_.]

It goes without saying that you must interest your audience, but you
must also satisfy them--gratify the curiosity you have earlier
aroused. It is all very well to write an "absorbing" story, in which
the excitement and expectation are sustained up to the very last
scene, but be sure that the theme is essentially such that _in_ the
last scenes, if not before, your action will unravel the knot that has
become so tantalizingly tangled as the play proceeded. No matter how
promising a theme may be in other respects, it is foredoomed to
failure if from it comes a plot of which the spectator will say as he
goes out, "It was a pretty picture--but I couldn't understand the
ending."

Another thing: If it is important that, in every case, the spectators
must be "shown" what happens in the working out of a plot, it is
equally important that they be shown _why_ it happens. This also has
to do with sound and comprehensible motivation. "It is not so much a
case of 'show me,' with the average American, as a common recognition
that there must be a reason for the existence of everything created.
He is inclined to give every play a fair show, will sit patiently
through a lot of straining for effect, if there is a _raison d'etre_
in the summing up, but his mode of thought, and it belongs to the
constitution of the race, is that of getting at some truth by
venturesome experiment or logical demonstration."[13]

[Footnote 13: Louis Reeves Harrison, in _The Moving Picture World_.]

Bear that truth in mind, no matter what you write of, and never start
anything that you can't finish--which is simply one way of saying, do
not start to write a story _at all_ until you have every scene,
situation, and incident, so thoroughly planned, motivated and
developed in your mind that when you come to write it out in action in
the scenario you cannot help making the audience understand the plot.
Never attempt to introduce even a single situation without a logical
cause; be sure that "there's a reason."

"Break away from the old lines," advises Mr. Nehls, of the American
Company. "Try to write scenarios that will hold the interest with a
not too obvious ending, with sudden, unexpected changes in the trend
of the story."

If the story contains a mystery, do not allow the end to be guessed
too soon. Interest thrives on suspense and on expectation. The
surprising thing, yet the natural ending, swiftly brought about, marks
the climax of a good photo