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CHAPTER XXXIII 141 many points at once will be to confuse the spectator and obscure the plot. You do not advance your facts too rapidly. Just as in the crisis you wait before advancing the next, so do you hold back one fact tliat the previous one may be assimilated and understood. If you offer too much the spectator will not grasp it all but will remember the most emphatic fact and fail to recall the rest. If the rest is not remem- bered, it may be that later on some other fact, dependent upon this forgotten incident, will puzzle and confuse the person following the story. 13. You can show in one scene that John kills Henry and have the fact remembered, but if you try to tell in a single scene that John kills Henry because he is the man who wronged Lucy, John's sister, and that Henry is now trying to win from John his sweetheart that he may add another to his list of victims, this will be too much to show in a single scene. It v/ill be better to advance each fact separately and permit it to be accepted before the next is offered. First John finds that Henry is trying to cut him out with Mary. In the next scene he learns that Lucy, his sister, has been wronged. She will not tell the •name of her betrayer. A few scenes later on John comes upon the scene as Mary is struggling with Henry. He knocks Henry down, or perhaps thrashes him. Mary confesses that Henry's intentions were dishonorable. Maddened, John goes to get his revolver. Now Lucy learns of his purpose. She loves Henry in spite of what has hap- pened. In her efforts to prevent John from killing Henry she rouses his suspicions. He wrings the truth from her. Now he is more than ev^er determined and in an early scene his purpose is carried out. 14. Trying to tell all of this in one scene would have resulted in a jumble of facts and leaders that would have confused everyone, possi- bly including the author himself. Telling them one fact to a scene, the story is shown so clearly that even the slow of wit can get all of the facts. Each scene advances the story one step further toward the killing, but each scene tells only one of the facts that concerns the killing. 15. Each time a statement of fact is made in action the spectator must be permitted to reason out the fact and to apply it to other facts previously related. All of the action in any one scene should have a more or less direct bearing upon the fact in that scene, and the fact should have a direct bearing upon the story. It should either be the establishment of a new fact or the emphasizing of an old fact through repetition. In the example above we twice refer to Lucy's unfortunate condition, or rather first refer to her condition and later tell that Hen- ry is to blame. There is only one scene about Mary and Henry. This is because the better of two reasons that John has for killing Henry is found in the fact that he has wronged Lucy. The fact being more im- portant, it is played up more strongly. 16. At the same time while all of the action in a scene should have a direct bearing upon the scene fact, it is possible and permissible to strengthen the scene through allusion to matters previously explained.