story-plot and in drama, and in this the playwright who has produced
a full-evening play has the advantage over even the trained fiction
writer when it comes to applying his dramatic knowledge to vaudeville.
Precisely what the difference is, and what drama itself is--especially
that angle of the art to be found in vaudeville--will be taken up
and explained as clearly as the ideas admit of explanation, in the
following pages. But not on one page, nor even in a whole chapter,
will the definition of drama be found, for pulsating life cannot
be bound by words. However, by applying the rules and heeding the
suggestions herein contained, you will be able to understand the
"why" of the drama that you feel when you witness it upon the
stage. The ability to think in drama means being able to see drama
and bring it fresh and new and gripping to the stage.

Of course drama is nothing more than story presented by a different
method than that employed in the short-story and the novel. Yet
the difference in methods is as great as the difference between
painting and sculpture. Indeed the novel-writer's methods have
always seemed to me analogous to those employed by the painter,
and the dramatist's methods similar to those used by the sculptor.
And I have marvelled at the nonchalant way in which the fiction
writer often rushes into the writing of a play, when a painter
would never think of trying to "sculpt" until he had learned at
least some of the very different processes employed in the strange
art-form of sculpture. The radical difference between writing and
playwrighting [1] has never been popularly understood, but some
day it will be comprehended by everybody as clearly as by those
whose business it is to make plays.

[1] Note the termination of the word _playwright_. A "wright" is