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306 A COURSE OF STUDY sonably close study of a script will enable a person of average intel- ligence to turn out something that is in the form of a photoplay, but it will be form alone. 5. Writing photoplays is as much a fine art as writing the drama of the stage or the story in fiction form. The rules differ and there is not required the mastery of phrase and literary style that are de- manded of the other forms, but this is offset by the need for being able to write in action so clearly that this action is as plain and un- derstandable as the written word. The fact that literary style is not required-does not also excuse the lack of inventiveness, of creative ability, of originality of thought. These are, in some ways, more necessary to the photoplay writer than to the fiction author, since the latter is able, to a certain extent, to hide poverty of idea behind a plausible and fluent expression. Imagination and the ability to direct imagination are even more essential to the photoplay writer than to the creator of fiction. 6. Xext to imagination, tlie most important requisites are patience and persistence; patience to endure the labor of practice, persistence to enable you to withstand the discouraging failures that will, at first, confront you. It is disheartening to spend days, perhaps weeks, even, on a script, only to be told that the idea has been used before, but you at least have had the benefit of the practice and your time has not been lost. 7. Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that could happen to you would be the sale of your first two or three scripts. More than one promising career has been either ruined or retarded because the first few scripts sold promptly. 8. It sometimes happens that the novice, coming fresh to the work, may have one or more ideas so good that the editor overlooks the structural faults for the sake of the uniqueness of the idea. Sup- pose that this happened to you. You would not be human did you not attribute these acceptances to your skill and not to chance. You promptly conclude that writing photoplays is even easier than you thought and you sink into a careless habit of rattling off your ideas without any examination of the plot. Everything that comes to you is an idea. Promptly it goes down on paper in hit-or-miss fashion and as promptly it is sent out to some studio. After a while the succession of rejections, unrelieved by any acceptances, discourages you. You stop work, concluding that photoplays do not pay. 9. If you had made no early sales you would have been ready to face the failures through which success is really w^on, but these few almost accidental successes have done their work, and you are not willing, once the rejections commence, to face the long, hard pull. 10. Success that comes quickly is seldom lasting nor of real value. The success that is won through earnest, persistent effort, that is built on hard work and labor intelligently directed, is the kind that lasts because it is not built on chance. So do not be in too much of