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CHAPTER LVIII 291 and not three reels of plot action and two thousand feet of padding. 18. It is permissible—indeed, required—to be a little slow in start- ing the story. Facts may be more carefully explained and in a five reel story a considerable portion of the first reel may be given over to explanation shown in properly vivid action. But once the story is started it must be kept going arid at a constantly increasing speed, but plan the layout of your plot in advance that you may know just , how rapidly the action is to be accelerated. 19. Take your plot and examine it closely. Decide into how many parts it may be divided. Since you cannot accurately determine foot- age, you must be guided in this by experience and seek, through the manner in which you divide the story, to induce the director to follow your lead. Now plan that at the end of each part you can end on an important crisis, perhaps a trifle more important than those that will immediately follow, for just as in building your crises you drop back from one crisis before approaching the next, you may also drop back slightly with the start of each new reel, though this drop must not be so marked as to be clearly perceptible. The falling action in the second part of your story must not fall below the seven hundredth foot of the first reel and this general proportion holds good until the last reel of a four or five part play, when the opening of the last reel is little, if any, below the end of the preceding reel. This may require a little rearrangement of the original plot, but when you have gained a mastery of plotting you will be surprised to find it flexible and yielding if properly treated. 20. In writing the multiple there is a tendency to overdo the use of visions and effects. This holds particularly true of visions. Pre- sumably the multiple reel will cover a longer period of time than the single. It is to be supposed that this will result in a greater number of time jumps to be established by means of time leaders. Also to present in the first reel material that is really not needed until the third or fourth will clog the opening with a mass of material that will not interest because its relationship is not yet apparent and cannot be made apparent without undue explanation and perhaps an exposure of plot factors you are not yet ready to present. All of this may be excellent argument, yet it does not in the slightest degree con- trovert the fact that a long play so sprinkled with visions as to dis- turb the spectator's appreciation of time is not a good play, no matter how good the plot, as such, may be. It is granted that it is sometimes necessary and important to vision back, but this should not be done to cover errors of omission or for purely pictorial effect. Light and other effects, used in moderation, may help the visual aspect of the pictures. They will not aid the plot nor cover up its defects. 21. Passing from the theory to the practice of writing the multiple, it should be said that since the multiple is no more than a single long story it should be treated as such and not as parts. Your story is written as a whole and not in parts. If you have a three part story you do not have three manuscripts, but one manuscript divided into