The technique of the photoplay ([c1913])

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78 TECHNIQUE OF THE PHOTOPLAY life, for now his illicit love has turned to hatred. In death the wife has triumphed over the woman she could not vanquish in life. A third method is to start with the beginning of the story and work for the climax. Here the start of the story is the com- mencement of the reasoning instead of the climax. Suppose a man passionately devoted to a woman who does not love him. How does he win her love? Suppose that they are married. He may win her love through his tender care or he may win her through pretended indifference. He may love her enough to let her get a divorce that she may marry a man she thinks she loves, but that very self sacrifice may show her which is the truer heart. She may have a harmless love affair with another man and turn to her husband on the rebound, or any one of perhaps a hundred developments may be used. We may work to the climax and then find that it would be bet- ter for the story if the woman loved the man instead of the re- verse. It is a simple matter to turn back to the fresh start. It may not come easy to the author at the start to evolve plots from little or nothing, but perseverance will bring results in exact ratio to the training the imagination receives. Some per- sons are too matter of fact to invent plots. There is little hope for them, but given the ability to think out a story plot, train- ing will bring development just as gymnasium work will pro- duce better muscular proportions. The man or woman who would write stories must study con- stantly to acquire a general fund of information. If you write of a broker you must know how brokers act, if you write of firemen you must know the life of the fireman. One play that caused much merriment in the studios had an unframed photo- graph of the broker's office staff on the mantel of his dining- room that he might point out to his daughter the man he thought stole the bonds. That would do very well for the home of a mechanic who might have a photograph of the shop force taken by some itinerant photographer, but it was wholly out of place in the dining-room of a wealthy man of reasonably good taste. If you write of courts, follow court procedure. If you do not know what that procedure is, ask some lawyer. If you write of physicians and know little about it, consult a doctor. Consult him also about diseases with which you are not familiar. If your hero is jailed on a false charge, do not have him turned loose the moment his innocence is proven. You cannot go right down to the jail and tell the Warden that it is all right.