We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
PLOT FORMATION 73 imagination. You cannot make another Jekyl and Hyde, but suppose your character is a man who is a good husband and a loving father, unless he is drinking and that a single glass of whiskey will transform him into a brute. You can work that into a drama from several angles or you can turn it into a comedy. It doesn't look much like a comedy, but just suppose that the man is a miser and hordes every penny, but the moment he tastes alcohol he spends lavishly. That is a distinctly comedy aspect of a seemingly serious theme. Most stories do have their serious and comedy aspects and the tragedy that fails may sell quickly as a comedy or even a farce. Having found an acceptable plot, the next question is one of possibility and plausibility. A story may be wholly possible and yet utterly lack plausibility. One author complained that a studio had rejected the story of an operation performed by a surgeon- missionary's wife in the jungles of Africa. He offered to give names and addresses to prove the correctness of his plot. It was entirely possible that the operation was performed, but it would not seem plausible to the audiences. It was a thing so excep- tional that it would carry no conviction. You may argue with the editor as to the possibility of this thing and that, but he cannot pass the argument along to the millions who might see the film, and so he passes the story back because it is not plausible, not because it is not possible that such a thing may have happened. Here we have the converse of the over-common true story. Do not follow the commonplace, but on the other hand do not offer the fact so unusual that it must be seen to be believed. The question of expense, too, cuts an important figure. If you write a fiction story and have the troops go marching by, you do not have to pay each man from two to five dollars a day. If you write of a steamer wreck, it costs no more to wreck an ocean liner than a small rowboat, but in a picture you must wreck the steamer or else find one already wrecked. Do not figure that they can make a trick picture because "they can make a camera do anything." They can, but even then they must get the steamer and it costs money to charter a steamer of the proper size. Perhaps in a farce you have the comedian thrown off the train because he cannot pay his fare. First you see him in the car and then train stops and he is kicked off. It costs a lot of money to build a car set and it will cost $50 to stop the train between stations, since you must hire a special train, but it will cost only $5 or $10 if you use a street car instead, and it will be much less trouble because a car will be hired on some line near the studio where it might be necessary to go fifty or one hundred