How to Write Photo-Plays (1915)

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98 HOW TO WRITE PHOTO PLAYS it is impossible to make each and every one startling, it is easy comparatively to make them "different." We use the words amateur and professional in this case in a broad sense, including those who are not sure of their footing in the first class, and those who understand the work in the last. The "amateur" should seek to learn just what would make his ending "different," while the "professional" should make it his duty to give every scenario he turns out a little twist at the end. It may seem like a lot of wasted space to point out this single weakness, but it is a fact that an audience can "sense" the end of an average film three or four scenes before its arrival, because they have seen the same finish many times before. This surely is significant, for in time it will have its effect on the entertainment value of motion pictures. THE FUNERAL MARCH, PLEASE. Those who are wont to go back into the days gone by and dig up material from some ancient play which they believe every one has forgotten, were handed a bit of worth-while advice by William Lord Wright recently. He selects the mortgage plot — that famous stand-by of writers dead and gone — as the special point of his attack, but that there is a deeper meaning to it can easily be seen by those who "look behind the type." Here's what he says : "That good old stand-by of the spoken drama of the thrills classification — namely, the mortgage and the shyster lawyer — are barred from picture-play plots pur'