Page:The Point of Attack, or, How to Start the Photoplay.djvu/7

 have gone before and those which are witnessed by the audience as integral parts of the photoplay itself. He must decide at just what time and place and under exactly what circumstances the audience may commence snooping into the lives of the characters whose dramatic relations carry them through smiles, tears and suspense for an indefinite period.

5. The novelist, the dramatist of the speaking stage and the photoplaywright must all wrinkle their brows over this same problem of starting a story, yet each in his separate path of craftsmanship must choose a different method. The novelist is the freest of the three from tightly drawn limitations. Frequently a novel is a fictional biography and starts with the birth, or at least the early childhood of its principal character, moving gradually along through the seven ages to the grave. Nor is this the limit, for the novelist may, in order to fully acquaint his readers with the most minute details of the character of his hero or heroine, go further back than birth and deal with the parents or even the grandparents, thus explaining hereditary influences that may have bearing upon the subsequent life of the principal figure of his story.

6. In "Madame Bovary," the hero, if we may call him such, is Charles Bovary. The author, Gustave Flaubert, describes the circumstances surrounding the marriage of Monsieur Charles Bovary, senior, the father of the hero, and acquaints the reader with the disagreeable events that precede the birth of little Charles. Then we learn of the boy's start at school, and through chapter after chapter his life is unfolded before us until he is married, a child is born, his wife passes away and finally, a bearded and broken man, he is found dead. 5