Page:The Point of Attack, or, How to Start the Photoplay.djvu/5



N the Handbook Mr. Palmer has set forth tersely and truthfully that one of the greatest problems of the photoplaywright lies not in gleaning themes and plots from a scant supply of material, but rather in choosing for development basic story ideas from a worldwide reserve store so inexhaustible as to bewilder those who have not acquired the knack and habit of elimination and selection. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "All the world's a screen," and all the myriad inhabitants are potential characters. When we establish well-motivated conflict between two or more such characters or groups of characters, we have the germ of a story which, as it evolves into a series of increasingly tense dramatic situations, expressed in action, becomes a photoplay.

2. After the first step of picking a theme and a set of characters comes the task of deciding upon a point of attack—a beginning. Aristotle, the father of all dramatic craftsmanship, required that every drama have a beginning, a middle and an end—a period of exposition or explanation, of development and of logical result. It is with the first of these that I shall deal. The novice may attach little or no importance to this initial move in the creation of a photoplay, but study and the experience that comes with practical analysis and the actual work of plot-building will lend emphasis to the statement that no single consideration demands more careful and thoughtful attention. Let us assume that when the 3