me he first discovered the red men closing in upon him;
it is how he will escape them that engages their whole attention. Once
get your action started vividly and the interest of the spectators
will permit you to give all the really necessary foundation
information as you move on with your story.

_4. Sequence in the Action_

Apply the same rule of directness to the introduction of new
characters in the scenes that follow. There is one main theme, one
main line of development, in every well constructed story--and only
one. See to it that you do not digress from it except as you bring up
from the rear other essential parts of the action. There is absolutely
no place in the photoplay for side trips.

As simply and as emphatically as we can put it, the most important
thing in connection with the writing of the scenario is to have the
action progress smoothly, logically, and interestingly from the first
to the last scene. Wherever possible, one scene should lead into the
next scene, and each scene should appear to be the only one
possible--from the standpoint of the action it contains--at that stage
of the plot's development. If, even for a moment, a scene appears to
have been written in solely for effect, or merely to delay the climax
of the story, the picture is open to criticism for padding. Not only
should the denouement (the untying, the clearing up of the story at
the close) appear to be the only one logically possible, but each
successive scene should follow the one preceding it with
inevitableness.

To be sure, this does not mean, as we explained in the chapter on
Plot, that the sequence of your scenes must be the simple,
straight-forward sequence of everyday life, in which one character is
seen to carry out his action without interruption from start to
finish. Quite to the contrary, photoplay action must often interrupt
the course of one character so as to bring another personage,
or set of personages, into the action at the proper time to
furnish the surprising interruptions and complications--and their
unfoldings--required to make a plot. But all this really _is_ the
progressive, logical development of the story in good climacteric
style.

Elsewhere in this volume we have spoken of the way in which the action
progresses in the twelve- to sixteen-scene comic pictures in the comic
supplements to the Sunday newspapers. Take for example the well-known
"Bringing Up Father" series of "comics." Commencing with