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248 ADAPTATION AND RECONSTRUCTION This is the order in which the events are recited, but the adaptor, placing them in chronological order, will obtain this arrangement: 6_7_8-9-3-4-5-l-2-10-ll. Here factor ten must be a vision, because it tells of something already recalled that must be shown. The rest is direct action. 16. The diagram reveals something else. This is a narration of events, but it is not a plot, because it has no end. Spartacus pleads with them to follow his leadership in a revolt, but he stops there. This is simple enough. He leads them in the revolt and wins. Supplying this omission and slightly changing the facts to suggest more strongly the story that the speech intimates rather than conveys, we would get more of a plot diagram and yet the same facts, as— 1. Spartacus, a young shepherd, has a friend of his own age with whom he grows up. They are inseparable friends. 2. Spartacus is captured by the Romans and carried to the Capital. 3. Here he is pitted in the arena against the gladiators, survivors of similar combats. 4. He defeats his opponent and his life is spared. 5. He becomes one of the body of gladiators retained to do battle with the captives. 6. By his prowess he not only escapes defeat but becomes chief of the gladiators. 7. In the course of years he meets an opponent whom he slays. 8. Raising his visor he finds it to be his boyhood friend. 9. His grief is intense. He is awakened to a sense of better things. 10. He longs to return to his own land. 11. That night, in the quarters, the gladiator makes an appeal to his fellows to join him in revolt. 12. They agree and overthrow the guards, 13. They fight their way through the city to freedom. From this arrangement it is a simple matter to build in incident and plot to make the story. 17. In adapting for the screen some such fragment it is necessary to seize upon the plot suggestion of every word. In a novel it is necessary to hold rigidly to the facts as given in the book if the adaptation is to be satisfactory to those who have read the book and who now come to see their ideals realized in action, but in adapting a poem or speech we must get suggestion rather than plot facts. ;Much can be done to build this up. Perhaps a love story may be injected. There is a girl they both loved. Now the friend with his dying breath charges Spartacus to go to her. Here we have a more interesting motive for his action than as given in nine. It is not his better nature alone, but this nature, roused by awakened love, that gives him determination. Other detail may be added. Perhaps the friend knows of Spartacus and seeks to get word to him. His jailor, an enemy to Spartacus, does not bring the message, but comes to gloat when the butchery has been done. The revolt is started by the killing of the jailor. Here an ability to plot is as desirable as in creative work, for imagination must be used to supply the bare facts.