before his appearance by the
introduction of an explanatory insert.

We urge this clear identification of characters so that your
spectators may be saved the annoyance of needless speculation, and be
able to yield to the play their instant attention and sympathetic
interest. Furthermore, this course will enable you to tell your story
and develop your plot with much greater ease, since the onlookers,
understanding who everybody is, and how they are disposed towards
each other, will grasp the points of the plot more quickly. Remember
that the motives actuating the different characters are virtually sure
to be the very foundations of a photoplay plot.

Almost everyone has sat half through a photoplay which was perfect in
all other respects, but far from pleasing because it left the
spectators guessing for minutes as to "who's who."

"Keep your first characters on the screen, even though in different
scenes, long enough to get everyone familiar with them and their
environment in the story before introducing a new and unexpected phase
in the tale. To fail in this is faulty construction."[16]

[Footnote 16: Herbert Case Hoagland: _How to Write a Photoplay_.]

_3. Prompt Beginning of the Action_

A common mistake among amateur photoplaywrights is to waste far too
much time on preliminaries. If a guest is expected from a distant
city, all that is necessary, as a rule, is to write in a short letter,
which is opened and read by the host- or hostess-to-be, announcing
that the guest will arrive at a certain time. But the young writer--to
judge from many scripts we have examined--thinks that in such a case
it is necessary to show the housemaid preparing the guest-chamber,
another scene in which the hostess instructs the chauffeur to be ready
at such an hour to meet her guest at the station, and so on. No matter
what kind of story you are writing, go straight to the point from the
opening--make the wheels of the plot actually commence to revolve in
the first scene--_plunge_ into your action, don't wade timidly in inch
by inch. To use up two or three scenes in showing trivial incidents
which may happen to the characters while they are, so to speak,
standing in the wings ready to make their entrances, is as tiresome as
it is useless. If the hero of the Western story makes his first
appearance by dashing into the scene madly pursued by a band of
Indians, the spectator is not interested in finding out what he was
doing at the ti