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84 TECHNIQUE OF THE PHOTOPLAY you work up to your climax. Do not loaf along until just be- fore the end and then spring a climax that is all out of propor- tion to what has gone before. It is easier to ascend an inclined plane than to climb a high fence and the climax presented sud- denly after weak action is like the fence. The audience is not prepared for it. Lift your audience up gradually. Plan your climax as late as possible. In the earlier scenes you can arrange a series of minor climaxes, or crises, each a little stronger than the other, but none approaching the real climax, but you cannot put your climax in the middle of your play and hold the interest through the falling action that follows. Your climax is the biggest moment in your play. All that comes after that is in a descending scale. In that little book agent story we wrote, the climax comes when Smith and his friends bought the books. Then Tim says "Thank you. Good night" and the play is done. That's where the climax belongs. In the story of the man who could save but one of the two women, your climax would come at the choice—about two-thirds of the way through unless you were careful, and so good work- manship should favor that development in which the woman the man loves tells him to save his wife and turns with a smile to face her own fate. If the story stopped right there, the climax would come at the end of the play, but if you used any of the other suggested developments your story would keep on for several scenes. Suppose that we took the development where, after all, the woman was saved and the wife died. That would give us the happy ending, but it would be an anti-climax, since it could not possibly be as strong a situation as the re- nunciation. The anti-climax is like eating a piece of bread and butter after you have had your rich pastry and dessert. The bread and butter is all right in its place, but the plum pudding and ice cream are the climax of the meal. Do not plan for the comedy relief that in the drama is used to lighten the action. Two hours and a half of straight drama is rather too much without some distraction and so the comedy relief was introduced, but in photoplay the story runs but twenty minutes or less to the reel and there is no time to cumber the action with matter that does not directly advance the main action. More than this, the introduction of a comedy relief will be apt to detract from the dramatic effect. Even some uncon- sidered action may bring a laugh that will be fatal to the sus- pense. In photoplay it is not possible to make the audience alter- nately laugh and cry. It may be comedy or drama, but not both; the form is too simple to admit of complex treatment.