facilities for conveying the sub-
jective is bound to be most satisfactory in this
respect at least. By the subjective we mean all
that takes place within the mind or soul of a char-
acter, either in thought or feeling, influencing his
future behaviour. -
In the spoken drama all the inner workings
of a man's mind or soul that cannot be shown
in action are gotten over in dialogue wherein the
character freely expresses his thoughts and emo-
tions. In the photoplay we need not resort to de-
scription, but can show quite as vividly the moods
of a man as we can show his actual deeds. This
is done by means of that technical advantage
which the photoplay has over all other mediums
of expression;–the “dissolve.”
By a “dissolve” we mean the fading out of a
scene in which, for example, a man thinks,—into
another scene showing what he thinks,—which in
turn fades back again into the scene of the man
thinking.
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98 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
Between a man and the woman whose love he
has bought at the sacrifice of his ideals there will
stand forever the consciousness of his fall. The
revolt in the soul of that man at times when the
shadow of his fall looms up stronger than his
love, makes a conflict that need not be told in a
raving rant of words, but can be gotten across
tellingly by the simple device of the “dissolve.”
The one scene would give us the storm-tossed
Soul of the man which the caresses of the
woman he loves only aggravate. Why he should
turn against this love even when he loves her
most startles for a moment, and then, just when
we might expect an outburst of words, our scene
“dissolves” into the scene of his fall for which he
despises himself, and then back again to the for-
mer scene. Though the woman may not know
what torments the man she loves, we have read
his mind, have felt and understood it vividly,
and from henceforth the drama holds for us the
tightness of a struggle that draws its strength
from the subjective.
In indicating this “dissolve” in a scenario, the
scenes are numbered consecutively. For in-
stance, Scene Eight may show the man's
troubled mind, after describing which we say:
“dissolve” into Scene Nine. This scene would be
the one of his mistake, at the end of which we
would say: “dissolve” back into Scene Ten, which
would continue the action of Scene Eight. This
“DISSOLVE” AND “DOUBLE EXPOSURE” 99
is a simple illustration, but it will serve as a model
for the technique of the “dissolve” in a scenario.
A power similar to that of the “dissolve” is
wielded by what is called a “double exposure.”
All subjective matter, such as a retrospection in-
to the past, a looking forward into the future,
or the hallucinations of a troubled mind, is possi-
ble to either, and so these two devices may be used
one in place of the other.
While a “double exposure” gives us one scene
in place of three, it is at a disadvantage when
compared with the “dissolve,” for a reason which
we will point out.
If the above situation of the man and his wife
had been treated in “double exposure” instead of
“dissolve,” we would have had the one scene of
the man's discomfiture, in which, as he thinks of
the past, there would appear in “double exposure”
on the wall of the room that scene of the past of
which he is thinking. As the “double exposure”
scene would fade from the wall, the man would
spring up or continue in any other way that the
nature of the scene would require. It is plain
from the above that the entire scene of the man’s
mental suffering would have to be taken first;
that the camera-man would then have to turn
back, counting accurately to where the director
has noted that the character first began to see his
vision. At this point they would take the scene
of the vision, “dissolving” it in on a certain part
100 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
of the first scene, thus exposing the film twice
through that section of it. It will follow that,
the above operation presenting technical difficul-
ties to the camera-man, scenes done in “double
exposure” are very apt to be spoiled in the tak-
ing. Should this occur, it will require the retak-
ing of what would cover three scenes by the sim-
pler method of “dissolve.”
We are told in the writing of plays that it is
best to give in action all that can be so given rath-
er than to present such matter in narration;–the
same principle holds, too, in the photoplay. Very
often, however, a story is of such a nature that,
artistically, its proper point of beginning is near
the end of the action. Starting at this point, we
tell our story in “dissolves,” which are equivalent
to the recital of happenings in a play. Our story
told in “dissolves,” we return to the scene of the
narrator and continue the photoplay to the end.
In doing this we must be careful to make the
scenes of the narration a simple sequence and not
to complicate them by “dissolves” within “dis-
solves,” for in this confusion lies the great dan-
ger of the “dissolve.” Then, too, it is not neces-
sary to return to the narrator after each scene,
for having once faded out from him into his
story, we may continue in the same, separating
the scenes by quoted subtitles in the person of the
speaker, until, at the close of his story, we can re-
turn again to the narrator. Neither the “double
“DISSOLVE” AND “DOUBLE EXPOSURE” 101
exposure” nor the “dissolve” is popular with the
audience of to-day; for even the smoothest “dis-
solve,” called the interpose, destroys the grip of
a photoplay, reducing it from drama to narra-
tive. We would advise our readers to use the
“double exposure” and the “dissolve” only where
no direct structure can serve the purpose.
CHAPTER XX
THE “CLOSE UP”
HAVING treated the matter of the dissolve and
double exposure as mediums for the conveying of
the subjective, we will now turn to a device
which, wisely used, may serve in place of either.
This device is called the “close up.”
By a “close up” we refer to that action which
is taken so near the camera that it looms large,
and its minutest details stand out boldly.
While we have looked to the dissolve as a
means of getting over that part of the action
which takes place within the mind, it can readily
be seen that far more subtle than such a device
is that delicate facial play that gets over only too
clearly what the character is thinking or feeling.
Where thought or feeling can be registered in
facial pantomime, we have action more artistic
and thrilling than can be gotten by the clumsier
method of the dissolve. Such action being deli-
cate, and turning so often upon the play of an
eye, must needs be taken close to the camera if
it is to register clearly.
This, then, is one great virtue of the “close
IO2
THE “CLOSE UP!” 103
up”;—it is the most subtle and the most artistic
way of getting down into the inner workings of
the minds and souls of characters in the photo-
play.
Outside of its value in subjective action, there
is the great service of the “close up” in the bring-
ing out of important, direct action that might
otherwise be overlooked. In all pantomime we
have what is called the large movements and the
finer movements. It might be of vital importance
to the thrill of one’s scene to see a character sur-
reptitiously feeling for his revolver, holding it
firmly the while he engages his victim in a conver-
sation, his face betraying nothing of his treach-
ery. In such an action it is plain that the man's
genial attitude toward his victim chills us only
through a knowledge of the death he is about to
deal him. Both elements must stand out with
equal strength. Now it so happens that the man's
whole bearing is clearly portrayed, while the sub-
tle action of the hand with the revolver is so small
as to pass notice, or at least to fail of thrilling us.
To bring this finer action out so that the two
parts equally may work their thrill one upon the
other, we needs must have a “close up” of the
Sa II16.
There are times in life when we say: “I never
felt so close to her as at that moment.” In this
feeling of spiritual nearness to another, which all
104 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
of us have experienced at some time, there lies
the third important use of the “close up.”
If our photoplay revolves about a perfectly
darling child, it is this darling quality of the
child that will produce much of the play's draw-
ing power. It may be a smile or a roguish
twinkle, or, better still, a little countenance aglow
with a beautiful soul, all of which would be lost
were the picture produced without those “close
ups” that would bring the little actor down into
our hearts.
So it is with the “close up,” or “near view,”
of the silent tear that slowly wells, rolling down
the cheek; so it is with every flitting expression
that gives us a glimpse into the soul beneath and
makes us feel how close we are to the charac-
ter that holds us. It is this feeling of a common
humanity, this binding of our heartstrings about
a character through a perfect understanding,
which adds that interest to a story or play that we
feel toward the happenings which befall those we
love.
Turning from this insight into the inner work-
ings of characters, we come to an insight into plot
machinery. The very expression “plot machin-
ery” takes us from an artistic vein of thought,
and suggests comedy, especially the comedy that
depends upon material things for its laughs.
We all know that Billy, aware of a prying
process server at the other side of the door, and
THE “CLOSE UP!” I05
sending a stream of vichy out to him through
the keyhole, is not so funny as Billy, suspicious,
going to door just as process server peeps in
through keyhole;—a “close up” of Billy's head
peeping out through keyhole and meeting “close
up” of a very large eye of the process server look-
ing in;–"close up” of Billy's face turning from
keyhole registering “The nerve! I'll fix him”;-
a cut of Billy getting the vichy bottle;—a “close
up” of his putting it to keyhole, sending vichy
through to—a “close up” of the process server's
eye to keyhole getting it;-cut of him sputtering
and dashing downstairs;–cut of Billy laughing.
It is plain here that the comedy is in the me-
chanics of the action, and that the same business
gotten over in one scene, without bringing out
boldly the parts thereof, would have fallen short
of the snappy effect of the “close up” flashes.
Exclusive of the above points which present
the actual necessity for the “close up,” there is
the consideration of that artistic variation of
near and far, which is added to a film by the use
of the nearer view, avoiding the dull sameness
of one uniform distance from the eye.
CHAPTER XXI
THE CAMERA “STAGE.” Its RANGE
PERHAPs the most prevalent faults, technically,
of the amateur photoplaywright result from his
ignorance as to what the camera will hold. How
often a beginner will write, as Scene One, that
Jessie, resenting the restraint put upon her by her
parents, meets Jack that night and elopes with
him; repents of her decision by the time she gets
to the station, and returns home to find herself
shut forever from the parental roof. All of this
constitutes Scene One. Scene Two will continue
with the downfall of Jessie, etc. How plainly im-
possible it is for one scene to contain the business
herein described as belonging to Scene One, will
be seen when we understand what is meant by a
scene in photoplay writing.
Technically, in photoplay writing we term as
a new scene every part of the action that requires
a shifting of the camera from the position it held
in the taking of the preceding action. Wherefore
if Scene One is laid in a drawing room and
Scene Two in a hallway, there will plainly be a
shift of the camera from the one set to the next.
IO6
THE CAMERA “STAGE.” ITS RANGE 107
Even if the two settings occupied the same space,
the one being taken down to make room for the
other, the camera would probably have to be
moved to get the new setting from the most ad-
vantageous angle. However, a situation like the
above, being the exception rather than the rule,
is not taken into account in the designation of
Scenes in a scenario.
From this it follows that the camera as turned
on Jessie's resentment of the strictness of her
parents would later have to be shifted to an out-
door Scene showing her escape to the trysting
place, and then shifted again to take in her meet-
ing with her lover. There might be a few more
shifts to the station, and there would have to be
a shifting of the camera to take in Jessie's change
of mind and return home. There would have to
be a shift then to the scene that shows her turned
from the door by her parents. Each of these
shifts of the camera constitutes a scene. There
may be many more shifts than the above, and
there may be fewer, yet what we have given will
show the multiplicity of scenes that the amateur
is prone to designate as one.
Where there is a large group to be contained
in a scene, the camera must be set sufficiently far
from the action to include all personages. This
gives us the large view of a scene such as we have
in ballrooms when we show the entire length of
the room. Such work being far from the camera,
108 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
lends itself to mass action. When we want to
show in detail what is taking place between any
two characters in this mass, we have to move our
camera up to them to get what is called a “nearer
view” of them. This shifting of the camera to a
smaller section of the ballroom gives us another
scene. The camera being very close to the two
individuals taken, will include them and little
else; should we move it closer to them we get
their faces only; still closer, we may get only as
much as an eye which would come out very large.
So it is clear that the camera cannot include much
from left to right without going so far away as
to sacrifice detail.
The same limitation is found in the range of a
camera vertically. If our scene shows us the side
of a large ship with a man escaping from the
deck, climbing down a long rope ladder to the
water, getting into a smaller boat and rowing off,
we would find it necessary, in order to get all of
this scene, to place our camera so far away that
we could get no detail, and the man escaping
would seem very small in the distance.
To take the above mentioned business in such
a way that detail will register, we would have to
take the distant view of the side of the ship, then
flash a “near view” of the man escaping over
side of ship and starting to climb down ladder;
—perhaps another distant view of his descent
THE CAMERA “STAGE.” ITS RANGE 109
farther down;–and a “near view” of the water
line with his escape into the boat and off.
The largest range of the camera, like that of
the eye, is straight out into the distance. Using
this long distance range, we can show with won-
derful artistic effect horsemen as small as ants
dashing down the winding road of the hill. We
get no detail in this, which is part of its charm.
Should we find it necessary to register faces, and
to show who is in the lead, we would have to shift
our camera down beside the road and take the
riders in passing, or in coming towards us. As
soon as we do this we get but a small bit of the
race and would have to move our camera farther
down along the line for the next bit, and still
farther along for the third bit;-all of which
shiftings would, as we have stated, constitute
SCC116S.
The same shifting is necessitated also when
any character moves around the corner of a
street, house, or other feature in the setting.
Since light travels in a straight line, the camera
cannot see around corners, and so will have to be
shifted to a new position to take up the action that
proceeds there, thus calling for a new scene in the
photoplay.
At times, however, the camera may not need to
be shifted from one position to another, but may
follow an actor over a considerable area, turning
110 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
on its pivot or rolling along on some vehicle be-
side him, back of him or in front of him, with-
out any break in the taking. This work is called
a panoram; is so designated in the scenario, and
COunts as One Scene.
CHAPTER XXII
PoſNTERs on THE “FORM” of A MANUSCRIPT
WE have read sundry textbooks giving advice
to those who would write photoplays, and if the
advice we herewith extend is different from
theirs, the contradiction need not be set down to
an oversight on our part.
We will say nothing here about the size of the
paper on which your scenario should be typed,
nor about its tint. It is absurd to believe that
such matters can determine the fate of your
story. Were it true that they could, the whole
field would not be worth your most indifferent
effort.
Neither will we advise you here not to roll your
manuscript, as the same will be annoying to a
busy editor. This advice is not so strange as the
other, for it has some truth in it, though the mat-
ter is not of sufficient importance to influence the
acceptance of your manuscript.
It is true that editors are busy, but they are
only human, and if every moment of their time
were so occupied that they could not spare a sec-
ond to give a twist to your rolled up manuscript
III
112 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
that they might read comfortably, most of them
would not live through the week to return it to
you.
We will say nothing here, either, about the tidi-
ness of a manuscript, trusting that your own
judgment will prevent your sending out anything
for purchase that is utterly slovenly. If the man-
uscript, however, is in presentable condition on
its return from one company, we advise that you
send it out again to another without retyping,
provided you are still satisfied with the contents
thereof. We say this as it makes our heart bleed
to think of so many of you following the advice
of text books that would have you retype a man-
uscript, when it is slightly soiled, before sending
it out again.
There are a few other matters, however, which
while they might also be left to your judgment,
are sufficiently imperative to be emphasised here,
as they are well nigh essential to the sale of your
manuscript.
The first of these is the requirement that all
scenarios be typewritten. However legible hand-
writing may be, it has characteristics to which a
reader must become accustomed. Through long
practice he is so trained in the reading of type
that he can utterly disregard it and put his mind
entirely upon your idea, getting it in an incredibly
short time.
At the rate of a few hundred manuscripts ar-
By courtesy of the Lasky-Paramount Studios
DRESSMAKING FOR THE SCREEN
A staff of workers is regularly retained for the making,
altering and repairing of the wonderful gowns worn upon
the screen.
By courtesy of the Greater Vitagraph Studios
A BUSY CORNER IN THE UPHOLSTERY
DEPARTMENT
Besides the properties a company hires for use in its
pictures, it has its own warerooms stocked with furni-
ture, objects of art, and draperies which must be kept
in constant repair for use when called for.


THE “FORM’” OF A MANUSCRIPT 113
riving per day in the reading department of a
leading company, it can be seen that thoughtless-
ness in the matter of submitting written scen-
arios would become a menace to the lives of read-
ers; wherefore the order has gone out that none
such will be read.
A second matter that is essential is the sub-
mitting of a concise synopsis with your manu-
script. This also resolves itself into a matter of
judgment when we realise that among the large
number of scripts submitted there are so many
whose theme or plot is not suitable to the com-
pany considering its acceptance. The more
Quickly the unavailable scripts can be gotten at
and weeded out, the more time will be left to read-
ers and editors for the careful consideration of
promising material.
The synopsis, therefore, being necessary to the
securing of a fair judgment for the better ma—
terial, has been pronounced by producing com-
panies as obligatory, and the main ones, at least,
will not consider manuscripts minus this impor-
tant detail.
Filling so important an office in the sale of a
manuscript, the synopsis might well be a subject
for careful study. As its main object is the sav-
ing of time to a reader, it stands to reason that
brevity will be its keynote. On the other hand,
as it stands to the author as the setting forth of
wares to a merchant, it will poorly advertise the
114 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
manuscript if it fails to bring out the fine points
of the scenario as an inducement to purchase.
After a carefully considered synopsis, it might
be well to attach a cast of the characters, with
brief description of each, if any particular type
is needed.
Another helpful detail is the writing of a scene
plot. By this we mean a tabulated arrangement
indicating, by number, the scenes that take place
indoors;–in the drawing room, sitting room, etc.
—or outdoors, on the porch, lawn or road. The
proper arrangement for this will be found in the
sample scenario of Chapter Six.
These points, together with the enclosing of a
stamped, self-addressed envelope, which will in-
sure the return of the manuscript to you in the
event of its proving unavailable, will cover all
that you need bear in mind as to your material
medium. Under the caption of advice we might
include, too, our earnest request that you submit
your scenarios to one company at a time. It will
avoid complications.
One point, however, which belongs rather to
the subject matter conveyed, it might be well to
mention here:—conciseness in scene description.
In setting forth the business of any one scene,
be careful to tell only what can actually get across
in pantomime. Then, too, it is not necessary to
give the precise details of how many times a man
runs his hand through his hair, or tramps up and
THE “FORM22 OF A MANUSCRIPT 115
down in a fit of rage. An expression like, “Jut-
son furious” will be sufficient. Give the action of
a character and indicate his mood, leaving it to
the actor to convey this emotion in the manner
natural to himself in his conception of the part.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TITLE
A TITLE is to a scenario, to a book or a story,
as a face or presence is to an individual. Either
the face interests us, arouses our curiosity or
leaves us indifferent. Where it holds us, it spurs
us on to know more of what is back of the face
that seems to promise so much. We follow up
an acquaintance with such a person in order to
get his content.
So it is with a well chosen title. If we can ac-
quire the happy faculty of sending our thoughts
out on the market with a title that gets attention
at the first flash, and then arouses interest, we
have secured for them that introduction to the
public which will cause the latter to make it their
business to become acquainted with all they may
11163.11.
If, after such an advantage, our stories prove
disappointing to an audience, they are no different
from those people who present a promising ex-
terior and are very commonplace in content. Our
stories have failed because they were not worthy
of success, but at any rate they have had an un-
common opportunity.
II6
THE TITLE 117
How pathetic, on the other hand, is the oblivion
of those beautiful souls who present an exterior
so unpromising that we never get beyond it into
the richness of the interior. The world is so
much the poorer for everything really fine that is
not properly advertised. How great a theme,
such as might enrich the lives of millions and
throw new light on dark places, will be passed
over by one group after another as they read its
clumsy title before a picture house.
Back of the quality of interest or attraction
stands a second attribute almost as important,
namely, the quality of fitness.
A title may be ever so attractive, and the story
it introduces may be ever so fine, yet the latter
may not be just what we have been led to expect
by the former, and so we are bound to feel a cer-
tain disappointment. It may be that the story is
even better than what the title suggested, in which
case, after a little period of readjustment of our
ideas to something different from what they were
prepared for, we begin to say consolingly that,
“After all, it is a very fine story,” and feel the
surprise of getting more than we had expected.
We may even, on such an occasion, leave the
theatre perfectly satisfied.
Yet it must be seen that much of the force of
what is really so splendid would inevitably be
lost through that readjustment of our ideas in a
new channel. This, however, presents the matter
118 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
at its very best. In most cases the public, drawn
into a picture house by a particular title, pay their
admission because they are interested in the sub-
ject that that title suggests. Be another subject
ever so interesting, it may not appeal to that class
of people who were brought in by the title it fails
to bear out.
In speaking of the expectations roused by a
title, we must warn our readers against a grave
danger. That title which suggests too clearly to
a public what the story will contain defeats its
object just as surely as the exterior of an indi-
vidual which shows too plainly what he is. In
such a photoplay we can have no more interest
than in the reading of a story after some one has
told us what it is all about. Wherefore, beware!
Let your title at once suggest and mystify, but
above all let it rouse feelings and speculations
such as your story is calculated to satisfy.
The question of a title, outside of any artistic
bearing it may have, is largely a matter of suit-
able introduction to the market. This being so,
there are phases of the subject which we cannot
afford to overlook. These refer to such matters
as the length of titles, the cheapness of titles,
originality, etc. -
It stands to reason that a title must never be
so lengthy as to become cumbrous on the tongue
in passing from one person to another. It is this
THE TITLE II9
passing of a title from one individual to another,
in praise of the picture that has been found wor-
thy of talk, that is its greatest advertisement.
Facilitate it.
For the same reason, also, that title is most
valuable which sticks in the mind so it can be
easily remembered. It is the absence of this qual-
ity that brings about the deplorable condition in
which people will tell their friends of a wonderful
picture they have seen, but they “can’t just re-
member the name.” Such advertising is the more
annoying as it has been well earned and missed.
Allied with these points, and equally a matter
of common sense, is the advice, “choose titles
which have not been worn threadbare.”
A threadbare title is cheap, promising nothing,
and is similar to so many other titles that the
public in reading it outside of a picture theatre
feel they have seen that picture before, and so
pass on to where perhaps older material is shown
under a newer title.
Much is said as to whether the title should be
chosen first or last in the writing of a story. That
depends entirely upon one’s source of inspiration.
If a theme or situation occurs to one first, inspir–
ing one to write the story, naturally the title is
chosen to fit the story when all is finished. Where
the title itself suggests the writing of the story,
it naturally appears first.
120 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
In any event, the last question in an author's
mind before submitting his work to the market
should be the fitness of his advertising medium
to that which he has to sell.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SYNoPSIs
IN a preceding chapter we mentioned as the
requisites of a synopsis that it be brief on the one
hand, and that, on the other, it omit nothing
which will increase the selling chances of the story
it sets forth. This may seem clear enough to
many, yet so often have scenarios been received
by us with the plaint from the author that it
would be impossible for him to make a synopsis
of the same, and still retain enough of its virtues
to make it salable. The same difficulty has been
experienced by many whom we have tried per-
sonally to help. This, together with the impor-
tance of the subject toward the sale of your man-
uscript, leads us to devote the present chapter as
an aid to greater efficiency in this direction.
There are times when a story follows the beaten
track for a short space, and then presents an en-
tirely new solution to the old situation. How
fatal it would be to do for this story what is so
often done in such a case by the author in writing
his synopsis. He will tell you carefully and lov-
ingly that part of his story which is so old that it
I2I
192 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
would never sell, and when he comes to the nov-
elty that is its one saving grace, he will say, “How
this works out and how John finally gets the
upper hand, will be the object of our scenario.”
If this is the object of the scenario, why in
heaven’s name not bring it out in the synopsis?
Why ask the editor to forage through a whole
manuscript on a chance of finding something
worth while, when the advertisement of such is
plainly the business of the synopsis? Besides, an
editor has too long been bored by writers who
pronounce their work “the greatest ever,” and
have not the slightest conception that the same is
a monstrosity. Would he not feel convinced that
the author of the above synopsis is only one of the
thousands who in the past have aroused his ex-
pectations, only to astound him with how little
they knew of what was really worth while?
This conviction has been pounded into the head
of an editor by so many bitter experiences that
it is not wise to promise him anything; give him
what you have at once. He will appreciate it
however briefly you may put it.
So much for the laziness that will drop down
in the middle of a synopsis, leaving it to the ed-
itor to forage for the rest.
Distinctly opposed to this failing is the weak-
ness of telling too much in a synopsis, lest some
of the fine points of the scenario be lost.
There are those writers who will painstakingly
THE SYNOPSIS 123
set to work and give so much of a scenario's busi-
ness in its synopsis, that it would be quite as sen-
sible for them to submit the manuscript with no
synopsis at all, for they have defeated the very
purpose of the same, brevity.
Between these two extremes there lies the mid-
dle course which is always the safest. What are
we to tell and how much ought we to leave out?
This question is answered as was the similar
questions of, “Which scenes shall we use to get
over our idea, and which scenes shall we omit?”
It will be remembered that the determination of
this matter with reference to scenes resolved it-
self into the question of the point of one’s story.
As it is wise to consider the writing of one’s
synopsis, like the choosing of one's title, as follow-
ing the completion of the scenario, it is plain that
the author who has devoted all his energies to
bringing out the point of his story in the scenario,
cannot well falter on a question of values in the
writing of the synopsis.
If the central thrill of your photoplay lies in
one big, unusual scene, see that your synopsis
carries not only the full meaning of this situation,
but also brings out what plays up to the same,
and is the making of it. Not one word of ex-
traneous detail need be given, only that on
which you base your hopes of a sale must be
well brought out.
If the sole point of your story is the study of an
194 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
unusual character, it follows that the synopsis
will not give its value unless it brings out clearly
the pathos, weirdness or lovableness of the unique
personality.
Where a scenario depends upon sensation for
its holding power, the synopsis must give us not
only the mechanical thrills, but also that sym-
pathy with the characters and situations which
gives the whole a human interest.
The synopsis of a comedy must contain all its
laughs, for each laugh is worth just so much in
the fixing of a price on the same. It may take
some careful thought, feeling what the laughs
are, to determine just how much of the situation
to tell so as to bring out these laughs in the
synopsis.
Remembering that the writing of a synopsis
is nothing more than the bringing out of its point,
or, in other words, the setting forth of that which
makes it worth buying, we come to the mechani-
cal end of the cutting down of phrases. Knowing
just what we are called upon to set forth in our
particular story, it will be a simple matter to give
the same briefly, for it is only vagueness in one's
idea that leads to circumlocution.
Having completed what we consider a concise
synopsis, it would be well to go over the same,
testing it for phrases or sentences that might be
omitted or expressed in fewer words without
detriment to the story.
THE SYNOPSIS 125
Only when the synopsis contains the gist of all
that makes the story worth while in plot and at-
mosphere, and presents this in the fewest possible
words, can we feel that it does justice to our
manuscript as an advertising agent.
CHAPTER XXV
THE CAST
IN the production of a scenario few things are
so important as the casting of parts. It is here
that an author who loves his work beyond the
check that may accrue therefrom will give his
final aid toward the success of that work by him-
self suggesting a cast.
How many a fine photoplay has been ruined,
though carefully produced and acted, through
having the parts played by those, who, while they
could interpret them, could not look them.
The part of the delicate little woman who gets
our sympathy as she is driven to the wall because
she is plainly too frail to stand her ground, would
be sure to arouse our annoyance, however well
played by an able-bodied actress. Her very
strength would make an audience ask: “Why
doesn’t she brace up? She looks able to cope with
anything.” Such a question, naturally, is the
defeat of sympathy.
How often the appeal of a character is that one
tender strain under a surface “hard as nails.” It
is plain that since the tender strain is to come as
I26
THE CAST 127
a surprise, the thing to look for in the casting
is a face that either presents or can achieve the
other quality of impenetrable hardness. Where
this quality can be gotten, we have the artistic
contrast that the story calls for. Where some
one “just as good” is chosen for that part, the
play is lost in that which would have made it
vital.
All of this may seem to an author outside of
his control. Yet he must not forget that a pro-
ducer is quite as anxious as is he to secure the
best results, and will be very grateful for such
casting suggestions as might not, in the stress
of the studio, have occurred to him.
If your story artistically calls for a certain
type, state this in a brief description opposite the
name of the character in the cast. This is your
way of helping toward the perfect casting of your
photoplay.
Perhaps the best way of securing for your pic-
ture the interpretation you desire is to make
yourself thoroughly familiar with the faces, per-
sonalities and work of those artists who belong
regularly to a company, and are spoken of as its
“stock members.” From these you will be able
to select those actors who most nearly approxi-
mate your ideal conception for the parts. These
actors might be suggested by you as a tentative
CaSt. -
Should any of them not be at liberty to play the
128 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
parts for which you suggested them, it will be a
simple matter for the director to give said parts
to those who most nearly resemble in personality
and art the ones whom you desire. So, even in
such a case, your casting is bound to prove help-
ful.
Then, too, there are subtleties in a character
which would make you instinctively prefer one
actor to another, however alike they may be.
Were you to set down in your description that
you desire an actor who, while thoroughly con-
trolled and business-like, suggests a warmth and
capacity for affection that makes him at times en-
dearing and at others terrible,_your description
might at first discourage the director as to his
finding the type you desire. If, on the other
hand, you who are so familiar with the character
to be portrayed could suggest some one in stock
who might be adequate, it can easily be seen how
your doing so would facilitate matters, even
where your choice is not available.
All these matters are not essential to the sale of
your manuscript, for a cast is not one of the
fundamental requirements. If, however, you
mean to take photoplay writing seriously, you
must do all that you can toward a successful pro-
duction of your story, for therein will be your
stepping stone to future successes, and to impor-
tance in the field.
Here it might be well to suggest that you recog-
THE CAST 129
nise the limitations of an actor, and that you be
not carried away by personal feeling. Your fa-
vourite actor or actress, no matter how capable,
will not, if they radiate warmth and sympathy,
be able to give you as adequate a portrayal of cold
boredom as will another actor whose personality
Suggests the part.
So, too, it will be hard to swallow, but never-
theless convincing, that no matter how you may
worship your slightly built leading man, it will
not be plausible to the thousands who see your
picture, that he fell at one blow a gigantic heavy
whom you have chosen as his opponent. Regard
probability.
Then, too, do not grow suddenly charitable and
feel that an actor whose face was designed by
nature to make him a first-class heavy, may want
a chance to be “good” for a change, or vice versa.
A leading man who plays the “man of the hour”
type does so because his personality or appear-
ance suggests that character, or because the pub-
lic have grown accustomed to seeing him in such
parts and would resent his appearing as a heavy.
To have these two types exchange parts in a
photoplay would make the audience feel through-
out the strain on plausibility; for consciously or
subconsciously they would recognise that the part
of the one would have been far better suited to
the other. In this matter we do not refer, mind
you, to those actors who are at home as the hero
130 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
or the heavy, playing either part with equal
grace.
The question of casting suggests what may
seem a minor matter, but what nevertheless looms
large in mental suggestion. This is the question
of the naming of one's characters.
It is true that a rose by any other name would
smell as sweet—if it had always been called by
this other name. If from the beginning of time
all the Clarences and Percys had been strong,
sturdy chaps, and all the Johns and Bills had
been effeminate fops, they would suggest these
types to us to-day quite as surely as they now
suggest the opposite.
Be mindful, therefore, of what the names of
your characters suggest. Use the fanciful name
only where the satirical or flippant nature of your
story demands it; do not despise the realness that
comes with the hearty simplicity of the good old
names. Aim at naturalness and do not force the
suggestiveness of a name into the unnatural,
where it would read: “Mr. Worldwise, Mr.
Doughbags, or Mistress Gossip.”
CHAPTER XXVI
PRODUCTION OF THE PHOTOPLAY
No phase of the picture game is so interesting
to an outsider, and no part of it will be more
helpful toward intelligent work in the writing of
photoplays, than a knowledge of the actual pro-
duction of a scenario, once it leaves your owner-
ship.
After your scenario has been manifolded, one
copy of the same is given to that head of the firm
who will supervise its direction or production.
The second copy is given to the producer directly
in charge. Other copies are given to those who
play the leading roles and will need to study their
parts; to the camera-man who will study the man-
uscript for lighting effects and camera oppor-
tunities; to the costume department or to the
modiste's, who will attend to the robing of the
actors; to the stage manager who will attend to
the planning and putting up of the sets required;
and to the buyer of properties who will see that
all stage belongings or furnishings necessary to
the action shall be on hand.
The scripts cannot, however, be given to any
I31
132 How To WRITE FOR MoVING PICTURES
one department, or to the leading actors, until
the director has satisfactorily cast the same. The
cast as it is then decided upon is posted on a
bulletin board in the studio. Any actor or ac-
tress, finding his name on a cast, will consider
himself “tied up” for as long as his work shall
last in that particular picture, and will not, dur-
ing that time, be at the service of any other
director, save for small bits which will not inter-
fere with the picture in which he is cast.
If the picture is a historical one, the costuming
department will now attend to equipping the cast
with the costumes that their parts call for.
While this work is going forward, the settings
that the various scenes require are being planned
and executed by the stage manager. At his com-
mand are stage hands, regularly called “property
men,” also carpenters, who fetch, carry and erect
according to direction. -
Working hand in hand with him is the prop-
erty department, whose head is to keep him pro-
vided with the stage properties he may call for.
On these sets the electrician adjusts the lights
as required by director and camera-man. The
camera is then placed for the taking of the scene,
but much has still to be done before this taking
Ca11 OCC111'.
The “much” that we refer to is the rehearsing
that the scene may require. Within the actual
drawing room, or bedroom perhaps, of your
PRODUCTION OF THE PHOTOPLAY 133
scenario, as it has been set up in the studio, and
as you will see it on the screen, the actors go
through the business that you have laid out for
them. The director stands out in front, intent
upon the scene, making changes and suggestions
in the acting and interpretation, until, satisfied
with the whole, he calls out, “Lights!” The elec-
trician turns the switch; the lights flash on, the
camera-man makes a few turns of his camera,
photographing the number of the scene he is
about to take, so that the scene will find its proper
place in the picture when the same is joined.
The actors go through the scene once more,
bearing in mind the action that has finally been
decided upon, and the camera-man, turning the
crank of his camera at the rate of one foot of
film a second, photographs this scene until, stop-
ping the camera at the close of the action, he has
in his camera what you will see projected on the
SC1'een.
If the scene was particularly effective, and
would look well on advertising posters, in bul-
letins or in newspapers, etc., the director calls for
a “still.” The pose of the characters in the most
telling part of the scene is held, and a picture of
the same is taken, not with a motion picture cam-
era, but with a regular camera such as is used in
still photography.
Any scene that is supposed to be witnessed
through the telescope, through opera glasses, or
134 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
through a keyhole, is photographed with a card-
board or metal mat before the camera, in which is
cut an opening of the required shape.
For example, a scene witnessed through a
telescope is photographed through a circular
opening. What is seen through opera glasses is
taken through the double circle which suggests
them. A keyhole form cut in this cardboard or
metal is the mat through which a scene is photo-
graphed when a character is supposed to witness
it through the keyhole.
Dissolves in or out are taken through the grad-
ual opening up or closing down of the diaphragm.
Trick effects such as the sudden appearance of
a hat on an actor's head, or of a cane which has
jumped into his hand, are produced by taking
part of the actor's work without hat or cane and
then stopping the camera while a hat is put on
the actor's head and a cane into his hand before
the camera continues with the taking of the ac-
tion.
The uncommon rapidity with which figures
move at times during exciting parts of a film is
due to “slow motion” in the camera during the
taking of the scene or scenes. By this we mean
that figures run or walk at normal speed, but
that the camera-man turns his crank a trifle
slower than the usual foot per second. Turning
slowly in this way, more action takes place on
the part of the actors during the turning of each
AN EXTERIOR SET IN PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION By courtesy of the Greater Vitagraph Studios
where a photoplay is laid in a period the homes of which cannot be matched
by any buildings of to-day, or where for the action a special kind of building
is required that the company may have to travel far to get, both the exterior
and the interior settings will be of studio construction.



PRODUCTION OF THE PHOTOPLAY 135
foot of film than would have been the case had
the camera-man turned at normal speed. It
stands to reason that when so much action is
projected in a theatre and is run off quickly at
the regulation speed, the actors on the film must
move with unusual rapidity, heightening the ex-
citement or the comedy effect as the case may be.
Countless numbers of effects are possible to
either of the above devices, as any one under-
standing the working of the same can recognise
in following up picture productions.
The negative of each scene when developed and
dried is projected on the screen in one of the
company’s projecting rooms, and is there wit-
nessed for quality and for flaws. Some of these
may be irreparable, in which case the scene must
be reenacted and must be taken again.
When all the scenes of a photoplay have been
taken, the negatives of the same are cemented to-
gether according to their numbers, and we have
the entire film in negative. From this negative
a print is made in the positive, which is called the
first, or sample, print. It is this print that is run
in the projection room for possible changes in the
film, such as the cutting out of certain parts that
are draggy, or the cutting to and fro between
scenes—any trimming, in short, which will im-
prove the picture.
The negative film is then cut and trimmed ac-
cording to the changes that were found advan-
136 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
tageous in the trimming of the first print. This
obviates the danger of making any experimental
cuts in the negative, which is so valuable and
which, after it has been trimmed according to the
first print, serves as that from which all other
prints are made.
Subtitles are photographed and their negatives
are cemented into the negative of the picture, in
their respective places, and the whole is then
ready for the making of the above mentioned
prints or copies, to be sent out to the various dis-
tributing centres or “exchanges.”
CHAPTER XXVII
EconoMY IN SETTINGs
IN the previous chapter on the production of
your scenario we did not go into detail but saw
fit to give only such a general view of the matter
as would be of interest and help in the writing of
the photoplay.
One point, however, in production bears so
directly upon the work of the photoplaywright
that we will treat it here with that same detail we
accorded in earlier chapters to the preparation
and writing of a scenario. The point in mind is
the feasibility of using the same set repeatedly
throughout your manuscript, the more especially
as you may have to apply for its sale to one of the
Smaller companies. This presents an advantage
and a difficulty, both of which we will treat in
this chapter.
Studio space is limited. When a director fin-
ishes with the scene or scenes that he is to take
in the one setting, he may find that the space he
occupies has been promised to another director
whose set is being promptly put up on the same,
as his picture has been booked for a prior release
I37
138 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
date. Your director will now have to wait, as
will his company, until they can get the next set
which they require to continue the picture.
This period of waiting, outside of the weari-
ness and discouragement it entails, occasions very
often the loss of from one to three days. Even
where a director is not called upon to give up his
space to another, it will take a few hours before
he can have the one set taken down and the new
one put up in its place.
All of this loss of time points to one thing:
that the retaining of the same set, using it re-
peatedly throughout the picture, or changing at
most to just a few others, is direct economy of
time, labour and money.
Many will say that this use of the same set be-
comes monotonous, and deprives the picture of
that variety which comes through change of
scene. To guard against this we suggest that
the set be not always taken from the same angle,
or at the same distance from the camera. If
scenes take place in various sections of the same
room, and if these sections be shown near and
far, we get a multiplicity of effect that is quite
equal to any desire for change that an audience
may feel.
At the same time, the location of such scenes
in various parts of the one room makes for
smoothness, allowing for no jumps in time or
space in the getting from scene to scene. Then,
ECONOMY IN SETTINGS 139
too, the minds of the spectators are never at a
loss as to where the action takes place, and the
effort that they would ordinarily expend in figur-
ing out their new location can be calmly put
into the enjoying of the story.
There is another advantage in keeping down
the number of settings. Where a setting is to
be used repeatedly, as suggested above, it will be
worth while to the stage manager to make such a
setting as artistically fine as possible, for the one
set will have so important a bearing on the whole
picture. The same care cannot be expended on
the creation of a set that will be used for one or
two scenes only, and then discarded.
Where this incessant shifting of scenes is made
necessary by the nature of one’s story, the action
should be laid as far as possible out of doors.
This brings us to our second great method of
securing economy in settings: keep your scenario
always in season, and lay the scene of the action
as nearly as possible out of doors.
There are stories that belong neither to winter
nor summer, yet even such can very well be taken
in the open, especially during the summer. Scenes
as intimate as a proposal, or as the overtures of a
man to the wife of another, can be taken in the
grounds of a home quite as well as in the home
itself.
Then there are porch scenes which require no
studio sets. It will readily be seen that pictures
140 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
laid entirely out of doors can be taken straight
through from start to finish, with none of the an-
noyance or loss of time that is entailed in the
change of sets. Such a picture could be produced
in a minimum of time, and while thoroughly at-
tractive and picturesque, would constitute a com-
paratively inexpensive production.
Often where pictures require an indoor setting
for some of their scenes, and an exterior location
for others, these outdoor scenes can be taken
while the next studio set is in preparation, and so
no time is lost.
The value of outdoor locations being apparent,
it follows that the question of season is very im-
portant to a photoplaywright. *
In the fall it would be well to send out your
photoplays that are to be enacted 'mid snow and
ice. It is well, if possible, to make such entirely
exterior, as most of the winter work is done in
the studios and a firm will be quick to see the ad-
vantage of sending a producer outdoors to thin
out congestion.
Do not depend upon this advantage, however,
for the sale of your manuscript, for all these
points are only added helps, presupposing that
the story itself is worth purchasing.
Before the warm weather or early spring sets
in it is well to put on the market your manu-
scripts that require a verdant setting. Such will
be prepared and will be in the producer's hand
ECONOMY IN SETTINGS I41
long before the foliage is sufficiently dense, and
will be done by him as soon as the time is ripe,
with the economical advantage above mentioned.
Christmas stories, or stories dealing with any
of the national holidays, might very wisely be
submitted six months in advance. This would
give the author an opportunity of making a sale
with one company or another before it is too late
for the production of his picture.
While the last item deals with timeliness rather
than with economy in sets, we have mentioned it
here, where it is not amiss, and where it will
translate itself, with all other points here men-
tioned, into a matter of common sense.
Let not the thought of economy lead the author
to stint himself in anything that would advance
the attractiveness of a photoplay, for that is poor
economy indeed which in any way diminishes the
selling quality of a film. It is our firm conviction,
however, that a little thought as to unity of place
does much to prevent the straggling, shifting
structure so prevalent on the screen.
CHAPTER XXVIII
RELATIVE VALUE OF IDEA AND FORM
As in all art, so in the photoplay, the idea de-
termines the expression and is the more import-
ant of the two. While we have said sufficient on
form and its importance to our idea, we must not
forget that it is of value only in so far as it is em-
ployed in the bringing out of something that is
really worth while. An idea that is commonplace
is of no value, however well set forth it may be.
A very fine conception, on the other hand, will
have a market value though it be well nigh lost in
the handling.
The practiced eye of an editor, whose business
it is to detect merits, even possibilities, wherever
such occur, will see at once just how much can
be made of a theme whose opportunities the au-
thor may have missed entirely. Such a manu-
script is then bought for the idea it contains. Its
price will necessarily be lower than it would have
been had the idea been well worked out. On the
other hand, it may sell to better advantage than
a more ordinary idea, well worked out, that was
just sufficiently interesting to get by.
I42
RELATIVE VALUE OF IDEA AND FORM 143
All prices are determined by market value, and
as nothing is more rare than an uncommon idea,
so nothing should, nor does, draw as satisfying a
compensation.
When such a theme or situation is purchased,
it is given to one of the staff writers, who, ab-
sorbing the same and feeling therein all its un-
realised possibilities, sets to work to do justice by
the same and to give it that bringing out that its
author failed to accord it.
A staff writer capable of doing by material
what the authors thereof have been incompetent
to do, must necessarily be a high-salaried indi-
vidual. The fact that a concern will pay well for
undeveloped ideas, provided they are sufficiently
big, and will pay in turn a staff of high-salaried
writers for the bringing out of such ideas and the
picturising of the same, proves that expense is of
no moment where quality is concerned.
In this lies the great warning to the photoplay-
wright: Do not feel in too great a hurry to get
to work on your scenario. No matter how quickly
you may complete the same, you have wasted just
so much time unless you have built it on an idea
that in itself, and without development, would
have been worthy of purchase.
All the time that you may have spent in the
writing of ten unmarketable scripts, put together
and devoted to the quest and development of one
uncommon theme, will give you a clear gain of
144 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
the generous price that such an idea would com-
mand. Were you to take these same ten unsal-
able scripts and offer them to a concern gratis,
your generosity would bring you a letter of
thanks, but could not be accepted; for the heavy
expenses entailed in the production of a photo-
play would make it perfectly absurd to lavish
the same on an inferior story that would drag
down the picture.
A poor story is not cheap at any price. This
is getting more true as month by month the stand-
ard rises. In this connection it might be well to
give a word of explanation to those who, from
time to time, feel that some company has “stolen”
their idea.
However large the price of a manuscript may
loom, it becomes comparatively insignificant when
compared with the total expense of its production.
Would it not be absurd for a company to endan-
ger its rights to something so expensive as the
completed film, for the relatively modest sum to
be paid for the photoplay? If an idea is very fine,
a company cannot afford to lose it, and will
quickly purchase the rights to the same, lest it
fall into the hands of another concern. How
dangerous would it be for them to produce such
a scenario without paying for it, only to find that
it has, in the meantime, been sold to some other
company whose production of the same defeats
their own.
RELATIVE VALUE OF IDEA AND FORM 145
During the many years of my experience as an
editor, I have encountered not one unpleasantness
on the score of apparent theft of stories by the
concern I served.
A few cases, in which an author felt he saw
something similar to his own on the screen, and
communicated the matter to us, were promptly
looked up. The author was given the name and
address of the writer from whom we purchased
the photoplay he saw on the screen. The date on
which said photoplay came to our studios, and the
date of its purchase by us, were given, together
with the date on which we received complainant's
manuscript and the date on which the same was
returned to him.
Strangely, in every case but one our purchase
of the former script antedated our reception of
the latter. Our giving of the entire record per-
taining to our source of acquiring the debated
photoplay, brought out only too clearly the fact
that some photoplays seem to be taken from oth-
ers because their theme is so little above the com—
monplace as to readily occur to any number of
authors throughout the country.
One thing is necessary to avoid this danger of
similarity in pictures, and to achieve that uncom-
mon novelty of theme that gives it its value over
form, namely:—to seek for our subjects under
life's surface. Do not write the first thing that
occurs to you; it is apt to be the first thing that
146 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
occurs to thousands of others. Get what you are
sure your neighbour has never thought of; startle
him with it, and the chances are you will startle
your editor, and after him, the public.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE Novice AND THE WRITER of REPUTE
MUCH has been said on the relative opportuni-
ties of the novice and the writer of repute, toward
the gaining of a market. Always there is the
thought that the beginner has no chance of a
reading. In this there is some truth and much of
falsehood.
If there are editors who will read and consider
only those manuscripts that are submitted by
writers whose names or the quality of whose work
they know, the stand they take is not arbitrary,
but grows out of a condition under which they
themselves are tried.
In a field where every child attempts to write a
photoplay—where so many undeveloped minds
have not the intelligence to realise how much of
thought and training is required toward this end,
there naturally falls to the lot of an editor an
overwhelming contribution of worthless material.
There are editors who, with the aid of their read-
ers, will wade through this mass in the hope of
finding what all are seeking, the new and promis-
ing writer. Others, however, discouraged by a
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148 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
long and fruitless search for the “two grains of
wheat in a bushel of chaff,” will turn from the
work of the beginner, which so often spells in-
competence, to the product of trained efficiency,
the manuscript of the writer of repute.
It is the blundering novice, not the writer of
reputation, who closes the market on the beginner.
If you who are taking the first steps in this field
could realise this, and would look upon every
ignorant competitor as your greatest enemy, you
would rise to that fervour for efficiency that
would be the greatest power in bringing about
the day of the beginner.
Toward this end there is but one royal road,
education and training in all that pertains to the
art you mean to pursue. Do not make the com—
mon mistake of envy which declares that a writer
sells his work because his name is known. That
name at one time was as unknown as is your own,
and the power and work that made it known are
no other than the thinking effort which will do as
much for yours.
Naturally, when you have finished a story you
look upon it as equal to anything you have ever
read or heard of. If you did not feel thus about
it, you would not have given to the writing of the
same so many hours of tedious endeavour. Do
not be misled by this appreciation of your work
into thinking that any adverse criticism on the
THE NOVICE AND WRITER OF REPUTE 149
same is made because the reviewer has not the
power to appreciate your idea.
Your feeling on the matter is only natural,
and is far stronger in the inexperienced than in
those whose judgment work and time have mel-
lowed.
There is in the mere novelty of expressing
yourself for the first time in story form a thrill
and unusualness that would make you see in rosy
colours the work that has cost you so much pains.
As time goes on and your mind, through practice,
has learned to get its effects more easily, every-
thing you do will seem to you so much simpler
and less extraordinary.
The arrival of this time is to a writer as the
achievement of perfect technique to a musician.
Once a pianist has absolute command of his key-
board, all effects are possible for him, and he goes
on to more and more difficult interpretations.
So it is with the writer. Once he has learned
to express himself with absolute command of his
art, he is bound for the places which those heavily
hampered by a lack of this command can never
attain. That for which he toiled at one time, and
which he thought, in consequence, so wonderful,
has become to him childish in the last degree. He
is now a finished writer, and if his name is not as
yet generally known to the public, it is known,
at least, to those who can introduce him to the
same, the editors,
150 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
It is to such writers that the editors look as to
a source of steady supply; for an author well
trained in the fiction habit is never at a loss for a
theme or plot.
All life abounds in an inexhaustible supply of
themes for stories, and the greatness of the in-
terpretation of these will depend on the power,
the native ability and development, of the one
who will interpret them for us, the author.
It is in this way that a name of repute is valu-
able to a producer. We all know that the names
of certain singers on a programme will draw us,
for those names have become a guarantee of ex-
cellence. So among authors, certain names as-
sure us of, or give us at least a reason to hope
for, something above the ordinary.
As time is short and as the evenings that we
may devote to our pleasure are precious, we can
take no chances on the possible boredom of an
unknown author, when we have our choice of see-
ing the work of another who has long been suc-
cessful in furnishing us entertainment. The con-
fidence of the public that he has earned for him-
self is possible for all of you. You must win it
as he did, by courageous and painstaking work.
There is no royal road to success, and remem-
ber always that no editor can be indifferent to the
promising beginner, for the ranks of the estab-
lished are continually thinning out, and new gen-
erations are pouring in to be amused.
CHAPTER XXX
PLACIARISM. THE NEw Twist
THROUGHOUT these chapters we have urged
the beginner to aim high and to delve deep for his
material. No better advice can be given him to-
ward the achieving of originality, yet the same
precept, we realise, is fraught with a subtle
danger.
The power to see in life what others have never
read therein does not come readily to the begin-
ner. It is the vision of the seer; it is at once the
fruit and the reward of a fine, thoughtful life
spent in contemplation.
The untrained mind of a novice, looking out
on life and seeing in it nothing but what appears
on the surface, is quick to detect that the works
of experienced writers present a clearer, deeper
insight. Discouraged by the comparison of his
own meagre understanding with their profounder
realisation, he turns from a study of life to glean
his themes from the works of others.
Herein lies the danger. The mind that could
see in life nothing but what appeared on the sur-
face may be able to see in the writings of others
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152 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
nothing but what actually appears there. If,
then, he bases his scenario on what he has read,
he gives us a plain case of plagiarism, or theft.
Such an offense closes the field to him forever,
for he is blacklisted as dishonest or unreliable,
and by a compact formed for the protection of
authors and of the companies themselves, no other
picture concern will purchase his scenarios.
The ban of the blacklist is a heavy penalty, and
is not imposed on a writer unless his work is
clearly a direct steal. How, then, are we to dis-
tinguish between plagiarism and that legitimate
basing of one story upon another, whereby the
second is quite as original as the first?
You will secure the one or the other in accord-
ance with the way you set to work. Perhaps that
suggestion of one story by another that is farthest
removed from any attempt at plagiarism occurs
as follows:
Often, in the reading of a story that has espe-
cially thrilled one, we close the book, keenly alive
to the atmosphere that pervades it. Immersed
in this atmosphere, and held by the mood it stirs
in us, a story forms that expresses our emotions,
and that is called into being by the high tension
of our minds at the moment. This story will have
nothing in common with that which inspired it,
save perhaps atmosphere.
This use of the works of others as an inspira-
tion to the highest activity of which our minds
PLAGIARISM. THE NEW TWIST 153
are capable, is the most legitimate use to which
such works can be put.
Less inspired than this former method of pro-
cedure, and tending rather toward the analytical,
is the weighing of the truths set forth by a story
and the arriving at a solution different from that
of the author.
If his views on the question have brought home
to you your own differing views on the matter,
you have the same right to set forth yours as he
had to exploit his. Your view being different, the
story which enlarges on it will naturally be unlike
his. - -
This is originality quite as much as if you had
encountered in life the outlook that called forth
your own in opposition.
Often, hidden away in some obscure corner of
a novel, you will find a character who appears for
a moment and then drops out again into oblivion.
That character whose possibilities have been quite
Overlooked by the author may present to you a
richer field than is covered in the entire novel.
He is yours by right of discovery; develop him to
the utmost. What you make of him is your own
creation—this is originality.
So often, too, there are situations that are un-
der-developed, or situations of which nothing is
made, that set one's mind to working. Every-
thing seems ripe for the entrance of a character
whose presence, under these peculiar conditions,
154. HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
would destroy our heroine's happiness forever.
By chance, or by the manoeuvring of some of the
characters, the crash does not occur, and the situ-
ation drifts by. If we feel the disappointment of
a situation lost, we have only to set to work imag-
ining what would have happened if the crash had
actually occurred. We might let it be a villain
who is involved rather than our heroine, and we
might make such other changes as the new con-
ditions call for. We would have a story in no
way suggestive of the one which set us on its
track—this would be originality.
There is a value in following the works of oth-
ers that lies not so much in the works themselves,
as in the training it gives us to think with, and
see with, these minds of deeper vision. Some
character that such a mind draws will stand out
more vividly alive to us than any of those charac-
ters that we have lived and worked shoulder to
shoulder with, but have seen only with our more
imperfect vision. Such a character will sud-
denly suggest a meaning in another, which mean-
ing we have never suspected there, though we had
a thousand and one opportunities to detect it.
We take that character whom we know so well
but never understood until now, and build him
up into a story which carries with it all the nov-
elty and charm that goes with the setting forth of
what no other has seen before us.
In all of these ways the use of the works of
PLAGLARISM. THE NEW TWIST 155
others is legitimate; for it will be seen that they
but teach us to seek that in life which we might
otherwise overlook, and introduce us into the
quest for that thrill which an explorer feels when
standing for the first time on a shore where no
other foot has trod.
CHAPTER XXXI
ORIGINALITY DETERMINED BY WHAT Is
HACKNEYED
THUS far we have emphasised as the prime
requisite for success in any creative field the
quality of originality. The preceding chapter has
pointed out to us how we may avoid that antithe-
sis of originality, namely, plagiarism. Here,
however, we mean to get down into the main
springs of what constitutes originality, endeav-
ouring as we do so to lead the minds of our read-
ers into the method of thought that is productive
of the same.
Why are we showered always with the same
ideas? Where lie those other thoughts that are
different? And how are we to arrive at them?
Building on what we have learned in the avoid-
ance of plagiarism, we continue in this chapter
toward the achievement of originality.
Shifting always as that which was new be-
comes old, perhaps the best way of viewing the
matter will be through a consideration of what
is ancient, for that, after all, is what determines
originality.
156
ORIGINALITY 157
Lazy animals at best, the mass of the public
think always along the line of least resistance.
Certain thoughts, as we continue, will be shown
common to all. These thoughts constitute the
main body of that material which, through its
prevalence and its long standing history, may be
termed hackneyed. As there is “nothing new un-
der the sun,” it follows that these things that all
people know cover the entire field of human na-
ture with all its peculiarities. Should a writer ar-
rive who will present to the public human nature
different from what we know it to be, his work
would not be termed original, but would be pro-
nounced lacking, through his ignorance of things
as they are.
If, then, a writer can present to the public
nothing concerning their fellows that they do not
already know, it follows that originality along
this line must consist of viewing established facts
in a new light and reading in them a meaning that
no one has as yet found therein.
Through his interpretation, therefore, is a
writer crowned as original or scoffed at as ordi-
nary.
No landscape painter has ever put on canvas
objects other than the world has given him, of
mountains, trees, and open plains. Yet into these
he has put a something of himself, the vision of a
seer. He has laid bare for us a hidden beauty
158 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
that we might never with our coarser minds have
SCC11.
So it is with a writer. Delicately, sympatheti-
cally, with his finer perceptions he lays bare for
us the main springs in the lives of those we knew
so well, and makes us see them, “Oh, so real,” but
as we never understood them before.
Love is no new sentiment in this world which
has, for ages, turned on this primal emotion as
on a pivot. To bring out in your story that John
Jones loves Mary Jane is to give your public
nothing worth reading or seeing, for the world is
full of John Joneses and Mary Janes, and they all
love each other, and while all the world loves a
lover, it does so because it hopes to live out some-
thing new and interesting when it delves into
their lives.
Unless we can bring out a deeper pathos in
love, a greater self-abnegation, a loftier height
to which it can inspire, and more astounding
situations proclaiming its invincible power, we
have gotten out of the most sublime of subjects
no more than will appear to the unthinking in a
surface glance at life.
You may be surprised when such a story is re-
turned to you by the editor to whom you sub-
mitted it, yet if you will stop to think for a mo-
ment you will see the absurdity of trying to sell
at all what cannot rightfully belong to any one,
By ºries, of me Greater vº, Studios
MODEL OF A COAL MINE USED TO SHOW EXPLOSION EFFECT
When filmed the whole structure is destroyed before the camera and gives a
realistic representation of an actual disaster.

ORIGINALITY 159
for it is common to all people and abundant as
are the pebbles that we trample under foot.
On the surface of life, too, there stands out,
amid other emotions, the passion of jealousy. To
state that this exists, and to name as James Brown
the man who is jealous of Bill Wells, is equivalent
to those asinine statements at which we all laugh,
yet which we continue to use, such as, “It’s a fine
day to-day,” “Some rain we’re having,” etc.
Think of the great question of jealousy.
Surely a force that has framed great destinies
and changed the history of the world is worthy
of deep thought.
Think of the insidious power of this undermin-
ing force! What causes it? In what darkness
of the human soul is it rooted and wherefrom does
it draw its strength? Consider the emptiness and
the folly of this deluding fact in the light of those
last quiet words, “dust to dust.” Feel the rend-
ing of a human soul, storm-tossed by jealousy,
cast wildly out of the great harmony, and then
turn again if you can, and say that “James
Brown is jealous of Bill Wells,”—we have noth-
ing more to say.
Everything crabbed and mean in the human
soul, everything tending downward, away from
eternal principles, is attended by unhappiness
and results in tragedy. All of it has a why and a
wherefore. Every condition that exists, every
160 How To WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
principle that is advocated, has a bearing on the
masses and an influence on posterity.
It is not in the things themselves, but in their
meaning, that lies the rich field for the writer.
Read between your lines in the events of each
day, and give to others what you have so read.
It will not be in the book of life, as they read it—
it will be your contribution and will earn for you
the reputation of originality.
CHAPTER XXXII
HACKNEYED THEMES IN THREE GROUPs
Group I
IN the preceding chapter on originality, we
have spoken of man as a lazy animal, and have
shown how the majority are prepared always to
follow the line of least resistance and to stop at
the point where things grow difficult. We will
now show how laziness is the root of those evils
that result in the hackneyed story and in all that
is commonplace and lacking in originality.
First of all, we will consider those stories that
have their rise in one of the laziest tendencies of
the human mind, its proneness to day dreaming.
The desire to get something for nothing is
deep-rooted in the human soul, and the only time
that we can be sure of getting it is when we sit
back in a corner and allow all those things to
come about in fancy that we are too lazy to strug-
gle for in life. Fond of tangoing, of “going out,”
of giving ourselves up to a careless round of
pleasures, we see before us none of that success
in life which crowns the patient efforts of the am-
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162 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
bitious. How, then, are we to achieve distinc-
tion? Why, by some one of wealth or importance
falling in love with us and raising us at once to a
station we never earned—in other words, giving
us something for nothing.
Such dreams are so enthralling to the average
boy or girl that it is time for some one to set
forth to them how contemptible they are. Look-
ing upon such a happening in their lives as the
most wonderful thing that could occur to them,
too wonderful, in fact, to be true, they write this
all-engrossing story and feel it ought to thrill
the world as it thrills them. As a result, we have
oceans of manuscripts giving us nothing new to
justify their existence, merely setting forth the
humdrum life of a farm girl who wins the love
of a millionaire passing in his machine, or the
sweet little stenographer who “strikes it rich’’
with her employer.
It is true that such alliances are possible. We
do not bar them from a story; we merely main-
tain that they, in themselves, are not sufficient to
make a story worth while, however absorbing
such a dream might be to would-be authors in the
twilight hours.
The feeling that comes to so many of these
dreamers, namely, that their charms are being
wasted on the desert air, that they have no way
of coming in contact with those men or women
of the wealthier class who would make their for-
HACKNEYED THEMES 163
tunes, matrimonially, is responsible for those
plots in which the heroine writes her name on an
egg, with the plea, “Write or call.”
Allied with these plots, and arising out of the
same tendencies, are all those stories in which
the hero, or heroine, finds a photograph and
searches for the original; finds a lace handker-
chief or other article of apparel, and traces the
possessor.
All these things are, “oh, so sweet,” when
dreamed in the dusk, but we must not forget that
millions of others, as lazy as ourselves, are
dreaming those identical dreams. Our manu-
script will go in with countless numbers that carry
the same idea, it being so world-old and univer-
sal that it belongs to no one in particular.
Growing out of the same desire of human na-
ture to get things without too much effort, ap-
pears the prevalent plot which represents an over-
night success. Oh, the bliss of getting a chance
and leaping up in one performance to first rank!
It’s all so easy. Millions have dreamed it; mil-
lions more write it, and add to that assortment
of stories that are commonplace beyond measure.
The poor girl with the wonderful voice, or the
violinist of strange power, are discovered and
rise to fame. It is so easy to be discovered; it is
one of those things that are done to one. We do
not have to struggle for it.
Do any of these authors show the heartaches,
164 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
the discouragements, the furnace seven times
heated, in which genius is tried before it is re-
fined to that place where it can give itself up to
those it serves? No. Such thoughts are sermons
for the ambitious, but they do not belong to day
dreams. They are disturbing to that tranquil,
hazy ease in which everything goes so smoothly.
So it is with the academy prize which the poor
artist always achieves that we may leave him, as
our picture closes, in ease and splendour. It
is all so easy, wherefore, you may be sure it has
been dreamed many times before.
The money that turns up at just the right time
to save the old home, or comes in handy for the
needed operation, etc., is the outgrowth of those
moments when, pressed for money, we see it com-
ing to us in fancy, in some miraculous way. It is
the stuff that dreams are made of, such dreams
as belong to no one in particular.
The desire to rise in life without effort is at the
bottom, too, of those day dreams that deal with
heirs or heiresses in disguise. A young girl sees
a stranger who is interested in her. It would not
do for him to be a commonplace mortal of her
own class, for such is not the dynamo that is
needed to elevate her out of her aforesaid class.
Here is where the day dream sets to work. The
man is perhaps some nobleman in disguise, or
some millionaire who keeps his fortune a secret,
that he may be loved for himself alone. The
HACKNEYED THEMES 165
dream is enthralling; it stirs the young heart to
such an extent that it becomes, in the course of
time, the basis of a story such as has been
dreamed by romantic youth since the year one.
Very often, hurt because we are not appreci-
ated, we go off into a corner and dream of coming
into our own, when everybody will be “sorry.”
This is the basis of all stories that show a de-
spised member of a family or community coming
out on top with the others grovelling before him.
As we say to the day dreamer, so we say to the
authors of these stories, “Buck up, get out into
life's realities, and see what you can make of
them.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
HACKNEYED THEMEs
Group 2
ALL the hackneyed themes in the world we may
class into three groups. Those in the first group
we have shown to arise from the pernicious habit
of day dreaming. Those in the second group we
will now show as arising from the tendency to
seize on the situation that gives us our conflict
and our entanglements with the least possible ef-
fort on our part.
Chief of such situations is the eternal triangle.
As we think of a story and realise that we must
set our inventiveness to work that something may
happen in the pages of our manuscript, we grow
bewildered at the prospect of so much mental
effort, and seize, affrighted, at the easiest thing
in the world to handle, the triangle.
Once two men are in love with the same
woman, the fight is on. We have only to sit back,
roll our thumbs and watch it. Of course one of
them will be sure to see the girl drifting over to
the other. Realising that she is lost to him, there
I66
FHACKNEYED THEMES I67
is no limit to the villainy he may concoct to get
his rival out of the way.
It is all so easy, wherefore it has been done
often. So it will be seen that the editors’ and the
public's disgust for the triangle is due to an over-
supply of this commodity, which fact reverts to
that lazy strain in human kind to which may be
traced all that is lacking in inventiveness.
We do not say that the triangle may not be
used in stories or photoplays. We merely main-
tain that it shall be incidental to a story rather
than the entire theme, and that the author shall
expend in new and surprising turns of his plot
all that he may have gained in economy of effort
through building on a situation so easy of devel-
opment as the triangle.
Quite as simple to handle as the triangle is the
beginning of a story with a far-fetched supposi-
tion.
To begin with, a heroine may declare to her
two suitors that she will marry the one who wins
the race, who brings her the finest set of skins,
or who achieves some other act noteworthy in her
sight. Beginning with such a supposition, the
author is in a bed of clover, for he has nothing to
do but sit back and watch the race to see who
wins. One of the two may even try to succeed
through treachery, which will make it a trifle
more interesting, just a trifle.
168 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
All stories built on such themes are not only
hackneyed, but very weak. We all know from
the start that the heroine, although she promises
to marry the one who fulfills her condition, will
be sure to take the one she loves, whether he win
or not, or else violate truth to human nature.
Then there are all those stories falling in the
same class as the above, in which the hero, or
heroine, must marry some one whom the uncle or
guardian has chosen, in order to inherit his for-
tune.
Something simpler than the development of
such a premise cannot well be imagined. We
have only to let the young people meet, whereupon
they will either attract or repel each other. Not
for a moment are we dismayed as to the issue.
Should they fall in love and marry, all ends hap-
pily. Should they despise each other and marry
anyway, they forfeit our sympathy, wherefore
the author has the heroine spurn her uncle's for-
tune to marry the man she loves.
Barred as this situation may be from any claim
to originality, there is no reason why some good
hard work put into the same would not startle
an editor as a surprising new way of handling
a theme that he had thought quite threadbare.
As a general thing, however, we would advise
your steering shy of the subject, as it will be
easier to land a new theme than to find in one so
HACKNEYED THEMES 169
old a development that has not been discovered
by all the thousands who have handled it.
Another royal road to plot development, and
consequently to failure, is circumstantial evi-
dence.
If our hero is not to be guilty of the crime, but
merely present on the scene, and consequently
suspected thereof, we need never lose our sym-
pathy for him and need never rack our brains for
a way by which he can extricate himself and live
down the great mistake of his life. All we have
to do as the author is to sit back, watch him suf-
fering under false suspicion until such a time as
something turns up which will explain it all, and
the heroine will fall into the hero's arms.
Circumstantial evidence and false suspicion are
great stepping stones to situations when the latter
are built upon them as a superstructure. It is
not against such a use of them that this chapter
is pointed, but merely against the laziness that
will accept a situation because it is easy of de-
velopment, and never get beyond it.
If you want a story in two shakes of a lamb's
tail, and don't care to work too hard in the de-
veloping of it, use loss of memory as a theme.
Once a man has lost his memory, he may disap-
pear mysteriously; he may forget he is married
and fall in love a second time; he may occasion
a thousand and one complications, all of which
170 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
straighten out when a blow on the head restores
his memory.
Such a story develops without your half trying.
All your neighbours are writing one just like it,
and none will suffer the least from brain fag.
CHAPTER XXXIV
HACKNEYED THEMEs
Group 2 (Continued)
AMONG those plots so easy of development that
they have been done to death, we must not over-
look the prevalent Civil War plot.
The Northerner loves a daughter of the South.
Duty calls and he enlists with the North at the
price of a heartbreak. After the war the girl
sees the justice of the stand he took, and the two
hearts are reunited.
Wherever a man's sense of duty compels him
to antagonise the family of the woman he loves,
we have a ready-made conflict which, of itself,
will develop a plot.
Seeking variation on the Civil War setting, we
have taken the same plot, laid it in the mountains
of Kentucky, making a sheriff of the Northern
soldier, and a moonshiner's daughter of the
Southern girl. Bound by the same sense of duty
to the state, as in the former story, the sheriff
takes his stand against the girl's people at the
sacrifice of his love. Later the girl, understand-
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172 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
ing the motives that prompted him, forgets her
grievance and accepts his love.
Feeling that this theme has outgrown even its
moonshine setting, we carry it into the business
world and into the field of politics.
We see the man of honour hold out against the
crooked operations of the girl’s father, winning
in the end the girl’s admiration for his stand.
While this theme may well be used by an in-
ventive mind, we wish to point out here that it, in
itself, is not original, and whatever merits may
pertain to a story built thereon would accrue to
it from what it contains over and beyond this
situation.
Easy, too, of building up are those plots that
start with one character in the power of another.
The parents who have complete control over
their sons and daughters through the latter's love
or filial obedience, insist upon them taking a stand
against which they revolt. With such a force
back of our hero's or heroine’s action, it is easy
to get either to take the step that shall mean his
own unhappiness and that shall bring about a
friction from which anything may result without
a strain on creative effort.
Allied with this, are those plots in which the
heavy holds a mortgage on the home, or has some
other claim on the parents, whom he will crush
unless the daughter marry him.
Very simple to work, these plots are bound, in
HACKNEYED THEMES 173
themselves, to be hackneyed. If, as before sug-
gested, we can take such old situations, making
them incidental to a bigger idea, this chapter will
in no wise discourage our efforts.
Another ease-securing device is the dropped
letter or overheard conversation.
Our heavy might have to do some very clever
things to accomplish his dastardly plot against
the hero's business interests. This would neces-
sitate that the author do some strenuous thinking
to work up machinations for him that will do him
credit. Much easier than this, and not necessitat-
ing any thought to speak of, is the method of let-
ting the heavy in on what he may use as a tool, by
means of the dropped letter or the overheard con-
versation. He now knows what no one suspects
him of even surmising, and as the unwary ones
go ahead in their transactions, they walk unwit-
tingly into the trap the heavy has laid for them.
Business warfare presents a battle of the
shrewdest wits, and victories that are won on the
closest margins. In presenting such a conflict
in your story, you, too, must be shrewd and clever
in contriving your entanglements and escapes.
As soon as your heavy’s fight is based on the in-
formation he has gleaned from the dropped letter
or the overheard conversation, his victory is so
easy that it has been presented in numberless
stories, and interests no one.
Another snare for the lazy is the belief that a
174 How To WRITE FOR Moving PICTURES
mechanical “punch” will be the making of their
pictures.
Once they have decided to use an aeroplane,
or to wreck a train, they feel that they may sit
back, see the flimsiest, most outworn plot taking
place around it, and find that the whole has been
lifted into first rank as a selling commodity by
the “punch” it contains.
They forget that that “punch” would cost the
company to whom they submit their story so
much that they would not think of expending
that amount save where a subject is sufficiently
big to warrant such a setting forth.
This belief that a mechanical device or hap-
pening will cover a lack of story is found ex-
ploited also in those slapstick scenarios that pre-
sent no idea or personality, but merely show a
chain of “punches,” such as the upsetting of a
basket of eggs, the throwing over of a ladder
causing painter, whitewash, etc., to come down
in an avalanche, and the thousand and one hit-
miss-and-tumble bits of business that belong to
this type of idea.
Slapstick has its place, and those who handle it
well do so because they have put into it an amount
of thought that would seem quite incredible to
those who enjoy it from out front. The mere
lining up of a succession of slap-bang Scenes will
not do it; yet because this latter process requires
so little thought, you who use it will find your-
HACKNEYED THEMES 175
selves lost in Oceans of scripts following the same
plan.
Last, but not least, are the stories where the
bogus count poses as the genuine article, or where
any character is believed by the rest to be other
than what he is, only to have the deception re-
vealed at the finish.
When we set out with a theme of this sort,
there is practically nothing for us to do save to
have the characters act in accordance with the
mistaken belief, until the same is set to rights.
The working up of this theme is too easy to be
rare, unless, of course, we are willing to put into
it that added work which will develop it into
something uncommon, in which event it would
fall out of the range of this chapter.
CHAPTER XXXV
HACKNEYED THEMEs
Group 3
THIs chapter, setting forth the third group of
themes ancient, deals with those ideas which drop
into the commonplace through their solutions.
Very often an idea painstakingly built up into
a climax will present difficulties in the solution
which it would require added effort to master.
Having expended on the entanglement of our
characters all the energy we had on hand, we
view this new difficulty with a sinking heart.
Too lazy for sustained effort, we fall flat at this
point, ending the story by the easiest way, which
is necessarily the most ordinary.
Say that we set to work ingeniously, and tie
our characters up in such a way that it seems as
though nothing under heaven would get our hero
out of the difficulty in which we have entangled
him. We contemplate this situation and realise
that we must work even harder to get him out
than we have worked to get him in. Too indiffer-
ent to make this effort, we calmly let the villain
176
BLACKNEYED THEMES 177
die, but not before he has made the death-bed
confession that clears the hero.
This is such a simple way of letting down a
situation that you may be sure that the writer
who avoids its use is the exception rather than
the rule. 4
Outside of the fact that the solution by death-
bed confession destroys your story's claim to
originality, there is in its use a something dis-
honest toward an audience. Following your story
and constructing it with you, they realise with
intensity the predicament in which you are in-
volving your hero. Looking ahead for the out-
come, they are thrilled, feeling they could not
possibly get him out and hoping that you, more
brilliant, will find a way that they may have over-
looked. Just as they arrive at the point where
your mental fireworks are expected to appear, you
leave them high and dry, falling down on your
death-bed confession.
It is hard to conceive a mixture of feelings,
partly foolish, partly disappointed, that is quite
so distasteful as this stranding in mid-air.
The same emotion occurs when a character,
hard as nails, whom nothing in heaven or on earth
could swerve from his relentless course, suddenly
takes from his pocket a little child’s shoe, or
prattles with one of these innocents, and straight-
way his evil spirit falls from him.
It is a beautiful conception that even the most
178 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
hardened are capable of being influenced, and
oftenest by something so slight as one of these
little ones. .
If this is your theme, exploit it to the fullest,
but don't use it as a “let down”; it’s sacrilegious,
also lazy. It is equivalent to telling your audi-
ence throughout, “Now mark me, this character
is absolutely impervious to any tender sentiment.
See, we can rap him on any side we choose, and
find him equally hard everywhere. There isn't
a ghost of a chance of this man ever melting with
any human sympathy. Bear this in mind, now,
ladies and gentlemen, and then consider that this
man, this monstrosity, has all his energies bent
upon the securing of Sam Hill's property.”
By means of such devices an author gets your
blood to run cold as you think of the fate of poor
Sam Hill. Suddenly when you realise that it
would be useless to beg for mercy from such a
creature in the impending crash, you see your
monstrosity break down and weep over the half-
worn soles of a baby’s shoes. You are startled,
then angry. The man has been misrepresented
to you. All your fears have been useless; the au-
thor has bated the question and has changed the
character in the eleventh hour, to let himself
easily out of a difficult situation.
When two young people marry despite their
parents’ wishes, the author makes it quite clear
that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, which
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-


HACKNEYED THEMES 179
will reconcile these parents to their children. The
audience gets the drift of the author and says,
“Yes, we see that clearly enough. The situation
is pretty bad; now what are you going to do
about it?” -
Putting it to an author like this is rather hard.
He hadn’t quite thought of that himself. If he
could only realise that thousands have stood in
that same embarrassing position and that all of
them have chosen the solution that now flashes to
his mind;—he will let the young couple have a
baby to which the parents will soften, taking their
children back into their hearts.
When a man is discharged by his employer,
or incurs in some way the displeasure of one on
whom his happiness is dependent, we make it per-
fectly clear that there is no chance of his ever
getting back again into favour, and just as the
audience begins to weep over his sad fate we give
him an opportunity to rescue the cruel one from
a runaway horse, or in some way to heap coals of
fire on his head, so that he wins back through the
latter's gratitude all that he had previously lost.
This is the easiest way of getting back into
grace, and consequently is an uncommon favour-
ite with those writers who would not be caught
distressing themselves, not on a bet.
Speaking of easy solutions, we must not forget
the locket, birthmark, or well remembered song
180 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
that serves to reunite with the distracted parents
the child long since lost or stolen.
Never overlook, either, the money that turns
up just at the most critical moment, when every-
thing looks blackest, and, like a “Deus ex ma-
china,” sets all things to rights.
If there is no way of proving the innocence of
your hero, remember there is always the camera
that might have been set for some other purpose
with string attachment, in such a way that it has
registered the scene of his innocence to the con-
fusion of the villain.
Lightning, too, may have photographed the
scene of the murder on the window or some other
place. We need never be at a loss; there is always
a way.
If it would take too much thought to have the
villain meet his doom through the recoil of his
own machinations, and you feel that he simply
must die for a happy ending, why kill him off;
drop a brick on him, anything you like, just so
you do it quickly.
All of these devices have so long been fallen
back on, that if we seem a little bitter in setting
them forth, it is because they are not worthy of
you, and we would spur you on as much as pos-
sible to a more ambitious effort.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Novel, THEMES AND WHERE To SEEK THEM
FoR those who see life in the flat and who ask
helplessly where they are to find those themes
that have not been done and done again, this
chapter and the few immediately following are
intended.
Written from out the lives of people, and aimed
to strike back again at their hearts, great themes
can have no finer source of inspiration than a
study of those faces that we see from day to day
in such numbers. On your walks, in the cars,
everywhere you turn, there are books that reveal
themselves much more readily than the printed
volume, namely, the human face.
You might read volume on volume from a pub-
lic library without getting that genuine thrill
that comes to you when you have learned to get
back of the faces you see, to let yourself go, and
to feel with their every line, mood and expression.
Get behind one of the thick-lipped luscious
faces with the blear eyes and the unwholesome
smirk; forget yourself into that face until you
feel every emotion that stirs it, until you know
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182 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
as you know your own, the soul that made it.
You have emotions now such as never come to
your normal self. You are lascivious, cruel.
Your attitude toward life, principles and your
fellow creatures has changed radically. You
feel a comfort in the flesh that surrounds you;
you sink back into it with a sensation of well-
being. The material things in life are your end
and aim; of what lies beyond them you know no
more than an animal. -
Brute though you are, you have learned from
the world’s standard that certain women are
called good; wherefore, you too call them good,
but in your heart of hearts you cannot know the
sentiments that move them.
Were you really this type of character, you
would not understand enough of life to write at
all. But you have the charmed mind that can live
this man's life at will, and return again into your
own. All lives are yours through the divine gift
of sympathy.
Beside the brute from whom you emerge, and
who leaves with you a shudder as you breathe
deeply, sits the little anaemic girl with the spir-
itual look and the grey, wistful eyes. Get down
into her if you can. Your work is not so easy
there. Is the spiritual expression the result of
personal choice, of a physically undeveloped state,
or of the life of innocence and ideals in which
her parents have reared her? Do the wistful
NOVEL THEMES 183
eyes dream of heaven, or do they yearn, perhaps,
for colour and life such as they have never
known? The girl has not as yet made her face;
—you may read into it a meaning that is not there,
yet what does it matter if your conjectures have
given you a character?
Between the anaemic girl and her brutish
neighbour surely there is a story. Place them in
what relations you wish, there will be in the forc-
ing down of animal realism on spiritual ideals
a tragedy, and there will be in the brute's groping
inability to understand the spiritual, a pathos.
Across the way, two seats removed from the
anaemic girl and her neighbour, there is a smirk
that attracts your gaze. As you watch the
mouth, almost without observing the rest of the
face, your own falls into the same expression
and you begin to feel a meanness and a hypocrisy
that cramps your soul for a moment, until, held
by the face, you let yourself go into a new world
as it were, or rather, into the same old world as
viewed through other eyes.
There is the fat, puffing, panting woman who
in the heat of summer feels the wetness of her
garments about her as she settles into the seat
across the way. She is an image such as no man
could love, yet she wears a coquettish little bow
at the side of the neck, looks foolish and keeps
her hair trained in waves that are arranged just
so, to bring out her cuteness. That submerged
184 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
laughter that glows under her eyes as, oblivious
to all others in the car, she contemplates some
witty remark she has made, or intends to make,
goes well with the repeated pats to the wavelets
whereby she keeps them in place for the meeting.
There is a tragedy, a comedy or what you will.
On the platform, where his clothing will not
soil any one, there is a labourer who is the richest
study of them all. His is the soul of the dreamer
in a body marked with the horny hands of toil.
On his face there is a sadness of dreams long
repressed, and in his eyes a strange wildness that
Questions “why” and cannot understand.
Answer the question for him; explain to him,
if you can, why he who was born to dream
dreams should have been ground down into the
digging of trenches.
If such a theme is beyond you, then handle the
pathos of this life that has been given no chance
to express itself; that has sweat blood to live it-
self as the world has directed, and that turns in
at life's eventide, broken, poor, to toil on to the
finish.
We have only begun; how we hate to leave off!
There is no more fascinating study in the world.
Though we cannot allow more space to it here,
we trust that what we have given above will
at least serve to direct your minds into that way
along which lie the richest of all pastures,-the
lives of our fellowmen.
CHAPTER XXXVII
MAN's THREEFOLD CoNFLICT witH LIFE: THE
BASIS OF ALL PossIBLE THEMES
IN the preceding chapter we have referred to
human faces as the richest source of inspiration
to the writer of stories. What gives them their
value? Every line, every turn of expression, has
a meaning we say. What is the meaning?
Marked by the bitter conflict with life, these faces
are pages on which are recorded the battles of the
past, and on which are foreshadowed the issues
of the future.
The demands of society have their shaping in-
fluence. Some are born with souls so tame,
so prepared to serve in meekness and humility,
that they can go through life without friction
against this shaping force. Such can reach old
age with faces so placid, so untouched by any
ravages of conflict, that these very qualities
mark their character and speak of the lives they
have led.
Again there are souls that have been tossed,
delirious, on the sea of life, until old age has
guided them into the calm. It may be that this
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186 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
guidance came with the cooling of the blood, or
it may be that it came with the larger wisdom
that belongs to experience.
Those who through life's turmoil have arrived
at wisdom, will show in the calm of their eyes a
divine triumph over the conflict-carved furrows
of their faces, and will show in the sadness there-
of a sympathetic understanding of those who,
like themselves, must struggle long for the light.
Every line, then, marks conflict, and conflict
is the soul of drama, whether portrayed on the
stage or on the screen. All of these conflicts, or
dramas, that we read on the faces of those with
whom we come in contact, give us our stories
ready to hand.
There is no drama or story possible, unless it
deal with the battle of a soul against the forming
power of life that would shape it after its own
fashion, regardless of that soul's destiny or incli-
nation.
From this it follows that all the stories in the
world are written on the human faces that pass us
to and fro. The more intense, the more thrilling
the story, the more deeply and clearly will it be
engraved there for the reading.
At times these stories get into print and some
one claims the authorship. What he has really
done is given a translation of what he has read,
in a language that the public can understand.
The same course is open to you. No one ever
THE BASIS OF ALL THEMES 187
really creates a character. That power belongs
to God. Wherefore, a writer’s work resolves
itself into contemplation of that which exists, and
into rendering thereof, his own interpretation.
To make simpler a beginner's quest for those
hidden forces whose warfare he can trace on the
face of man, we will group all such conflict into
three classes.
First and most primitive, therefore most ele-
mental of these, is man’s conflict with nature. It
is this that gives him his sinewy strength and all
that rugged brawn which we love to heroise in
story.
Classified with this is man's struggle with man
as another animal preying upon his life. But
man has long since ceased to struggle thus with
man. Uniting with his fellows against a com-
mon enemy, he has formed society, and his strug-
gle with man is governed by the rules and regu-
lations thereof.
This gives us our second great classification of
conflicts, namely, the struggle of the individual
against the social order. Complex, and built on
specialisation, each individual finds his place in
the great machine, as he is prepared to serve it
in the limited capacity it has laid out for him.
Let one member of all this nicely adjusted body
reach out for more than his share therein, and
immediately he treads hard upon the existence of
his neighbour. The fight is on. What the nature
188 How To WRITE FOR Moving PICTURES
of this conflict shall be, is determined by those
forces in the social order that the expansion of
the individual is drawing down on himself.
It may be that it shall entail a conflict indus-
trial, or perhaps a conflict with those laws that
have been the outgrowth of community life and
have rendered social existence possible. It may
be that the laws of morality come in to check him
and to contest his desires with him;-it may be
the unwritten law which is understood in the
hearts of men as inviolable if they are to continue
abiding one with the other, and if they are to
continue building, not for themselves, but always
for the next generation.
Primitive still, though outwardly conforming
to the artificial arrangements with which he has
surrounded himself, man fights within his soul
those deeper conflicts whereby he keeps himself
in harmony with this social order. It is these
battles within the soul of man that give us our
third classification of conflicts.
How everything man does that society may
live goes against the natural grain, and how,
through ages of this self-abnegation, he has come
to feel it less and less, will be our subject when
we come to deal with what constitutes those inner
and outer conflicts that present so rich a field to
the writer.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THEMES BASED ON MAN's ConFLICT witH THE
SOCIAL, ORDER
As all man’s conflict is with his environment,
whether natural or human, whether waged out-
wardly or internally, we will consider in this
chapter those phases of his struggle that best lend
themselves to story work.
Naturally individual in his outlook, and con-
cerned chiefly with keeping himself alive, he is
obliged to-day to manage his self-preservation
with brain rather than with the brawn on which
he relied in primitive times.
Society declaring as one of its laws that no
man shall violate property rights, has, neverthe-
less, not uprooted in the soul of man that de-
sire whereby he shall covet the possessions of
others. He will plan and try to secure, without
violation of the law, the goods of his neighbour,
for he may no longer boldly reach out and seize
them.
His mental acumen not sufficient to the task
of thus getting around the law, he will be obliged
to follow that second course which is a product of
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civilisation, namely, to sit back and envy his
neighbour until the very strength of this emotion
is a story in itself.
The feeling that this world may not be large
enough for a man and his enemy exists to-day
as it did in the earliest times, for man in his heart
is elemental to-day even as then. He may not
to-day, however, go forth and kill his enemy, for
society with its laws was formed for no other
reason than that safety, and the right to life and
happiness, might be vouchsafed to its members.
The penalty for this violation of its laws is death.
Should an individual chance it, the law becomes a
hound on his tracks. Therein, in itself, lies a
story.
Under primitive conditions in life a man had
the same chance of existence whether his neigh-
bours approved of him or not. Game was just as
plentiful; light, warmth and shelter just as easy
to be gotten whether he was despised by his fel-
lows, or much honoured.
In the social order it is not so. Man must
depend so utterly on his fellows for his living
that to destroy his credit with them is practically
to take his life. It is this that makes slander a
crime.
The awfulness of a life ostracised through
slander gives you one of civilisation's best sto-
ries. It is from the living death of such a condi-
tion that blackmail draws its strength, and it is
CONFLICT WITH THE SOCIAL ORDER 191
man's realisation of what these things mean that
gives to them their gripping power as stories.
Recognising the welfare of the masses as im-
portant beyond the desires of the individual,
society fights hard against primal sex attraction.
Laws of civilised nations limit the number of
wives a man may have, most of them fixing that
number at one. Such a law curbs, while it does
not destroy, sex attraction.
It is this restriction that brings out the con-
flict between the primal instinct and civilisation.
Where the primitive has remained stronger than
all those man-made laws that have striven to re-
fine it, it breaks through the latter and we have
a life that has shattered convention and broken
itself in the issue. Where man-made laws have
loomed strong enough to crush down natural pas-
sion, we have the pathos of a life's happiness de-
nied. In either event there is a conflict rich in
story possibilities.
Then, too, community life has given us a thou-
sand and one ideals which we call virtues. It will
be found, in looking over the so-called virtues,
that all of them represent that attitude of man
toward his fellows which furthers community
life and all that for which it was originated. The
vices, on the other hand, represent those attitudes
toward the community which submerge its wel-
fare to individual inclination.
In the primitive man selfishness is no vice;
I92 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
neither are those issues that arise therefrom, such
as murder, plunder, etc., properly called evil. Re-
sponsible to Providence for one thing only, the
preservation of his life, all those things that tend
thereto become good in his sight.
In the social order, man, responsible for the
maintenance of that elaborate system called into
being to further human development, must put
above the preservation of himself the welfare of
the community. Now, as in primitive times,
everything that furthers this first duty is good,
while everything that is destructive to it is evil.
It is merely the duty that has shifted.
It is from this friction between man's individ-
ual self and man's community self that all those
themes and stories originate which deal with pa-
triotism, unselfish devotion to one’s fellows, mar-
tyrdom for an idea that will further the welfare
of humankind. Everything that deals with man's
unselfish surrender to the larger whole, and that
presents what tends toward the spiritual and
away from the material, is born of this conflict.
Such themes are spoken of as elevating, for man
is quick to feel the expansion that comes to him
with a beating down of the individual, and a
drawing him out into the larger life of the com-
munity.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THEMES BASED ON MAN's CoNFLICT witH
NATURE
WHILE man's battles with nature far antedate
his conflict with society, we have chosen to briefly
outline the latter before taking up the former,
which shall be the subject of the current chap-
ter; for it is through the eyes of civilisation that
he must view his primitive self, even as it is
through the eyes of the adult that we must try to
look back into the years of childhood. What we
see there will thrill us through that of its ele-
mental nature which has remained with us despite
the years, yet all of it must inevitably be coloured
by the changed mind that views it.
Since we can see the primitive only in the light
of its contrast with civilisation, it is best to con-
sider the latter first as we have done.
When we show the rugged strength of those
who brave the big snows, or the brutal coarse-
ness of deep-sea captains, the thrill that their
lives give us comes through a subconscious com-
parison with the soft, sheltered lives we live.
Whether the two types only subconsciously sug-
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gest each other, or whether we actually show in
the story the brute in juxtaposition with the pro-
duct of civilisation, the comparison takes place
nevertheless.
These stories which are primitive throughout
in tone, and which subconsciously suggest their
antithesis, civilisation, take us through all those
thrills and dangers that confront man in the
wilds.
There are stories terrible in the pitting of
man's primitive strength, bare-handed, against
the ferocious power of some animal. Such a
story is “The Wolf,” by Maupassant.
There is a terrible suspense in stories that car-
ry us through the overwhelming blizzards of the
North. There is an opponent to try the courage
of a hero in a swelling, dangerous sea.
Such issues with nature bring out the strong-
est or weakest in a man and build their story
almost of themselves.
There are stories of forest fires, stories of
floods, with their drama of those who show up
bravest in the awful struggle. There are themes
in which a man pits himself single-handed against
the overwhelming power of nature that he may
save the lives of his fellows. Such is the story
of “The Little Hero of Harlem,” who gave his
body to hold out the sea that would have swept
away remorselessly those he loved.
Outside of stories that bring primitive man in-
CONFLICT WITH NATURE 195
to thrilling conflict with nature, there are those
which transplant him bodily into civilisation, and
pit him against men who have long curbed and
tamed down the impulses that move him.
In such cases, the interest lies in the terrible
conflict between the nature that has never been
broken to harness, and the check that civilisation
forces on it.
An elemental character reared in the wilds and
out of his sphere in civilisation, may be held there
by his love for a woman. A law unto himself,
he may kill as he would have done in his native
wilds the cad whose attitude he feels is an insult
to the woman he loves. He may lay himself open
to any other tragedy that might result from his
sudden immersion into a sphere which is foreign
to him as is a remote planet.
He may, on the other hand, grope with a burn-
ing fierceness in his soul to understand why the
woman who loves him will not marry him. He
knows nothing of what civilisation has done to a
woman in this respect. He cannot sur-
mise that she seeks the thrill of his loving her,
and that a flirtation with him, just short of mat-
rimony, is exactly what she needs to kill the bore-
dom of that particular season.
Perhaps, having struck it rich in the Klondike,
he buys with his gold an ultra-refined product of
society. Remote from him through the posses-
sion of all that he lacks, he worships her and
196 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
tries to please, only to find that to her he is just
a brute from which every nerve of her shrinks.
It may be that he will learn to realise the shal-
lowness of the small, well-polished soul, and per-
haps, who knows, the silence of the great wilds
nay give her wisdom in place of knowledge, and
she will learn to meet him on the common plane
of rugged bigness.
Outside of these stories that introduce into the
social order those who have been made in the
primitive struggle with nature's strength, we
have another set of themes in which the members
of Society, struggling too hard with nature in the
form of hunger and cold, revert again into the
primitive.
Such stories deal with the lower strata of in-
dividuals whom we think of as brutalised through
want, rendered animal through the incessant
quest for enough of food, shelter and clothing to
keep them barely alive. Af
The price that society pays for this reversion
of its members into the primitive, the internal up-
heavals of lawlessness and crime that it occa-
sions, present to the writer that rich field of the
underworld, created by those who have become
brutalised, it in turn brutalising those whom it
attracts.
CHAPTER XL
THEMES BASED ON MAN's INNER ConFLICT
WITH HIMSELF
As still waters run deep, so it is true that
man's fiercest battles are fought within his own
soul and remain forever a secret to his fellows,
save in those outer changes that they bring about.
We suddenly find, to our joy, that some one
from whom we expected an unfair deal has re-
solved to do right by us. We have no conception,
however, of the long hours of tumultuous strife
within that man's soul, nor of the tender recol-
lection that may have come up to turn the tide
of battle to the victory of his better self.
It is this fight, rather than the result, that is
the meat of the drama built upon it. The more
intense we make the man's desire for revenge,
or what you will, the more powerful will we have
to make the gentler, opposing force.
If we can show through many scenes the wag-
ing of a character's war with self, the pathetic
inability to tear from his soul its maddening im-
pulse, the dramatic moments when he might have
carried out his revenge but something prevented,
I97
198 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
until, in flood or fire, he sees the death-struggle
of his enemy whose life Providence is taking out
of the reach of his revenge, we build up to that
climax where, as he watches, he realises, fren-
zied, the keenest of all revenge, the returning of
good for evil. He gives his life in the saving
of his enemy, and the climax becomes powerful
only in so far as we have succeeded in building
up a terrific inner struggle.
Often the things that a man desires bring
him into conflict with the law. He feels within
himself at such times an irritation in which there
pounds continually through his inclinations the
question, “Will it pay?—Is it worth the pen-
alty?”
This internal issue involved in stories that deal
with opposition to, or a hoodwinking of, the law,
does not furnish as rich story material as do
other more generous stands.
We can readily see that those desires
which set aside the law are selfish, and it is plain,
too, that the fear of punishment is selfish.
Wherefore, we show in opposition two selfish
forces, with the result that it becomes a matter
of indifference to the public which of the two
wins out. t
If the man determines to abide by the law,
avoiding consequences, there is no glory to be
won in such a decision. If he takes the other
stand and chances detection, our conscious or
*
MAN’S INNER CONFLICT I99
subconscious thought will be, “It serves him
right.” For this reason, man's conflict with the
laws of his own making is usually treated as an
external struggle into which a character falls
through lack of inner debating.
The themes best treated in internal conflict
are those that present worldly inclinations in op-
position to spiritual ideals.
Having laid out for ourselves as an ideal char-
acter one that is the expression of all that pres-
ent-day civilisation finds good, we will test, sub-
consciously, every act we mean to perform by
the standard of this ideal. The primitive forces,
still strong within us, are the opposing force
against which these latter-day conceptions must
contend. Where ideals go down in the fight, we
experience a slump into that emotion called re-
111OTSC.
Remorse being so entirely a contention within
man's soul, the theme falls directly under the
classification represented in this chapter. No
greater moral lesson is taught than comes to us
through a realisation of the dread power of re-
morse, which crushes us when we have been suc-
cessful in eluding all things else.
The smile of trust with which a victim faces
his murderer lingers in the latter's mind after
the deed is done; the terrible look of realisation
in the victim's eyes as he is being strangled
strikes to the heart of the criminal and makes
200 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
him want to tear it out as he thinks of what a
monstrosity he is. Unsuspected, he walks among
his fellows; watches their happy innocence and
burns as he thinks, “How would they look at me
now, how would they shrink from me, if they
were to know !” But the hand cannot be torn off
that offended, and the struggle will not ease save
as he pays the penalty.
Allied with remorse are the emotions of fear
and despair, so terrible to contend with, which
fight with us always in the dark of our inner-
most selves.
Formidable, too, is the power of superstition.
Presenting to a man’s mind the haunting image
of the man he did to death, it maddens even as
does remorse. At times it forces him to look on
as a loved one dies, while, because of his faith,
he may not stir to save him. It is this that forms
the foundation of our stories of the North Amer-
ican Indians and their medicine men; of any
primitive people and their local beliefs.
At other times, superstition will so convince a
character of impending failure that it weakens
him for the struggle, causing him to fail and
making the superstition come true.
Somewhat in line with superstition is a belief
in one's inability. This lack of confidence is one
of the strongest forces to contend with in inter-
nal combat. Its paralysing power will make a
story of pathetic appeal.
MAN’S INNER CONFLICT 201
Allied with it is that still more bitter malady,
a loss of faith in those we love.
The purely psychological story, dealing with
peculiar traits in the individual, hereditary or
otherwise, has, too, as its field of combat, the
mind and soul of man. It is these mysterious
glimpses into the inner workings of a soul that
give us a thrill a shade more thrilling than we
experience when we see the works of some mar-
vellous mechanism.
CHAPTER XLI
THEMES BASED ON MAN's SocIAI, CoNFLICT:
THE FAMILY
REVERTING again to our subject of faces, we
will follow the same through the various combi-
nations we can make between it and the conflict
with environment, or between it and the conflict
subjective.
Realising that those themes are nearest a
man's heart that lie closest to the interests of his
daily life, we will turn, first of all, to his most
intimate relationship with society,+the family.
In the weighing of an individual there is pres–
ent almost always, consciously or subconsciously,
another estimate, which, if we were called upon
to give it we could express in the clause, “I would
not care to be married to him.” With that, if we
were to follow it up, would come a mental con-
jecture as to the type of person who could be
happy with the aforementioned individual.
Having determined that, the next step would be
a summing up of the types of characters who
would go mad if bound in this relationship. Of
these last mentioned, select the type on whose
2O2
THE FAMILY 203
qualities the individual under consideration
would most painfully grate. Combine the two.
This is the basis of those stories on matri-
monial tragedies that result from no particular
vice in either party, but rather through incompat-
ibility of tempers.
One may treat the tragedy in a comedy vein,
recommending separation for a time as tending
toward mutual appreciation. The working out
of the proposition would constitute the comedy
drama.
We may treat it, on the other hand, as a pain-
ful setting forth of life’s most prolonged agony.
It may be that we will treat it from the point of
view of its effect on growing sons and daugh-
ters of the family.
Where only one of the two partners to a
matrimonial compact is at fault, we build up
our story to bring out the terrible injustice
of framing a life partnership on empty
promises, of watching our partner sticking stead-
fastly to the agreement through the best years of
his life, only to see us leave him high and dry,
giving him a laugh for his trust in the compact.
The relationship of parents and children give
us those themes of beautiful, though often fool-
ish, self-sacrifice on the one part, and ingratitude
on the other. It may be that the ingratitude is
not intentional, but the result of spoiling that
hopelessly unfits the character for life. In this
204 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
event, his position arouses pity rather than con-
tempt.
Perhaps the reverse of these conditions is true.
The parents in their selfishness may destroy the
happiness of their children. The latter, accus-
tomed to this selfishness from birth, might trudge
on, pathetically ignorant of the situation's true
colour.
Between brothers there is a relationship of fra-
ternal jealousy or of self-abnegating love. The
crime of Cain is an ancient crime, but its un-
pleasant theme holds good to-day as then.
Between brother and sister there is a strange
relationship that colours, in a way, a man's en-
tire attitude toward women.
Stranger than this, however, is a man's vulgar
conception of women which is in no way coloured
by the purity of his regard for his sister. Ready
to prey upon women, he is prepared at the same
time to kill the man who does by his sister as he
has done by the sisters of other men.
The same is true, in a way, of a woman's atti-
tude toward her brother. Prepared to flirt with
all men and to trifle with their affections, she be-
comes a fury against that woman who, playing
the same game, has shattered her brother’s life.
Into all these relationships you can fit the par-
ticular face that interests you, and whatever the
part may be the face that plays it will colour it,
making it a new conception.
By courtesy of the Greater Vitagraph:Studios
THE PLANTING OF EXPLOSIONS FOR
SPECTACULAR EFFECTS
Explosions in battle scenes or in any scenes where nu-
merous actors are present on the field must be controlled
by wire so as to avoid accident and loss of life. The
picture at foot of page shows the wiring of a field for
explosions which can be set off during the action by one
responsible operator under the command of the director.

THE FAMILY 205
Lastly, there is the family spirit. A small clan
within a greater clan, it illustrates well that co-
operation which is the making of society's most
ideal condition. Not one member can fail in his
duty without laying a stress on the other mem-
bers, or, at least, darkening their happiness.
A father who fails as a provider exposes his
family to starvation; a mother who fails in her
duties makes home a soulless place; and children
who do not make it their business to realise their
parents’ ambitions for them turn back upon the
loving hearts of their dearest friends, all the
years of patient, self-sacrificing toil, in one deep-
ly harboured disappointment.
At the core of civilisation, and the foundation
stone in its structure, family life represents that
unit from which all things social, industrial and
political emanate. All things in their turn react
upon the family. From this interaction of social
elements spring those themes which will be the
subject of the chapters next succeeding.
CHAPTER XLII
THEMES BASED ON MAN's SocIAL ConFLICT:
HIS RELATIONSHIPs OUTSIDE THE FAMILY
WE have shown how faces, or types, intro-
duced into one or another relationship with that
unique and central body, the family, give us an
infinite variety of combinations for stories. We
will now make similar combinations between the
faces that interest us, and those wider fields of
man's environment outside the family.
Man bears toward individuals, toward law,
politics and industry, relationships as distinct as
those more intimate ones that connect him with
the home. Dry subjects at best, law, politics,
business, present no appealing interest to man,
save as they furnish the background to some hu-
man struggle. Presenting a sameness in them-
selves, they draw their ever-changing aspect from
the type of the opponent who tussles with them.
Say that a face interests us in passing and
chills us, perhaps, with its domineering strength.
We feel at once, subconsciously, that we would
pity any human being who would dare to pit his
will against this invincible force, whether indi-
2O6
OUTSIDE THE FAMILY 207
vidually, politically, industrially or even in legal
combat. This is the beginning of our story. Say
that we place in opposition to him the kindly man
of ideals who, thoroughly capable, has earned his
success in the past, giving fair play to all. Or
say that we bring out in striking contrast the
iron hardness of this man in business and the
soft, almost foolish indulgence of the same char-
acter at home among those he loves; in which
case we would show the decadence of his own
family through opulence, and the brutalising of
his workmen through oppression.
We might show him in all the pride of his
wealth, drawing the same without conscience
from the labour of children, of tired women and
mothers, or from the work of fathers, who, not
properly protected, are maimed by the machines
of his factories. To treat him in this way would
make an ugly subject. Its one value would lie in
the bigness of the drawing, in the bringing out
of that mistaken conception in humanity where
one man feels that he has achieved success,
though it may have crushed the lives and possi-
bilities out of thousands to put him on his doubt-
ful elevation. *
Starting with the opposite type of face, we
have our story partly to hand when we take that
character and throw it out into the turmoil of in-
dustry. Afraid of work, or rather, terrified by
the bigness, the uncompromising hardness of it
208 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
all, we show our character chiselled, whetted,
made raw, by the pitiless shaping process. Such
a story carries with it the pathos of the unfit.
So, too, does the story of the unemployed.
Unlimited are the variations in faces and their
meanings, and infinite, too, are the combinations
that can be made between these and the spheres
of man's activities.
Take that haunted, meek look that seems to
apologise for its existence, while it peers always
about with a nervousness as though dreading im–
pending danger. It is not a bad face, and so it
arouses in one a quick flood of sympathy that
goes out to such as, trying hard in the present,
are yet overshadowed by what they may have
done in the past. Perhaps he is haunted by the
fear of impending arrest for a crime of which
he has not as yet been suspected. Perhaps the
police are trailing him. It may be that he has
served his time in prison for an offence, and that
he dreads now his recognition by some one who
knows of this fact and may use his knowledge to
blackmail him. Perhaps his long years of im-
prisonment have given him this strange fear of
the world to which he is no longer accustomed.
Were his face a little more evilly intentioned,
we might class him with those individuals who
operate just within the law. That type of char-
acter might lead us on to some great crime, the
result of a slip in his subtle operations, for which
OUTSIDE THE FAMILY 209
he pays the extreme penalty. Add to his slick-
ness the burly domineering spirit of the business
magnate above mentioned, and we make a
dreaded politician, unscrupulous, yet very smooth
withal. The crushing power and the instigation
to crime of this man would be the more terrible
when appearing through his oily veneer.
Terrifying all men, we get dramatic contrast
by placing in opposition to him the straight,
clean-cut man of politics who challenges him in
the cause of right. The more formidable the
power of the evil one, the more glorious becomes
the undaunted struggle, single-handed, of his op-
ponent.
On such a theme are based those popular sto-
ries of the young governor who defies the politi-
cal machine at the cost of his career and honour,
only to win out in the darkest moment just before
the curtain.
Realising that this world is peopled by unnum-
bered millions as far removed from one another
in personality as is pole from pole, and then con-
templating that with all their differences they
are penned together, acting and reacting upon
one another in the proximity made necessary by
social existence, it becomes evident at a glance
that the themes resultant mount to infinitude, and
that that man must indeed be blind who com-
plains he can see nothing to write about.
CHAPTER XLIII
THEMES BASED ON MAN's SocIAL CoNFLIct:
PUBLIC OPINION, IDEALs
HITHERTo we have treated that part of man's
environment wherein man restricts man for the
common good, or for selfish interests. We will
now go on to that far greater field of conflict be-
tween man and his environment, that draws its
strength from a something within the human soul
placed there by divine wisdom. We refer to
man's conflict with the standards of morality and
ideals, either his own or those of the masses.
Perhaps no more stringent demands are made
upon the individual than those imposed upon him
by morality and ideals. What is to prevent man
from ignoring these dictates, so hard to abide by?
He may break every law of morality, save such
as would bring him within the range of the law;
he may live for himself entirely and ignore every
ideal that marks the highest thought of his fel-
lows. All this he may do, and grow rich thereby.
What is to prevent him? What stops him is that
something placed within him by Providence, the
something we mentioned above.
2IO
PUBLIC OPINION, IDEALS 211
There comes a time in the life of a very little
child when disapproval gives him pain, when
there is intense joy to him in being called a good
boy and a dark, strange unhappiness in being
called “bad.” This attribute belonging to the
human soul is ever present. We may deaden its
edge; crush down its promptings, yet, though
we become a criminal and a monstrosity, we can-
not get beyond the power of public opinion, which
power is nothing more than our dread of the dis-
approval of our fellows. Let a man be ever so
hardened, ever so selfish his whole life long, yet
he will be shaken to the core when all men hate
him, when all men feel this world would be a bet-
ter place without him.
Realising that this prompting to do what is
right is present in all of us and is man's keenest
conflicting force, we have but to take faces that
show marked tendencies in the opposite direction,
in order to secure at once the conflict that makes
our story.
The man who is pronouncedly selfish will de-
sire many things with a terrible intensity, which
he cannot secure save by a combat with honour.
Those who see him make the fight and succumb
to his greed will despise him; will look at him al-
ways with eyes that show, however well they may
try to conceal it, their thoughts of him. Their
opinion will work upon that strange something
that God placed in his soul and will feed it until
212 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
his own thoughts of himself sicken him;-force
him to make restitution or drive him to madness.
So it is with love. How often natural prompt-
ings would lead a woman to forsake her husband
for another, or a man to leave his wife for the
same reason. When they fight it out within them-
selves and escape the temptation, it is because
that inner prompting of which we speak, or per-
haps their fear of public opinion which will drive
it home, is stronger than natural inclination. If
they yield to the temptation, they secure that
which should mean their happiness. Why is it,
then, that their step brings them nothing but
wretchedness, and results in tragedy? They grow
even to pall upon each other in the sickening sen-
sation that comes with self-contempt and with
the knowledge that society has ostracised them.
The young in their wildest moments stop
abruptly on the threshold of imprudence, when
confronted there by the warning figure of con-
vention.
A woman might be tempted to go alone to a
man's room, to converse with him there, take tea
and leave. The action seems innocent enough.
Why does she hesitate and finally refuse? If she
is sensitive, she will keenly resent even the sug-
gestion of such an invitation. Why? For her
own actions under the circumstances she could
account to herself, but the opinions and suspi-
cions of her friends and others she cannot con-
PUBLIC OPINION, IDEALS 213
trol. Without their faith in her she cannot live.
Their suspicion is death.
So it is seen that it is this same inner force of
which we speak that gives convention its power,
and convention, in turn, serves its great purpose
toward morality and the purity of social rela-
tions, the same being vital toward the well being
of the next generation.
Say that a woman is not wisely warned off by
convention in the taking of an imprudent step,
and we have in consequence a story that brings
out the tragedy of that flimsy thread on which a
woman's reputation hangs.
So it goes on through the entire code of right
and wrong, through all individual and social
ideals, and always it is that inner something that
gives strength to the conflict which is perhaps the
hottest that man fights with his environment.
There are times when this inner tendency is
not aided by the fear of public opinion; there are
times when it stands quite alone as it does when
a man will die for his faith, though all the world
revile him. Strangely enough, it is when it
stands thus alone that it is greatest. It beats
down the dread of ridicule, of censure. It is in
such moments, and of such stuff, that martyrs
are made. Terrible in their aloneness, they pre-
sent us each with his Gethsemane;—there are no
higher pinnacles for the writer of fiction, for we
are here at the top of the world.
CHAPTER XLIV
WHAT ConFLICT MEANS TO A PLAY OR STORY
So much has been said on the vital importance
of conflict to a play or story, that perhaps it
would be best for us here to demonstrate the same
and so translate the subject into a matter of
common sense. Textbooks on the writing of
plays or stories are so copious in rules, that often
we come to look upon these as arbitrary restric-
tions of the writer's art. Throughout these les-
Sons we have striven always to give in place of
the rule its structural necessity. We have been
the more careful to do this, as we realise that once
the why and wherefore of a rule is thoroughly
appreciated, our knowledge of the same becomes
a working knowledge. We will follow the same
method here in a consideration of what conflict
means to a play or story.
Say that you hail your friend on the street:
“Have you heard about Brown? You know he
always wanted to buy the Jenks' apple orchards.”
Your friend responds: “Yes, well, what about
it?” You look at him for a moment and then
say: “Why, he bought them,” and your friend
2I4
WHAT CONFLICT MEANS TO A PLAY 215
becomes strangely puzzled as to your mental con-
dition. He may even think that you are playing
a joke on him and grow angry. The reason for
this is that when you stated that Brown always
wanted to buy the Jenks' apple orchards, your
friend expected some opposition to this desire and
a resultant story. There was no opposition and
no story, hence your friend's chagrin. If, how-
ever, you had brought out that Jenks had made
an ancient oath that Brown should buy no or-
chard of his, you would have at once the element
of opposition to Brown's intentions. If, then,
you had told your friend how Brown, in order to
get the best of Jenks, had gotten some one to buy
the orchards and then turn them over to himself,
you would have had a story, however meagre the
same might have been.
The above illustration shows in a most rudi-
mentary way how there can be no story resultant
from a man carrying out his desire without oppo-
sition. The story must of necessity grow out of
opposition to a character's desires, which opposi-
tion he must either succumb to or triumph over.
Try to conceive of any earthly thing that a man
may wish for, then let him put out his hand and
take the same and see whether you have a story.
Realising that stories do not come this way and
that conflict is essential to their very existence,
we arrive now at those degrees of conflict that
216 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
give to our stories a proportionate degree of ab-
Sorbing interest.
We all know that in a well-played game of
baseball, where players are evenly matched and
where the conflict is, in consequence, so tight as
to leave the issue at any one moment doubtful,
an audience that might ordinarily be calm is
driven into a perfect frenzy of excitement. This
intense holding power is not due so much to the
conflict as to a something within the conflict
which we will here point out. The pitting of one
team against another holds our interest, but does
not give us the intense excitement above men-
tioned. It is only when one team begins to gain.
on the other that we work up to a suspense, look-
ing to the other to regain the ground it has lost.
When in the closeness of the contest one team
springs a surprise upon the other, excitement is
at fever heat for the response of the opposing
team to the new issue put forth by the surprise.
All this illustrates very aptly the two forms of
conflict that make stories. The mere pitting of
team against team would be very like that form
of conflict in stories where a man's desire is
pitted against opposition from the very start, and
where both the desire and the opposition present
no new phases throughout, but run along quietly
parallel until they arrive at some situation that
closes the story. Such a story, for instance,
would show a lovable old character whose one
WHAT CONFLICT MEANS TO A PLAY 217
desire in life is to give of that which he has to
his fellows. Place in opposition to this desire
the character's poverty, and we have a conflict
that is equivalent, as we stated above, to the mere
pitting of team against team. From this point
on, the character continues to do for his fellows
and continues to be poor. Perhaps he grows
more poor. It may be that he faces starvation.
At any rate, though one of the conflicting forces
may have gained a little ground during the story,
the same was achieved so gradually that we were
nowhere startled into excitement, but simply held
by a quiet interest.
If, on the other hand, the two teams pitted
against each other had been represented in our
story by the corrupt politician on the one hand
and the upright young governor on the other, the
two opposing forces would put forth incessant
surprises upon each other as the politician tries
to undermine, or to break, the governor’s power,
and as the latter baffles him repeatedly by un-
expected turns of ingenuity and finally crushes
him.
So it will follow that when two opposing forces
are each a live wire, we cannot keep pace with
their conflict save by the liveliest of mental ac-
tivity. Each new surprise sprung by the one
force will make us leap to the other to conjecture
in advance what its response will be, and so,
though seated in the audience, we play the game
218 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
of story building like the game of baseball, at
fever heat.
While both the types of conflict herein de-
scribed may be called sustained, the former pos-
sesses that quality only, while the latter adds to
it the attribute of intensity or excitement.
CHAPTER XLV
CoNFLICT AND BIG DRAMATIC Scenes
We have shown how conflict is the very mak-
ing of a story and how the degrees of conflict de-
termine its intensity. We will now endeavour
to point out how the bigness or dramatic strength
of scenes is in direct ratio with the degree of con-
flict between the plot elements.
We all know that between the members of a
family there exists at times submerged friction.
Nothing happens for the time being, yet every
one feels that it is coming to a head and is bound
to break out in a general understanding. Where
this friction is slight, a complaint on the part of
one member and a yielding on the part of another
is all that may be expected; but where the con-
flict is between deep-seated and unchanging dif-
ferences of temperament and attitude, we look
forward to an upheaval that threatens to rend the
entire domestic fabric. It is not otherwise in
stories. The conflict that is slight will come to an
issue in scenes almost as gentle as the forces that
make it. Where, through a photoplay, one char-
acter has smiled lovingly, perhaps a little sadly,
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220 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
on the unselfishness of the other, we build up in
the heart of the former a realisation that the lat-
ter needs must be made of sterner stuff if he
would hold his own in a world quick to take ad-
vantage. The action works up to where the lat-
ter is taken in hand by his more practical friend.
But how gentle is the reproach, how tender the
scene, that grows out of such a conflict! If, on
the other hand, a wife is tormented by the pres-
ence in her home of a former lover who holds
the secret that will destroy her happiness were it
betrayed to her husband, we work up a friction
so intense that we realise it requires only a mo-
ment alone between the wife and her persecutor
to break out into a tempestuous scene. If the
husband come in on this scene, the excitement
subsides into a lull that works up again into a still
more violent outbreak as he surmises the truth.
From the above comparison it becomes clear how
big scenes are the outgrowth of intensity of con-
flict. -
When a man fights single-handed with nature,
the bigger the odds in the “life and death strug-
gle,” the greater the scenes that portray the same.
A fight against the currents sweeping down into
the falls of Niagara, the fatality of a struggle
against the suction of the quicksands, an
encounter with some wild animal along the side
of a cliff where one misstep would mean a fall
from a dizzy height, such scenes, and number-
CONFLICT AND BIG DRAMATIC SCENES 221
less others, that are called big, draw this quality
from the strength of the combat they represent.
Similar to these are those issues that culminate
in the stupendous fight of one man overpowering
many, or in a hand-to-hand encounter between
two men, each primitive in his uncontrolled pas-
Sion.
Those stories that set forth social intrigue lead
our expectations always to some big scene in
which all the threads so finely spun shall have
become snarled. The more threads there are sub-
tly tightening the conflict, the bigger will be that
scene of the snarling which rends them.
Dramatic scenes growing out of conflict de-
velop in two different ways. There are times
when the conflicting forces play against each
other in such a way as to result in one big scene
after another, culminating at the climax in a
scene no bigger than the rest but weightier be-
cause more vital. Such stories proceed along a
line of continual excitement, giving us at each
moment an unexpected turn which sets us gasp-
ing for the outcome. This form lends itself es-
pecially to the adventure type of story dealing
with hair-breath escapes from gangs, etc. At
other times the conflicting forces act slowly and
steadily upon each other, and close in by inches
the victim of their manoeuvring. Knowing, for
instance, the tremendous love of our hero for his
wife and realising at the same time his violent
222 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
passionate nature, we dread the consequences to
himself and to his wife when we see her being
slowly lured from the path of right. Little by
little side lights come up in the story which fore-
shadow an awful doom. A suspense is created
as we wonder how long the guilty wife, now per-
haps repentant, can escape the whirlwind. We are
carried into the scene of discovery. There is a
great lull for a moment as the suspense hitherto
built up trembles on the brink of realisation.
From this breathless moment we are swept up-
ward into a scene that is the white heat of trag-
edy and concentres within itself all the pent up
fury of a conflict long delayed in coming to an
issue.
Such are all stories that build up and build up,
breaking loose in one big scene which fights the
issue to a finish. Conflicts long fought within the
soul of man and breaking out suddenly in some
telling scene, fall under this class. In every case,
conflict is a slowly gathering storm accompanied
at times by a continuous play of lightning flashes,
and at other times darkening steadily to a great
lull preceding the crash.
CHAPTER XLVI
CoNFLICT SIMPLE AND COMPOUND
VIEWED from the angle of complexity, con-
flict divides itself into two groupings, the simple
conflict of two opposing forces, and the more
complicated conflict which involves any number
of forces each acting independently in its own di-
rection. Perhaps the most prevalent instance of
simple conflict is found in the triangle plot. Two
men want the same girl. The first becomes force
A, and the second, force B. Here we have the
two forces working in opposite direction. One
will prove more potent than the other and will
draw unto himself the field of contention, the girl.
Any material thing desired by two individuals
who contend for its possession gives us the sim-
ple conflict between two. Should there be three
forces in the field, two of them working together
against the third, we would still have simple con-
flict, for the two will act together as one in one
direction, while the third will constitute the sec-
ond force in the opposite direction.
It follows from this that in the matter of con-
flict we do not deal with the number of individ-
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224 HOW TO WHITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
uals opposed, but rather with the direction of the
forces they represent. If, for instance, we show
a poor but virtuous girl in her struggles to lead
an honest livelihood, it would be a useless divi-
sion of opposing energy to show her friend per-
sistently tempting her to go wrong, to show a
wealthy young man playing the same rôle, to
show an adventuress also working on her in a
line of force parallel to the two preceding. All
three of these rôles played side by side constitute
one force divided by three in opposition to which
we have the unified force, the girl’s virtuous turn
of mind. Would it not be a strengthening of the
former force, and a concentering of attention on
it, to have two of the rôles drop out and to have
the third played by one villain equivalent to all
three? Wherever the desire of an individual, or
of a mass, meets opposition in any form whatso-
ever, we have the simple conflict of two contend-
ing forces.
Outside of all material contentions, there are
conflicts between one ideal set over against an-
other. Whether the opposing ideals be suffrage
or antisuffrage, the exaltation of capital or fair
play toward labour, any selfish or unselfish
ideal contrasted, all those on the one side will
constitute a united force in one direction while
those on the other side will comprise the opposing
force.
Turning now from simple to compound con-
CONFLICT SIMPLE AND COMPOUND 225
flict, we can best illustrate the transition by con-
sidering those struggles that take place within
the mind of a character. It is in moments of in-
decision that we begin a conflict say between our
desire to possess a certain luxury and our knowl-
edge of what that luxury will cost. Into this sim-
ple issue there enters now the thought of a loved
one whose needs ought to be considered before
the luxury is even thought of. On the other
hand, it suddenly occurs to us that the care of this
loved one ought rightfully to devolve on some
other member of the family, and so on until any
number of issues have contended for the field,
leaving the victory to the strongest. This form
of conflict appears in all of our more complex
plots, building them up into multiple reel features
and giving them a carrying force through six,
eight or twelve reels.
In stories of the political order, in which a
newly elected governor defies the machine that
would control his actions for private gain, we
have a clearly defined simple struggle between the
uprightness of the official and the power of the
boss-politician. Into this conflict creeps a side
issue, the thought in the governor’s mind of dis-
grace to his father or of the loss of his sweetheart
through what the politician can reveal to break
him. This last mentioned consideration does not
ally itself with the designs of the political ma-
chine, becoming one with it against the governor,
226 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
for in his mind the two forces remain distinct.
His opposition to the corruption of his office re-
mains unchanged. The thought of injury to his
loved ones is a force in another direction, preying
upon his strength and tearing at his heart as he
resolutely collects his powers to fight the poli-
tician to the finish. Under this class fall all
stories of blackmail where the simple conflict in
which a character might originally engage is
modified by the character's purpose being bent
and twisted with each new issue that enters into
the scheme as a conflicting force.
The play of so many plot issues leaves us at
any one moment doubtful. We cannot even esti-
mate, as in the case of the simple conflict, the
amount of progress that the one force has made
upon the other, for we cannot tell which one of
the issues will come into play in the next instant,
how its action may change the colour of the situa-
tion entirely, or combining with the other ele-
ments, explode the story, finishing it. This gives
us the intense excitement and holding power of
the compound conflict over the simple, and makes
clear why the former must inevitably be used to
carry successfully a lengthy subject.
CHAPTER XLVII
HEART INTEREST
Following closely upon the discussion of con-
flict, it would be appropriate to introduce the sub-
ject of heart interest, an attribute that lends per-
haps more than any other quality toward the in-
tensity and gripping power of a conflict. Before
we proceed, it may be well to make the distinction
that is so often omitted, between heart interest
and love interest.
We may treat, for instance, of the love between
the head clerk and the stenographer, into which
the bookkeeper enters as a rival. We have here
the eternal triangle. Unless we are careful to
handle the situation with novelty and appeal, our
readers will close the book, saying, “Oh, it's the
same old stuff! I don’t care to finish it.” Had
the story touched their hearts, they could not pos-
sibly have thrown it aside without caring what
happens to the characters. We have, therefore,
right at the start, an example of a story that is
built on love interest but is utterly lacking in
heart interest.
We may set forth the love between any two
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228 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
characters ever so vividly, yet if these characters
grate upon our audience and if the latter feel that
they do not care what becomes of the former, we
have not, in our story, heart interest.
How many a love story has bored you to death,
and how many a fine simple tale that touched the
heart, yet carried no love interest, has moved you
to tears! While a story can get along very well
without love interest, it can in nowise succeed
without that most vital element, heart interest.
Seeing, then, that there is no one feature so es-
sential to success as is heart interest, how shall
we set about to acquire it?
There is perhaps no more astounding proof of
man's sublime destiny than this: that heart inter-
est, the one thing he will respond to with fervour,
arises always out of what is good. In the dark-
ness of crime, in a world gone topsy-turvy, there
is no more steady ray of hope than emanates from
a study of what it is that touches the hearts of the
1112.SSCS. &
Present to them in your story a man who
through selfish motives marries a woman for
money and then finds that he is tied to a despica-
ble, characterless creature. Draw your character
with ever so much detail, yet the audience will be
left wholly without interest and will wait, bored,
until your offering is flashed off the screen and
another, more appealing to them, is put on. This
is not because your characters are disagreeable,
HEART INTEREST 229
but because there is in your story nothing of vir-
tue to set them off. The verdict of your public is
merely this: “He got what he deserved when he
married her, and she was worthy of nothing bet-
ter than what came to her.” With this they drop
them from their hearts and interest, and subcon-
sciously say, “Next!”
If, on the other hand, the man were a straight,
fine fellow who married, not for money, but be-
cause of his belief in the woman, we would have
in the revelation of her character to him a direct
tragedy, the more so if the same would have to
be concealed for the sake of the little ones.
It is this note of goodness in its struggle with
evil or adversity that furnishes heart interest.
Though there be thousands of hearts in an audi-
ence, not one will make a mistake and saunter
over to the wrong side. Every heart knows the
side it belongs on, as do the little chicks in a poul-
try yard, be they ever so mixed up, know the
mother with whom they must march off.
Reversing the story, say that toward the
woman, fine and worthy of any man’s love, there
exists, in the husband, no personal appreciation.
This situation and what results therefrom is
fraught with heart interest.
Husband and wife, each believing they were
married for ulterior motives and suffering in con-
sequence, present a struggle for an ideal or a sor-
230 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
row because of its supposed loss, which is a heart
interest theme. *
All those themes that represent the world's
ideals to-day reflect to an audience a heart inter-
est in the characters who struggle to uphold these
heights. As all universal ideals must inevitably
be unselfish, and as there is in all the world no
such tender unselfishness as that with which we
toil for the next generation, so there is no subject
fraught with that appealing heart interest that
goes out always to the child.
Allied with the pathos, love and tender interest
that surrounds child life, is the heart interest that
is aroused by a character essentially childlike, a
cheerful vagabond, an improvident good soul, a
simple creature who throws himself upon the
goodness of his fellows with a child's perfect
faith.
Of all the heart interest themes, there are per-
haps none so popular as those which attempt
nothing further than to hold up the mirror, as it
were, to an audience, letting them see themselves
as they are. There are times when such themes
become hard and sarcastic—when they lose en-
tirely that touch of human sympathy. They have
not, then, heart interest, but we must not forget
that such do not reflect, as in a mirror, human
nature as we have endeavoured to point it out.
CHAPTER XLVIII
DIVIDED INTEREST
IN the several preceding chapters we have
dwelt largely on the subject of conflict. We will
now consider its negation, divided interest.
If we were to have a fight with a fellow man,
how fatal it would be to the strength of our fight-
ing to have us suddenly see the disputed matter
from our opponent's point of view. Much of that
intensity which would have been pitted headlong
against him would now swerve about and fight
for him. The same thing occurs in stories, with a
similar weakening of the conflict, when an au-
thor, through inexperience, suffers a condition of
divided interest to maintain. If, for instance, the
poverty of a leading character, and her misfor-
tunes, win the undivided interest and sympathy
of an audience, we need only show that character
ignoring through laziness or a feeling of superior-
ity, an opportunity to work, and we have at once
divided the interest by a feeling of resentment
against the woman. So in all stories in which we
are to appreciate the absolute fatality of a char-
acter's misfortune, the author must be careful to
23.I
232 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
remove from the range of that character even
the remotest possibility of self-help, for while
such exists there must inevitably result a much
weakened sympathy for the character who either
through ignorance or indifference overlooks the
S3.1110.
Often when the strength of a story depends
upon our hating with a deep, double-dyed, inky
hatred our utterly impossible heavy, an author,
not realising that we want to hate him, that we
love to hate him, that the story wouldn’t be worth
two pins if we didn’t hate him, and it wouldn’t be
worth much if we hated him a little less, will en-
deavour to please us by letting the heavy perform
some good act. We realise that he is not such a
bad sort after all. The hatred is divided by an
opposing sentiment—the one-sided interest is
washed away. We do not refer here to that fine
art of character drawing which represents an in-
dividual as both good and bad, but rather to that
form of story construction which makes it essen-
tial that the villain remain grippingly bad.
After the divided interest of a change of senti-
ment toward a character, there is perhaps nothing
that so tends to divide and sub-divide interest as
a large cast. In meeting with many people at an
afternoon affair, it stands to reason that none of
them will be thoroughly revealed to us as would a
single person with whom we might share, undi-
vided, that afternoon. It is true that in all that
* T - - - - - -
A STAFF OF CAMERA-MEN BELONGING TO ONE company By courtesy of the Lasky-Paramount Studios
This gives an idea of what a busy place a really large company is. Each
camera-man with his assistant belongs to a separate little company, and each
of these little companies has its star, its director, assistant director, property
man, etc., and a photoplay in process of construction.








DIVIDED INTEREST 233
mass there may have been some very interesting
personalities with whom we felt we would like a
more intimate acquaintance, yet, after all, those
were only promising first impressions, while the
One acquaintance followed up through a whole
afternoon would have become a friendship. In
stories or plays this distinction is the more clearly
made, for once we close our book or leave a the-
atre, we cannot follow up first impressions, and
acquaintances remain acquaintances while friends
remain friends.
Say that all the progress made by any three
characters in a play could well have been achieved
by One, this one through playing a so important
part would become heroised in the eyes of the
audience, while in the former arrangement the
three characters displaying each but one third of
his ingenuity would have been overlooked as com-
monplace. -
Outside of the importance it gives to a char-
acter to have him play a big part in a small cast,
and outside of the sympathy an audience feels
for him through a more intimate acquaintance,
we must not forget that the memorising of a large
cast and the following of a great number of ac-
tors through small bits, is a tax on the minds of
those in the audience, which strain alone divides
the interest they can feel in the characters. In
the obviating of divided interest it is necessary,
therefore, to cut down the cast to the fewest num-
234. HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
ber of persons needed to tell the story and at the
same time to set each other off with the required
contrast and variation for truth to life.
For the prompt fixing of interest in a charac-
ter, nothing is so important as his early identifica-
tion. While we are left in doubt as to whether
the character is good, bad or indifferent, our in-
terest wavers. We may even believe that a char-
acter will develop into a lead, only to have a
complete reversal of feeling when the author
shows us that he had intended from the start to
make him a heavy. Such a changing of senti-
ments with regard to a character gives us the
weakened response of interest divided.
The same is true of action that stalls and stalls
before getting into full swing. Here the original
expectation with which an audience read the title
of the film becomes divided by the boredom that
precedes the beginning of the action. The error
in this direction may be sufficiently great to kill
all initial interest, in which case the story must
indeed be fine if it can fan into a flame these dead
embers.
This delayed opening often takes the form of
the so-called false start, a failing to which begin-
ners are prone. They will give us, for instance, a
number of sweet domestic scenes, and just when
we are looking forward to impending complica-
tions we discover that these characters and
scenes have nothing to do with our story; they
DIVIDED INTEREST 235
were simply inserted as a background to the dear
old man who now sits down in the centre to tell
us the story proper. All the spirit with which we
entered upon the story, and all the energy we ex-
pended in trying to look ahead to what was going
to happen, is killed at a blow. In some of us it
revives feebly for the story proper; in others it is
replaced by annoyance and the story is lost.
CHAPTER XLIX
INCONSISTENCIES AND ANACHRONISMs
To one's absorbing interest in a narrative,
nothing is so fatal as a doubt even for a moment
as to the tale's veracity. Let your friend tell you
a story that holds you spellbound, when suddenly
a something that he states refuses to tally with
other facts in his story. Instantly your interest
in the story is divided by a feeling of chagrin at
the lie he is trying to pawn off on you, and you
say to yourself, “I don’t believe him. Why it
couldn’t be, because—” It is this “because”
that introduces us into the subject of inconsis-
tencies and anachronisms, one of the most pre-
vailing factors in divided interest.
If we want to trap our heroine in a question-
able resort, destroy her happiness and the faith
of her lover in her, it would not do to have her
involved in the situation through her duties as a
reporter or detective. To explain her presence
in this compromising locale would necessitate
merely her showing of her badge or license. To
be sure the author wanted to give her a legiti-
mate reason for being there, so as not to destroy
236
INCONSISTENCIES-ANACHRONISMS 287
sympathy for her in the hearts of the audience.
He has left her with a way of escape, however.
The audience realise this, grow angry with her
when she fails to use it. It is inconsistent, or in
other words, not plausible.
It may be quite the finest thing for the entan-
glement of our plot to have a murder committed
in a certain place in the story. It might be won-
derfully helpful, also, to have said murder perpe-
trated by a particular character through whom it
might lead to the most powerful developments.
Immediately we ascribe to that character a rea-
son for committing the crime. We fail to realise,
however, that the character might achieve his end
quite as well, if not better, by some other means;
or we shut our eyes perhaps on the discovery by
another party that must inevitably result if said
character be made the criminal, thus defeating
the plot. While we glide blissfully over these
things, expecting the public to “take our word
for it,” they on the other hand are prepared to
do no such thing. They have discovered a flaw
in our story. Either we were misinformed in
what we are narrating to them, or else we are de-
liberately lying. In either case, their interest in
the story is divided by their realisation that it
never could have happened.
This same feeling is always present, necessar-
ily, where we commit that historical inconsis-
238 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
tency, called the anachronism. Let an ancient
Roman be tormented always as a certain hour
strikes, and your story goes for naught, indeed
develops into comedy through the fact that clocks
had not, until long after our story, made their
appearance on this earth. So it is with the use
of any essential in our story when it is plain to
an audience that in said period such could not
have existed. .
Wherever we allow an audience to question;
“Why would he want to do that, being the type
of character he is?” we have divided their interest
by the inconsistency in our character drawing.
Wherever we allow them to wonder how one situ-
ation could maintain despite the fact that our
other plot elements would make it plainly impos-
sible, we have failed in plausibility through that
weakness in our analytical faculty which allows
to an audience a shrewder logic than our own.
Should we, for instance, develop a blood-cur-
dling story in which a debtor is about to murder
his creditor who means to close in on him, forcing
him into bankruptcy, we cannot, after such a
premise, allow the horrors of our story to wind
up in the death of the said creditor in whose will
the victim’s debts are cancelled. It is quite plain
in so doing that plausibility has been sacrificed
to the happy ending. If the creditor felt so kindly
disposed toward his debtor as to make a will in
INCONSISTENCIES-ANACHRONISMS 239
his favour, then surely the latter must have been
misinformed as to the former's intention of
crushing him. On the other hand, it seems im-
possible that where so friendly a relationship
maintains, the debtor would not have gone to his
creditor to obtain, first hand, any information on
what the latter intended toward him. All of these
things an author can solve by that same mental
process we employ in life in foreseeing the out-
come of our transactions.
Whenever we negotiate with some one toward
a business combination, we always figure out
mentally every phase of his response and of the
response of the business world. We will say to
ourselves, “If I offer him thus and so, it will ap-
peal to him because of such and such other inter-
ests in which he is now engaged and on which my
proposition will have a direct bearing.” Should
we make the combination, it will affect the entire
Gogum industry, for instance. In the Gogum
industry there are certain divided interests. One
half of these can be banked upon to enlist with
us because of particular conditions which prevail.
The other half will, in self-preservation, combine
with the Bulbul syndicate. When they do this,
we will meet their united antagonism after a
fashion which we carefully decide upon as cal-
culated to defeat them on their own ground,
knowing in advance what the ground must in-
240 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
evitably be. This form of mental action applied
to our characters and stories as we develop them,
is clearly at war with that most common source
of divided interest, inconsistency.
CHAPTER L.
THE Too-THIN PLor—THE HALF-BAKED PLor
—THE NON-APPEALING PLOT-USE of
ACCIDENT—CHARACTERISATION
ONE property of a story very seldom thought
of as dividing its interest is the too thin quality
of its plot. For every story that comes our way
we have a uniform amount of interest, namely,
the entire amount of which we are capable.
When the story engrosses all of this, it holds us
as in a vice. Often, however, its plot and theme
are so thin and meagre as to have but little hold-
ing power over us. In this case, all of our inter-
est has drifted away to other things, to our
neighbours or to ourselves, leaving on the story
just sufficient to maintain an attention that fol-
lows vaguely the theme.
Closely allied to the above is the failing of the
half-baked plot. Here, situation after situation
is touched upon but never developed, and the
audience, running on ahead of the author, have
their interest painfully divided between the story
and a realisation of its lost possibilities.
Outside of these stories that spill so much of
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242 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
our attention because they have not sufficient
weight and depth to hold our interest, there are
those stories which we have discussed under heart
interest, that repel our attention because they
do not appeal.
Where the theme in itself would be of sufficient
volume to hold us, it often falls short through its
accompanying plot of incident and accident.
Once the laws of the game have been laid out and
we know that John is to advance against Paul
along a given line and according to the set rules
of cause and effect, we are prepared to follow
them through a stiff game and to look ahead cun-
ningly to anticipate their next move. All the
tension, all the suspense, is caused by the knowl-
edge that these moves must be made in accord-
ance with the fixed rules. It is this limitation
that arouses interest in the ingenuity of the play-
ers as they calculate their moves within restric-
tion. Should one of them suddenly score an ad-
vantage over the other by the breaking of a pre-
supposed rule, we would cry, “Foul!” Suppose,
then, that our cry was ignored and we came to
realise that in this game there were no distinct
rules. We would drop away immediately, feeling
rather chagrined that we had wasted so much of
our time on what promised to be a conflict but
petered out into nothing.
So it is in stories. All life is governed by cause
and effect. Every act we perform must inevi-
DIVIDED INTEREST 243
tably have its consequence. Industry, fore-
thought and ingenuity will advance us materially;
idleness, wastefulness, will impoverish us; right
living will be conducive to health and happiness;
dissipation will undermine our being, and so it
goes on down the gamut of those rules that gov-
ern the game of life.
Ancient as is the game, its rules have never
been changed. So deeply are they engrained in
our minds that they are present in even the wild
happenings of our dreams. When, therefore, a
story presents itself, we have a right to expect
that it, as a life portrayal, will be governed by
the laws of life. With this expectation in mind,
we accept the theme which shows us the dissolute
youth and his sister, a splendid type. We go
ahead with the game, playing squarely within the
rules and trying to anticipate what will happen
next. Suddenly, just when the reckless youth
would inevitably have sounded his death knell,
despite the struggles of his sister, the latter, sob-
bing out her grief on the family Bible, drags
forth a valuable letter which has been waiting
to be discovered for thirty years. Long before
this sees the light of day the audience are miles
ahead in conjectures as to what must inevitably
happen. When they see the author, therefore,
come on with something “so easy,” we must for-
give them for saying, “Bosh!”
Outside of this accident’s sad reflection on the
244. HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
family Bible, there are those who would argue
that such an incident, however far-fetched, might
happen. Granted, it might, but we are not con-
cerning ourselves with freakish bits of chance;
we are playing the game as it must inevitably be
played when it is not interfered with by those
accidents that set us marvelling because of their
infrequence. As soon, therefore, as we realise
that the author does not mean to play the game
squarely, but is prepared to ignore all laws,
breaking such, going over, under or around them
with his accidents, it becomes plain to us that
there can be no sustained fight between our hero
and his destiny; wherefore our concern in the
same drops away. Our interest in the theme
also has become divided by our feeling the im-
probability or arbitrariness of the events that
take place.
Under this heading fall all those stories of ac-
cident that present, in one guise or another,
miraculous reunions of families or individuals
with those who had become at one time, lost,
strayed or stolen.
Similar to the divided interest resultant from
the use of incident and accident, is the effect of
characters that do not behave consistently along
the line of the characterisation given us by the
author. A shrewd business man, for instance, is
not in the habit of divulging to a stranger what
he means to do, even though his doing so will
DIVIDED INTEREST 245
enable the stranger to forewarn his friend and so
help on our story. Whenever we allow a char-
acter, once established, to do something that will
make our audience question, “Now why in
heaven's name would that type of man do thus
and So?” we have divided their interest immedi-
ately by the doubt that prompts the question.
CHAPTER LI
UNFORTUNATE CHOICE OF COMEDY SUBJECT-
PARTISANSHIP-FALSE VIEWPOINT—RE-
LIGIOUS AND HISTORICAL SUBJECTs
OF all those failings in story writing that tend
to that still more fatal shortcoming, divided in-
terest, perhaps none are so vividly felt as is an
unfortunate choice of subject for comedy. How
often we play jokes upon one another, or keep up
a rapid fire of clever retort, when suddenly those
who have been listening with peals of merriment
will begin to grow quiet; their faces will lengthen;
they will look reproachful and will remind us
gently that we are going a bit too far. A joke
is a joke only while it remains good natured.
Carry it beyond this point and it calls forth sym-
pathy for its object. A feeling of pity divides the
laugh and the division of a laugh kills it.
It is the truth of this that makes it necessary
for clowns to paint their faces until the same be-
come inhuman masks. This is true also of those
who play slapstick in pictures. People may won-
der why the actors most successful in getting a
laugh in this sort of fun, always do their work in
246
DIVIDED INTEREST 24.7
such a wooden, eccentric fashion. The more
they depart from the human in their make-up and
personality, the more readily can people laugh at
the safe that descends on them, or at their head-
long fall downstairs. Let the same actor drop
for a moment his Punch and Judy make-up and
allow a glimmer of human feeling to appear at
the surface, and instantly the audience will real-
ise that the blows descending on him must hurt.
This rouses a quick sympathy which divides the
comedy interest, killing it.
While we have in the leading slapstick actors
an absolute woodenness in everything they do,
even in the way they make love or smile, the same
qualities must appear more or less in the com—
pany supporting them, for the destruction of a
man's property is never funny and it is only when
the man becomes merely an entity, making no
human appeal, that the same can get a laugh.
All this becomes very simple reduced, as we
show it here, to its lowest terms. So, too, does
the matter of introducing into comedy death
scenes, coffins, funerals, anything that would
arouse in an audience a line of thought antago-
nistic to the comedy element.
The mere exploiting of drunkenness is never
funny, though at times we might get away with
a little of it provided we keep the tone good
natured and clean.
Marital unfaithfulness, or any other form of
248 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
dishonesty, arouses resentment, sympathy and
other mental attitudes, to combat pure enjoy-
ment. Many of the best farces, it is true, are
built upon innocent deception of husband or wife,
for perhaps a little more freedom, but mind you,
they are innocent, and it is this harmlessness that
gives to comedy elements an unhampered play.
Reverting from the subject of comedy to a
consideration of more serious themes, we find
that any situation, however well handled, which
reflects unjustly on a large class of people, giving
offense to them, will cause all others to feel this
unwarranted thrust, which feeling divides what
interest the theme may have aroused. No author
who wishes to achieve the undivided interest of
his audience can afford to give offense to any
one class or to let personal feeling lead him to
deviate in any way from the absolute truth. As
often as he presents a false viewpoint on any
question whatsoever, he must expect that the in-
terest in his story will be divided, perhaps
crushed, by the mass antagonism to his false con-
ception.
This is especially true in the handling of sin.
The natural aversion an audience feels toward
this subject, unless backed by a worthy viewpoint
on the part of the author, is such as to antagonise
and break up their undivided interest.
Another quality dangerous to trifle with is that
of false sympathy. A wife who has brought on
DIVIDED INTEREST 249
her own doom by eloping with another may suf-
fer so intensely as to win our sympathy, but let
the author try to lay the whole blame of her down-
fall on the kindly husband who, he argues, should
at once have forgiven and taken her back, and im-
mediately he has gone too far. He has tried to
arouse false sympathy. The audience feel the
fallacy of it and recoil.
If, on the other hand, it is the husband himself
who believes that he was to blame for not having
taken her back, the matter becomes different, for
we are not accountable for—we can even shower
a great flood of sympathy on—the distorted view
a loving heart may take.
The question of divided interest, too, is largely
responsible for the poor market now open to re-
ligious and historical subjects. While a religious
picture may appeal strongly to those who believe
in its tenets, it will be bound to arouse in others
an antagonism to its teachings that will be de-
structive to their interest in the same.
While this division of interest is less marked
in an historical picture, it nevertheless remains
that there are many to whom the mere fact that
a story occurred long ago is sufficient to destroy
one half their interest in the same. At every
thrilling climax in the story such people will feel
their suspense killed by a counterthought: “Oh,
well, even if she is going to be killed, it isn’t real.
It all happened so long ago.” -
250 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
While these last mentioned points are not so
general in their application as the preceding, we
have inserted them here to make clear to writers
why their market for religious and costume sub-
jects is limited by the producer’s recognition of
this divided interest.
CHAPTER LII
Trre OPTIMISTIC VIEWPOINT—SATIRE–PHI-
Losophy—FAULTY ExPOSITION.—THE
PRODUCTION
So much has been said of an audience's distaste
for stories that depress, and so much of praise
has been given to that attribute of stories which
endows them with laughter and tears, yet few
people realise that the latter construction tri-
umphs over the former through the conserving of
undivided interest.
There is in normal human nature an optimism
that cannot be downed. Through the darkest
vale of despair there is always a glimmer of hope.
We must have it so; we could not live without it,
for hope is constructive. Construction is the es-
sence of life and its negation is the attribute of
death. Because we are so built by Providence,
a story that is wholly sad can appeal to but a
small part of our nature and that the least active
part. All through such a performance the ele-
ment of hopefulness and constructiveness in an
audience will be chafing against bonds that it will
not tolerate, against a subject that puts forth
25I
252 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
nothing to engross it. At any one moment in the
performance of such a theme we can hear re-
marks as, for example: “I don’t like this—I’m
sorry we came—I hope it ends happily.” In each
of these remarks there appears strongly an audi-
ence's consciousness of itself, of its own personal
feelings with reference to the subject. -
Whenever it is possible for an audience to
make a conscious statement, either mentally or
aloud, as to how it feels toward a story, we may
be sure that there exist two entities, the story and
the man viewing the same—the former has not
absorbed the latter. It is his inability to clinch a
man, all of him, by a story depressing in its tone,
that is the fundamental argument against the
story wholly sad. We may rail at the public, we
may call them “low brows,” and we may feel that
their shrinking from the hopelessly sad betokens
a frivolous nature, an inappreciation of art; yet
the fault lies not with them but with us who do
not know life's elementary laws.
One of the subjects most difficult to make suc-
cessful is that of satire. The problem that it
brings to bear upon the producer is none other
than a question of divided interest. Satire pre-
sents a view of life so wholly personal to the au-
thor and to that limited class who think as he
does, that it is bound, when viewed by others, to
go above their heads as presenting no truth that
they are aware of, or, on the other hand, to go
DIVIDED INTEREST 253
against the grain as antagonistic to their own
private view of the matter. To get the full force
of the satire one must know so intimately that
field of life that it covers, that one can appreciate
a cynical exaggeration in the setting forth of the
same. Where we are not familiar with the real-
ity that is being stretched, our interest in the
satire will be divided, perhaps annihilated, by a
continual groping as to what the author may be
trying to get at. Wherefore, satire, except when
played to the limited number whom it will strike
just right, must always suffer its interest to be
divided on the one hand by insufficient knowledge
of the subject, and on the other by opposition to
the point of view.
Under those subjects in which the interest of
an audience is divided by a groping effort to un-
derstand, fall philosophy and all themes above
the average intelligence; also lighter matter
whose exposition is so faulty and vague as quite
to baffle our understanding it.
While mystifying an audience holds their in-
terest through stimulating their minds toward
clever guessing, it is better never to attempt this
than to err into so bewildering one's public as to
divide their interest by annoyance and resent-
ment, and then by disgust, as they give up trying
to see light through the chaos.
A matter little thought of under the heading
of this chapter, yet falling undoubtedly under
254 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
divided interest, is the consideration of the facili-
ties for production, and special aptitudes, of the
particular company to whom a manuscript is
submitted. Perhaps no one thing is so conducive
to the dividing of interest in a play or photoplay
as inferior production. Between the theme and
the audience stands the actor. The deepest sub-
ject, the profoundest thought that life can yield
us, must fail to engross when our interest is ever
divided between the theme and our annoyance at
the actor whose artificiality in nowise interprets
it. Our interest once divided, the ridiculous in-
terpretation may become so ludicrous as to at-
tract more attention than the story. In such
cases we have what often occurs, a fine concep-
tion getting a laugh throughout.
While an author cannot always avoid such a
catastrophe to his work, there is much he can do
to lessen the chances of its occurring. In writing
for a child actor, for instance, it would be simple
forethought to keep the demands of the part
within the range of his limited ability. Though
he be ever so clever, he cannot be expected to give
a fitting interpretation of what is beyond the
grasp of the child-mind.
The same caution must be observed in writing
parts for animals, the reasons being obvious.
Follow the kind of work in which any particu-
lar company excels, and let this knowledge govern
DIVIDED INTEREST 255
the destination of your manuscript, for by this
wisdom you play straight for a superior produc-
tion which, as we have endeavoured to point out,
is so important toward undivided interest.
CHAPTER LIII
THE ENDING OF THE PHOTOPLAY
“ALL’s well that ends well.” Nowhere is this
so true as in stories, plays and photoplays. We
will go through volumes of five hundred pages or
more, and always we will carry with us the one
impelling thought: “How does it end?” Should
any one be so obliging as to tell us how it ends,
we would close the book in anger with his blun-
dering stupidity. The work has suddenly lost the
suspense that thrilled us, for we know the ending
now, and when we know that, do we not know it
all in all? So much for the importance of our
subject with reference to the merits of the story
itself. We will turn now to a consideration of
story endings not from a literary but from a
financial point of view.
In the making of an acquaintance in life there
is always the first impression. Sometimes the
first impression is heightened after a few mo-
ments’ conversation and very often it is changed
entirely. During the first half hour it will shift
many times, and when at the end of that time we
say good-bye, it is the last impression that de-
256
THE ENDING OF THE PHOTOPLAY 257
termines whether we will want to meet again,
whether we will speak to our friends of that man
or whether we will entirely forget him.
Those who furnish us with our comedy tell us
to “Always leave them smiling when we say good-
bye.” Perhaps this advice is equally good in
drama, though often it is just as well to send
your audience away with a deep, abiding thrill.
Such advice, however, bears out the importance
toward a protracted success of the last impres–
sion. Woe to that photoplay which starts off
well, as so many do, only to die down steadily,
passing away long before its conclusion. The
audience dies with such a picture—at least men-
tally and spiritually. If they have any feeling
at the close, it is similar to what we experience
at witnessing a long, hard death: “Thank
heaven! It is over now.” No one would care to
go through it again, no one would send his friend
there to see it.
To get the successful close a picture must work
up steadily, holding one so completely absorbed
until the very last moment that the ending comes
all too soon and leaves us crying for more. Some-
where within a few scenes at the close the action
will have so shaped itself that the minds of an
audience can readily run ahead to the finish. If
your action here follows out scene for scene what
they have mentally constructed, you can realise
that the end of your picture becomes to them a
258 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
mere matter of waiting for the stamp of the Na-
tional Board of Review. It is in these last
scenes that the action must be held suspended,
threatening to take a turn. It may not do so,
however, as such a turn would produce an anti-
climax. Its object is to keep one guessing until
the very last moment, working up to the ending
like to a crash in music,+finis!
One of the most prevalent sources of the “let
down” in interest at the close of a picture is the
regulation ending. These endings are so well
known to the public that they are always ex-
pected, and in their very avoidance is the element
of surprise. Once an audience realises that the
lovers’ difficulties have been straightened out and
there is nothing left but the embrace, the lips of
some of them will form for the kiss with which
they register their contempt for the obvious.
What a neat little turning of the tables if an au-
thor can give them the unexpected, just when
they were so thoroughly prepared for the other.
This brings us to that little turn in the end of
the last scene, which we call the “take up.” Hav-
ing completed your scenario, it will pay you well
to ponder long over its last scene for some unique
and unexpected close. It is like a beaming smile,
or the throwing of a kiss at one's audience before
the curtain comes down to separate us from them.
Conceive of what an insult you perpetrate with
your hackneyed ending. It is equivalent to say-
By courtesy of the Famous Players-Paramount Studios
THE TRIMMING OF A FILM
The first assembling and trimming of a picture accord-
ing to the manuscript. Subsequent finer trimmings are
made with each running of a picture and with its sub-
titling prior to release. The trimming of a film is some-
times done by the director and sometimes by professional
film cutters,

THE ENDING OF THE PHOTOPLAY 259
ing: “Here, run along! We’ve tried long enough
to entertain you. Anything will do for a finish,
just so we're rid of the painful job.”
This brings us down to sadness in endings.
There are two types of the sad ending. The one
is the unhappy close that could have been avoided
without detriment to the story. The fact that it
was uncalled for arouses in us that annoyance
which we feel toward everything criminal, in-
human, that is allowed to remain when it could
be obliterated. The second is the tragic ending,
in which all the threads of a story culminate in a
great fatality. Such an ending is not so depress-
ing as the former, for its bigness gives us the
thrill that purges it. It is this type of ending that
makes critics wail out their observation that the
public has no soul for art, that they will tolerate
nothing but gladness, gladness, gladness, in an
ending. While the former type of ending will not
be countenanced at all, and while the second type
will appeal strongly only to the intellectually de-
veloped, we feel it will be good advice to a photo-
playwright to remember that the greater part
of his audience is made up of those who feel
rather than think, and the happy ending, where it
can be achieved, makes the appreciated finish.
CHAPTER LIV
WHAT Constitutes MoRALITY IN PHOTOPLAYS
WHEN author, actor and producer have put
their best efforts into a photoplay,+after all that
multitude of workers who in one way or another
are active in making that picture a success have
pronounced it finished, it is ready for its pre-
liminary and final judgment, the former by a
jury of Censors, the latter by the great mass of
the public.
Should the Board of Censors, now called The
National Board of Review, rule out the picture in
its entirety, declaring it in theme and substance
unfit for public presentation, all the time, labour
and thousands of dollars expended in its produc-
tion, would go for naught in the case of all those
larger companies who have bound themselves,
for the good of the industry, to be governed by
The National Board of Review. If only sections
are found objectionable, the difficulty can be sur-
mounted by cutting out of the film the offensive
parts. Such cutting might make the picture not
understandable, might break its smoothness or
otherwise cripple it. All of this can be obviated
260
MORALITY IN PHOTOPLAYS 261
by a knowledge on the part of the author of what
governs the decisions of the censoring board.
While it but rarely happens that a photoplay
violating the dictates of censorship gets as far as
purchase or production, there are times when,
bent upon the artistic status of the offering, a
company may overlook an offending detail. It is
better, therefore, that an author refrain from
putting into his manuscripts what the revising
staff of a company must necessarily eliminate, or,
in the event of their failing to do this, expose the
producers to grave loss. Far from arbitrary in
their demands, the best advice that can be given
to a writer on keeping within their rule, is that
he look at life always sanely and wholesomely.
There is much in life that is not as it should
be, and there can be no helpful interpretation of
existence unless such matters are squarely at-
tacked and wisely solved. It is not in the subject
matter, but in the angle of vision, that a writer
makes himself liable to censorship.
Say that an author draws a light, frivolous
woman, flirtatious and intimate with her hus-
band's friends. Such creatures exist, and as
everything that is has a vital bearing on life, the
subject is worthy of exposition. Having chosen
a subject delicate to handle, we realise that the
same can only be kept wholesome by superimpos-
ing on it, throughout, the normal aspect. This
can be done in two ways, either through the other
262 HOW TO WHITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
characters in the story or through the author’s
personal viewpoint betrayed between the lines.
If, for instance, we show our other characters as
recoiling from, or despising, the deeds of the
erring one, we bring out very markedly the atti-
tude of society toward those of her type. The
clarity of definition between right and wrong is
never obscured.
If, on the other hand, the light, frivolous one
receives an amount of adoration from her hus-
band and no end of ingratiating compliments
from the men who seek her; if, throughout, we
show her achieving through loose morality all
that the more virtuous must do without—even
love and regard—we have so driven home a
frightful injustice that it will not be sufficient to
have the woman arouse the jealousy of her hus-
band, the latter killing her. While this end might
punish her, it does not clear up the lesson, for we
realise how, through unworthy reasons, she lived
on the fat of the land, and the thought will not
down that she could still be doing so if she had
not made the mistake of letting her husband find
her out.
Handling the story after this latter fashion,
there is but one thing that will save it, namely,
the subtly interspersed attitude of the author
himself on the character he has created. In a
photoplay, for instance, this could be done in
Subtitles denouncing the character, slamming her
MORALITY IN PHOTOPLAYS 263
frivolity, her deceit toward her husband, the
treachery of his friends in whose hearts the
woman is only a laughing matter, anything, in
short, that will dull the glitter and bring out the
disgusting reality.
All questions of right and wrong must be
treated in similar manner, and no advice is neces-
sary to the writer save that he maintain always
in himself, and that he get across in his writings,
a thorough appreciation of life's values. This
will obviate his falling into the trap of heroising
the crook, the bad boy, the swindler or any other
objectionable character.
All of this deals with that judgment of the
Censors based on morality proper, and its tran-
scription in art by the photoplaywright. A sub-
ject may conform to every requirement of moral-
ity and yet contain within itself that which,
through mental suggestion, is destined to exert
upon an audience an evil influence. More subtle
than a question of morality, this quality,+the
subject of our next chapter, requires the finest
discernment in author, producer and Censors.
CHAPTER LV
THE Power of MENTAL SUGGESTION
ON the minds of an audience nervously high-
strung through the tension of a picture, there can
be produced an almost hypnotic effect through
the power of mental suggestion. More subtle and
therefore more dangerous than a mere question
of morality, this power of mental suggestion pre-
sents to the Censors a menace, the avoidance of
which will tax their keenest discernment. Much
of the matter of mental suggestion, whether for
good or evil, resolves itself into a question of de-
tail. We all know the hold a fine character in a
novel or play gets on the public who follow him
through the story. A statement as to the charac-
ter’s goodness would never have done this. It
is detail piled upon detail in a thousand little en-
dearing acts that so entrance us. Every concep-
tion, however profoundly its bigness or novelty
may stir us, remains mental until well-chosen
detail brings it down into the emotional, causing
it to affect our lives. As every great power for
good, when misused, becomes a correspondingly
great power for evil, so detail by its mental sug-
264
POWER OF MENTAL SUGGESTION 265
gestion becomes a dangerous force when wielded
by an unworthy agent. Just as the little acts of
love and kindness work us gradually into that
sympathy with a character where we are com-
pletely absorbed by his personality, so the minute
handling of a murder works us gradually into
the mentality of the criminal. Thrilled, horri-
fied, our nerves strung to their most impression-
able state, we watch each harrowing step; we
see the facial expressions that accompany the
same and feel the emotions of the murderer.
After such detail it is we ourselves who plunge
the dagger. The more susceptible we are to out-
side influence, the more surely is this true. Say
that night after night we commit these murders
on one provocation or another, is it not fair to
surmise that we will become, to say the least,
hardened toward the unpardonable sin, and is it
not safe to believe that those deeply held by these
scenes would revert to such mental suggestion at
times when in their own lives there occurs provo-
cation similar to that in the story which found
its solution in murder? Such an effect on indi-
viduals in an audience is more dangerous when
the subject touches intimately on a painful, per-
haps irretrievable, mistake of their lives. A good
example of an idea that strikes home with per-
haps a bit too much of realism to a certain section
of one’s audience is found in the sample scenario
of Chapter Six, “His Silver Bachelorhood,”
266 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
which was offered as a guide to form in photoplay
writing. So many women have chosen “the
easiest way,” and all of them realise at some time
or other the mistake they have made. With this
realisation there comes the morbid feeling of
hopelessness as to ever undoing the step they have
taken. At such moments suicide suggests itself
and is dispelled with a frightened laugh. A pic-
ture which shows, as did “His Silver Bachelor-
hood,” the morbid state of mind of one of these
women when she sees herself in the light of what
she was or might have been, and then develops
her emotion into suicide, is bound to fall under
censure for its mental suggestion. It was just
this fate that befell “His Silver Bachelorhood.”
The difficulty had been foreseen however, and the
subject was so delicately handled as to reduce the
mental suggestion therein contained to a mini-
mum. Despite this, however, the cutting of a
few bits from the action was found necessary,
and the same do not appear in the film released
on the market.
Photoplays that set forth too minutely the
clever workings of a master-cracksman in the
making of a big haul, so emphasise detail as to
place an audience under the fascination of the
mind operating the burglary. This, it can be
Seen, is dangerous mental suggestion outside of
the education it offers as to how the thing is done.
Where crime must be shown in order to bring out
POWER OF MENTAL SUGGESTION 267
the terrible reaction of society upon the breaker
of its laws, it is best always to suggest, rather
than to clearly set forth, the crime. This is done
by eliminating the actual deed. For instance, we
may show one man about to fell another with a
blackjack, but before the blow descends we must
either cut to some other scene or insert a cut in,
returning to the action when the victim lies
stretched on the pavement or is seen in the act of
falling. We may show, too, a man shooting in
one scene and then cut to a second scene in which
the victim receiving the bullet falls. This is
preferable to portraying a shooting to the death
in one and the same scene. In cases of petty
theft we may show a rogue about to pick a man's
pocket, cut before he slips his hand into the same,
and return to the action as he makes off with
what he has taken. All this to avoid the mental
suggestion of detail. The question resolves itself
into a love of one's fellows. If we really care for
those we serve, it will not be hard to weigh
everything we give them in the light of its effect
on their lives. It would be impossible in such a
frame of mind to write anything that might stir
up in them vulgar feelings or sexual thought, for
such are conveyed by the attitude of the author
toward his subject, rather than by the story it-
self, and a mind that thinks purely, radiates pur-
ity by mental suggestion.
CHAPTER LVI
THE EDUCATIONAL STORY
SIDE by side in human hearts run the two
great cravings, the desire to learn and the desire
to be amused. The gratification of either of these
will hold an audience, and that offering which
satisfies both leaves nothing to be desired. We
do not mean by this that all subjects served as en-
tertainment should deal with educational subjects,
using the word in its more limited sense. We
include under the heading of subjects that teach
all those themes the adequate treatment of which
sends an audience away with that peculiar satis-
faction of the mind that can come only through
the absorption of that which contains substance.
Many stories interest or amuse us immensely be-
cause of their sudden, frisky surprises, or their
unexpected laughs, yet on finishing such we feel
a peculiar emptiness. We account for this by
saying: “It was nice but there was really noth-
ing to it.” It is just this failing of giving us noth-
ing to take away with us, that makes this form of
entertainment fall short of the ideal. The knowl-
edge contained in books of science is perhaps the
268
THE EDUCATIONAL STORY 269
least important to our daily lives. We intend no
disparagement to science, this monument to man's
inquisitive turn of mind; we wish merely to exalt
that other knowledge of ourselves, our fellows
and of life's fundamental laws that grows out of,
and in turn governs, our contact with others.
Any story that leads those in the audience to un-
derstand themselves more clearly, combines with
the entertainment it furnishes a priceless knowl-
edge. Thrilled by this new and deeper under-
standing as by a revelation, the subject gives them
much indeed to carry away with them, and no one
could here say: “There is nothing to it.”
Just as it is best to combine with one’s enter-
tainment an educational value, so too it has been
found advisable to impart education in the guise
of entertainment. If it is urgent that the masses
be enlisted in the war against tuberculosis, it is
essential that they not only know the facts con-
cerning this disease, and its menace to mankind,
but also that they perceive the same in such a way
that they shall feel the closeness of the danger
to themselves and to those they love. Nothing
brings home a great peril so strongly as having
it descend upon ourselves or upon one who is very
dear to us. The data on tuberculosis or on any
other subject, no matter how clearly set forth,
must needs be very far away unless it be brought
to bear on those who, in the story, have come so
near to us that we are led to feel what is happen-
270 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOVING PICTURES
ing to them as though it were happening to
ourselves. It is such subjects that lead us
to look on all movements in the light of their
effect on the individual, for, after all, great move-
ments are vital things drawing their existence
from the very lives of the individuals who com-
prise them. It is only when handled in statistics
that they become dull, and it would seem that the
demand of the public to have these themes treated
in story form, rich with the life and interest that
surrounds them, arises out of a deep seated,
though subconscious, knowledge that great move-
ments exist only through the multitude of indi-
vidual cases of which they are an abstraction.
Bring down the general thought always to the
particular instance which, being concrete, can be
seized on and grasped.
The reverse holds true of stories constructed
primarily for entertainment. Build up from the
individual or particular idea to its universal ap-
plication or underlying thought. This will give
an audience an insight into the meaning beneath
the surface of those situations with which in life
they are so familiar. If, for instance, to make
this last point clear, your story deals with a situa-
tion so often encountered in life as to occasion no
thought, and if in this familiar condition you have
found a warning of universal interest, it would
be your duty toward your fellows and toward the
value of your story, to colour the whole in the
THE EDUCATIONAL STORY 271
light of the new meaning you have found therein.
Beyond the richness that accrues to a story
through its substance or educational value, there
is a vividness that it acquires through dealing
with something of which the author knows, either
through his own thinking thereon or through in-
formation. It is this fact that occasions the ad-
vice we hear given so often to beginners: “Write
only of what you know.” An intimate knowledge
of a particular type is a treasure stored away in
the mind of the one who has gleaned it. When
he conveys this, through his stories, to the public,
he imparts to them a valuable possession which
they are not slow to appreciate. The world is
full of knowledge and of the wisdom which in-
terprets it. As no man can be possessed of this
vast hoard, we are all of us in a position to obtain
from one another what private treasures each
may have stored up. For these we pay with
money and applause. Send out your stories as
treasure ships carrying your richest thoughts,
and if these be only priceless enough, it would be
strange indeed if you could supply the demands of
those who cry for more.
CHAPTER LVII
MoTION PICTURES,--THE GREATEST EDUCA-
TIONAL FoRCE OF ALL TIMEs
FoR centuries we have dreamed of a millen-
nium. Great minds have planned and tried to
put into practice their schemes for a Utopia, a
land of love and harmony. It is not in any geo-
graphical location that such dreams come true,
nor is it in the firm resolve of individuals who
band themselves together that their ideal may
be achieved. Such a determination is a man-
made resolve; it can move never more than a lim-
ited number and these only partially. There are
bigger forces at work in humanity; forces God-
implanted, on which our very beings are founded.
What would advance the world and sweep us six-
teen hundred million strong toward a millennium
must be based on life's propelling force. Before
the bewildered mind of a child can arrive at any
order in its chaos, it can understand through the
extent of its little being approval or disapproval.
All of us, as we come from God, have implanted
in us the desire to do what according to our lights
or the lights of humanity is thought good.
272
THE GREATEST EDUCATIONAL FORCE 273
Whether this impelling power express itself in
martyrdom for a cause, or in the tear quickly
wiped away that moistens for a moment the eye
of the criminal in the presence of a gentler in-
fluence, it is one and the self-same force. Guid-
ance for this invincible power, enlightenment, is
the cry of the world. How often we hear the ex-
pression: “If you could only have been there,
if you could only have heard her side of the story,
how differently you would feel toward the stand
she has taken.” It is the photodrama that takes
us “there;” it is these picture plays that give us
the other side of the story; that teach us to un-
derstand our neighbour as ourselves and our-
selves so much the better. They develop in us
that greatest agent for good, a wholesome im–
agination. How many little thoughtless acts we
perform and then stand back aghast and Oh, so
sorrowful, to think how deeply we have hurt a
very dear friend. If we could have known be-
fore the careless act was performed just how
much suffering it would bring, the same would
never have occurred. If we could imagine in
taking another man's property the harrowing
grief of the loss of a life-time's saving, we could
not take the dishonest step. From day to day we
hear the expression: “I can sympathise with you
for I have been through just such a sorrow my-
self.” We must really live through a great grief,
or even through a petty annoyance, before we
274 HOW TO WRITE FOR MOWING PICTURES
can appreciate what the same will mean to an-
other. Life holds for each of us but a limited
amount of actual experience. To run the whole
gamut of joys and sorrows would exhaust that
vitality which belongs to us for the world's work.
We must get the greater part of our experiences,
therefore, at second hand, through pictures,
stories, and through the lives of our neighbours
as interpreted by a sympathetic understanding.
All that we so glean helps us to imagine, or to
conjure up mentally, the reaction on others of
every deed we perform. When any one hurts
our feelings, we smart under the blow and in our
hearts we cannot realise how any one could have
ruthlessly inflicted so much pain. That is be-
cause we know ourselves and love ourselves, re-
joice and sorrow with ourselves. If we knew
and learned to love others even as we do our-
selves, we would suffer with them beyond the pos-
sibility of harming them, and rejoice with them to
the utmost extent of our power to help them.
This is the great work of the photodrama.
Reaching all classes and vivid as life in its graphic
portrayals, it causes its spectators not only to
hear of, but actually to live, life's great refining
tragedies. It gives us a thousand lives in the
span of “three score years and ten.”
No one is so heavily encumbered as he who
would mount to success with a body exhausted
by its own infirmities. A cancer in an otherwise
THE GREATEST EDUCATIONAL FORCE 275
wholesome body, rendering all infirm, is that ele-
ment in society that blocks the path of upward
progress. As a millstone about our necks is the
truth that “one half of us do not know how the
other half lives.” Toward the ultimate effect
which we speak of as our millennium, we must
advance all in all or not at all. Nothing at any
time in the world's history has been so influential
in the letting in of light into dark places, as has
the photodrama. Nothing has been so helpful
in giving us all the data from which we can glean
those eternal underlying principles in harmony
with which, and not otherwise, we can attain the
highest in human perfection. It is to this great-
est of all fields that we may well dedicate our most
earnest and inspired efforts, giving all our
strength to that cause which must eventually
bring it to pass, through enlightenment, that we
shall do to others as we would they should do
unto us, and that we shall love our neighbour as
ourselves, the achievement of the millennium.
THE END
Sººn-º-º:
A
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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