totally unfitted for the work. Hundreds more struggle on without a
sufficient knowledge of dramatic values and plot building, not knowing
precisely what can and what can not be presented successfully in the
silent drama. Lacking this knowledge, it is impossible to succeed. But
the great majority of the ones who fail, and who, otherwise, would
almost certainly have succeeded sooner or later, owe their failure to
their inability to hit upon and develop original, ingenious and
dramatic or truly humorous plots and plot-situations. Many a man of
brains and of excellent education who in any other calling might
easily make his mark, finds himself totally unable to win success in
short-story writing and photoplay writing simply because, not having
an imaginative or (in the literary sense) creative mind, he neglects
the thousand-and-one opportunities to stock that unimaginative mind
with ideas furnished wholesale by the life he sees about him every
day, or by available books of reference, magazines and daily papers;
and, last, but far from least in importance, the pictured stories seen
on the screen.




CHAPTER III

PHOTOPLAY TERMS


Since it is the purpose of this volume to place in your hands every
tool of the trade and every bit of information that may possibly be of
assistance in winning the favor of both the manuscript editor and the
director, we must now give the meaning of the technical terms used in