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.
234 WRITING A PLAY strengthening scene as a cut-back, returning to the first action to get the fullest possible effect. 11. Leader has some slight value in giving emphasis since it may relate a fact that cannot be told in action, ,but if the leader has pre- viously been used in some other action it is generally better to cut back to that other action. An example of emphasis through leader alone would be the scenes in Monte Cristo where Dantes tells off his victims. 12. Players as well as action possess value. The maid who takes her mistress' cloak or brings her hat has not the value of the maid who acts as messenger and aids in the elopement. She is not of the same value and so she should not be given the same emphasis. If she is merely a maid she is used as such. If she is one of those having to do with the real advancement of the plot, action should be written for her in the early scenes to emphasize the relations be- tween mistress and maid that, in the scenes where she really serves an important purpose, her use for this purpose may be accepted without question. 13. Characters are important to the play in proportion to their connection with the plot and not in accordance with their presumed social status. The maid who helps the lovers may be more impor- tant to the play than the father who forbids the union. In comedy the cook may be the heroine of the play in which her master and mistress are merely in the secondary cast though the butcher ,boy is the hero. They must be treated and their parts developed in ac- cordance with their value to the play, but never in such a manner that a maid ceases to act like a maid, a cook like a cook or an employer as such. 14. In laying out your test scenario determine from this the value of each scene and the value of each personage and give to them an importance commensurate with their value and no more. Do not overplay the maid who is of slight importance nor overwrite the scene that may be pretty but which is of little value to the plot Nicely proportion your emphasis to your values and your play will please because it is well balanced. Give false values and presently your play will be all out of proportion, a veritable cripple. (5.IX:13) (7.x :2') (8.XXXI:14) (9.XXXV:9 XXXVIII :19) (10.XXXIX:9) (ll.XLVIII:27). CHAPTER XLVIII WRITING A PLAY HAVING gained a knowledge of the elements of plotting and form, it may interest the student to overlook the actual writing of a play. In Appendix A are found reproductions of the ten pages that constitute the script of a two-part photoplay, "The