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CHAPTER LVllI 287 plot as might go into an act an hour long. If you have a one reel story you must get plenty of plot into small compass. If you write a full play, or a story in sixty thousand words, you do not write twelve times as much plot as you would for a five thousand word story or give six times as much plot to the three hour play as you assign to the half hour playlet. You must have more plot, but you do not need quite five times as much plot for a five reel story as you do for a one reel play. Here you have not the same need for con- densation. You are not required to complete your story in fifteen minutes. You may approach the climax more leisurely provided that you offer something else to replace the lessened plot-speed. 5. Perhaps it may mislead the student to say that not as much plot is required. It is true, but true with qualifications. You have only to look at current productions to discover many five reel stories that would be excellent in three reels, but which tire in five. This is because a three reel plot has been stretched to five reels and nothing has been supplied to take tlie place of the missing two reels of plot. A five reel story is not merely a film five thousand feet long. It is a story that must be capable of maintaining the interest in an ever- increasing degree throughout its entire length. You cannot hold in- terest with padding; you must hold it with plot and plot action. 6. If you will differentiate between plot and plot-action, the action that tells the plot, you will find that while the plot of the five reel story does not require to be five times as great as the plot of a one reel story, you must have more than five times as much plot-action. More than this, you must have a plot more than five times as big in thought if you will hold the interest for the entire period. 7. All of this may seem to be contradictory and confusing. You are told you may make a more leisurely approach to your climax and then you are told you must increase your plot-action. You are ad- vised that the plot need not be five times the quantity of the one reel plot and then are told that it should be more than five times as im- portant. You are told that you need less plot and yet more plot-action. 8. In the first place, suppose that we dissect a one reel story.- This will run fifteen minutes. You find that the first five minutes are taken up with getting over the premises and getting rid of the intro- ductions and explanations. In the next five minutes you advance the action that leads you to the climax. In the next three you work up to that climax and in two minutes more you are done. The net result is that Nellie did not run away with Robert because she real- izes that Henry, her husband, is ,by far the better man of the two, though his fine qualities lie in his heart and not on the surface as do Robert's superficial graces. Both men are physicians. An epi- demic of smallpox breaks out in a poor quarter of the town. Henry kisses his wife and goes to do his duty. Robert begs her to advance the day set for the elopement lest he be forced to his place of duty in the pesthouse. In the contrast between the two men Nellie realizes