Moving Picture World (Jan-Mar 1912)

32 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD The SCENARIO WRITER CONDUCTED BY EPES WINTHROP SARGENT H One Place at a Time. ERE is a man, evidently a newspaper man, at that, who asks the familiar question as to the duplication of scripts. He writes: Here is a question I would like to see you take up in the Moving Picture World. In view of the unusually long time that some companies take in considering scenarios, isn't the author justified in making two copies of his story and submitting them to different firms at the same time, the same as he would a house or any other comodity, and accept the best offer. There are a lot of authors who will echo a heartfelt Amen! to that proposition, but they are not the trained writers. They look only upon the surface of the question and find reason upon their side, but looking more deeply into tne matter there is but one conclusion to be reached. An author never is justified in submitting the same script to more than one firm at one time. Read it once more. An author never is justified in submitting the same script to more than one firm at one time. II you don't like the way a firm transacts its business, don't do busiTcss with it, but if you do try to do business, be businesslike. If j'ou know that the Blank Company takes from six to eight weeks to pass on a script and you are not content to wait that long, send it somewhere else. You are not compelled to submit any matter to the Blank Company, but if you do, you are required to conform to their metliods. If you want quick action send it to companies that make quick decisions. The trouble is that the companies giving quick decisions are those most apt to send it back. They are the companies using the work of their own staffs of editorial writers and they are good places to keep away from; not that the companies are dishonest, but that there is no use wasting postage and getting a nice clean manuscript mussed up. Let's go into the average editorial oihce with a script. Suppose that you go in the envelope instead oi the typewritten pages. You're likely to hang around a couple of days before some typist takes you out of your covering and sends off a postal announcing your arrival. Perhaps she makes an entry, covering that fact, in some sort of a record book, and perhaps she doesn't. At any rate she passes you on to a reader or the editor himself. If you go to the reader perhaps this person is competent to see the story from the synopsis and perhaps not. If you do not get the synopsis over you go back, but if you have a chance of acceptance you go on to the editor. Here the weeding process is repeated and if you still stick the chances are that you are passed on to a producer. The producer is the man who makes the picture. He's busy making pictufes so he has no time to read you. You are tossed into a desk and you lie there until the producer gets to the editor with the remark that you are pretty rotten, but maybe he can make something out of you. Perhaps then they have one of those foolish things called a conference. They all talk you over and tell what they would do with you if you were theirs, and then they ask the boss about you. The boss is even busier than the producer, but he gets around to you after a time not because he has any more time, but because your producer has no more scripts. He simply has to read you, so he does. Back you go to the editor — if the director remembers, and the editor sends you a check when he gets a chance. You sign your name in all the places indicated by an "x," swear to it before a notary, swear at it because of the trouble you're put to — and you get your check. This isn't a very businesslike way of doing business, but its the way it's done in most studios, and you have the consolation of knowing that the longer you stick the better your chance of hanging on gets to be. In some few studios the payment is even held up until the story has been made and approved in the film, but most companies pay on the delayed acceptance. If you don't like waiting that long and make inquiry, you are liable to lose your chance. The editor or director looks pained, you go into the envelope with a rejection slip and pretty soon you are back home, a little mussed, not as clean as you were, and very, very tired. Some companies will give favorable action within a month, but most companies require longer time, and if you're not a good waiter you'd better give it up. Suppose that you send out three or four copies. The quick action studic snaps them up and you're compelled to recall the others. After a time the quick action market dries up. You keep on going to the others, but you're known now. You're the fellow that's always writing for his scripts before a decision is made. Even the record clerk knows you and what might be a good market is closed to you forever. Selling a scenario or any other manuscript is not like selling a house. You do not give the keys of the house to half a dozen people and tell them that they are at liberty to go ahead and move in whenever they get ready, trusting to luck that not more than one family will move in. You show the house to all who wish to see, but if you give one possible tenant an option, you hold off the others until the option expires. The submission of a manuscript to a company is an implied option on that story for such reasonable length of time as the company may require in which to make a decision. To give options to two or more concerns is a business indecency. The only thing to do is to find out which company will do best by you and give them first chance. If Brown keeps a script only six weeks, give him the script before Smith gets it, but if Smith, who gets around to a decision in ten weeks, will pay $35 against Brown's $25, why not give him the first chance? It means another month, but it also means another ten. If both Smith and Brown refuse it, let Jones keep it as long as he likes. He's yuLir last chance. A lit.le experience will give you the proper "dope" and after that you can act accordingly. There is only one way to beat slow action and that is to build up a "string," Short story writers who are dependent on their pens for a livelihood have a string of from thirty to sixty stories constantly going the rounds. For more than five years the writer had a string of from forty to sixty stories in one office alone. It was hack work under contract, but even with a contract it was necessary to keep up the string to keep up the checks. With twenty to thirty scripts always out, you won't mind the ordinary delay once you are started, but you'll soon have more than sixty on hand at home if you send out carbon copies. Fiction writers experience the same troublesome delays, but they are apt to be experienced and the wider their experience the less they complain. If they get action inside of a month they feel they are favored of the gods and some magazines require three and four months. The stories go first to the quick-action, pay-on-acceptance places and wind up in the places that pay as soon after acceptance as you can force the editor to disgorge. Locate the best concerns to deal with and deal with them first. Go on down the line until you have made a sale or until there are no more places to try. Then rewrite and try again. The first office will have forgotten it by then. More than one promising writer has spoiled his chances by being in too much of a hurry for action, but if there is anything that will damn a writer quicker than the carbon copy it's the abominable practice of sending out several carbons with the statement that the best bid takes the rights. It is the unforgiveable sin. Keeping Track of Scripts. Do you keep a record of the scripts you send out? It's useful in many ways and a simple matter. Get one of those fifty cent card files. This includes a pack of cards and a lettered index. Reverse the index and on the back of the tabs write the names of the companies. Get a ten cent rubber dating stamp and an ink pad. Now when you write a story, type the title of the script at the top of the card and on each of the blue lines type in the names of a company to which you intend to send the script in the order in which they should be tried. Date to the right of the first line and send out your story. Put the card in the compartment marked with the name of the company to which it is sent. If it comes back date the return and send it off to the next on the list, using the dater again. Now put the card into the compartment for the second company. Keep it up until you make a sale or run out of stamps. When a story is accepted enter that fact on the card and put it in the' front of the cards entering the date the receipt is returned. When the check comes file the card at the back of the box. Number your cards in consecutive order and when you make a sale enter on the card of that company the fact that you sold story number eleven or seventy-three as the case may be. File the paid cards in proper order and the gaps will show the failures, the cards will show the average length of time each company takes to pass a script and the company card will show how they treat you. If you want to query a script or a receipt you have the date it was sent, and you know at a glance what companies have scripts and how many each has by looking in the box. How Many Words? Nothing seems to bother the scenario novice more than the question of words and lengths. Short stories and long are sold by the thousand words and the writer has trouble in understanding a business in which a story is sold by the thousand feet without regard to the number of words. One troubled correspondent writes that a company advises him to keep the script as short as possible and then returns a story with the statement that the action is not described in sufficient detail, while the company's sheet of hints to scenario writers state that the bare idea may be submitted, which seems at variance with the statement that the action should be properly written in. There is no hard and fast rule to be set down as to the number of words to be used to a scene. Fifty teet may require ten words and ten feet fifty, and the direction that the action should be clearly but brietly described seems to carry no hint, ^'et this means exactly what it says. Tell in as few words as possible all the necessaiy action and make sure that the written action and the leaders will tell the story. If you can do it with clearness in ten words, use ten words, if you need two hundred take two hundred, but if you've written a fifty-foot scene you will be paid for fifty feet in either case. The debatable question is how many words really are necessary and how much of the action should be written. Opinions may widely differ, but practice will enable even the novice to gain brevity and clearness at the same time. The essential action is that which carries forward the plot. If you write that "John crosses to the table and plays with the paper knife while Helen xipbraids him for his perfidy," you've written both essential and nonessential action. If Helen does not upbraid John the story cannot advance, but the story would advance just the same if John did not play with a paper knife. All that you need to tell is that Helen upbraids him and it's better to do that without telling about what John does with the paper knife. Just write it "Helen upbraids John" and let it go at that. But suppose that some apparently non-essential is really required. Suppose that while John is playing with the paper knife he comes upon a scrap of paper which shows that in reality it is Helen's brother who is to blame. New the action with the cutter becomes essential because it leadi up to the finding of the paper, and you write it in. Comedy scene';, where ihc comedy action is more important than the