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74 A PRACTICAL MANUAL OF SCREEN PLAYWRITING
Time is the essence. There are reasons for this failing. The motion picture— and especially the half-hour television film— is afforded only a short period of time in which to present its story as compared, say, with the novel. A novelist can devote a considerable number of pages to the development of the motivation and character revelations necessary to accomplishing a satisfactory conversion.
Action vs. character. Then again, the current Hollywood insistence on action progression to the detriment of character development provides the writer with insufficient footage with which to prepare the audience for the character's conversion by means of a slow, cumulative process. For people do not respond on the spur of the moment even when they may appear to be doing so. Their actions are usually the result of an accretion of thoughts and afterthoughts, actions and reactions, questions and answers, accusations and selfaccusations, conversations, arguments, proofs by example, injunctions, threats, promises— in fact, by a vast arsenal of moving elements that are part and parcel of the process of conversion.
Arguments are not enough. Usually only one, or a few at best, are brought into play to bring about a quick conversion. When little time is available for it, a very quick conversion is accomplished by the use of "argument." The evildoer is made to see the evil of his ways by having a good character— usually someone on the order of a priest, a teacher, or any other older person of accepted moral stability (and sometimes a child)— convince him by argumentative persuasion that what he is doing is bad and that if he is to enter the Kingdom of Heaven he will have to mend his ways and confess to having been the real perpetrator of the act of which some innocent character has been accused. It stands to reason that a hardened character whose evil has been developed over a long period of time would hardly be so receptive to moral suasion.
Plant conversions. It is necessary, therefore, to make such a conversion seem genuine. To do this, the breakdown of evil should begin some time before the actual conversion takes place. Also, there must be planted in the character of the evildoer those elements that could make for a conversion. He could, for instance, be shown to be vacillating in intention, simply by dramatizing one of his vacilla