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70 TECHNIQUE OF THE PHOTOPLAY Take it the other way around. There are two men and a girl. She is the central figure. She cannot marry both, but if we are interested in her we want her to marry the right one and per- haps we feel that we would like to tell her that she is foolish to care for John, who has a wife living, when Frank is such a fine fellow. Frank is not the central figure, the girl holds our interest, but because it is the girl we are interested in, we want to see her marry Frank and not the villainous John. The clever author will carry the story along with the general sug- gestion that she is going to marry John. Now and then it will seem that Frank has a chance, but the next scene will show John more firmly entrenched that ever. Then, all of a sudden, in walks that wife of his and has John arrested for desertion and non-support. You can guess what the finish of that story will be. If it had seemed all along that Frank would get the girl and that John never had a chance, the element of struggle (which is more or less another name for suspense) would have been so slight that it would scarcely seem a story at all. The fully equipped author is like a typist. He knows that to strike a certain key will print a certain letter. He strikes three keys and gets the word "and"; he strikes three others and gets "the." He knows which keys to strike to get certain word effects and he strikes these keys almost unconsciously. In stories his keyboard is the gamut of human emotions. He knows which to strike to secure any desired effect. Sometimes his fingers slip and he strikes the wrong key, just as the typist does, but the greater the practise the typist has, the more nearly correct is the writing, and the same holds true of the keyboard of the emotions. But to have a plot is not sufficient. This plot must be new to command attention. There are very few starting ideas or master plots, but the combinations of incident are many, just as the twenty-six letters on the typewriter keyboard can produce any of the words of any language. It should be the aim to get a new combination of incident. It is practically impossible to evolve anything that is abso- lutely new in every aspect. Take for instance the wireless operator on a ship in distress who sticks at his post for forty-eight hours summoning to the aid of the imperiled passengers. Surely this must be new, be- cause the wireless telegraph is a comparatively recent invention. The use of the wireless is new, but the master plot is old. Almost everyone is familiar with the story of the little boy whose tiny hand stopped the trickling flow that averted the break in the dike that would have inundated miles of territory.