efore, you should learn to
take advantage of every shining opportunity to work in a really
effective sub-title, while constantly guarding against the temptation
to introduce one on the slightest excuse.

Let such inserts as you do use be phrased in clear, terse language.
The old example in the schoolbook, that it is simpler and therefore
better to say, "A leather apron" than, "An apron of leather," holds
good with inserts, and especially leaders. Short, clean-cut sentences
strike the eye and penetrate the mind the most quickly and
effectively. If you doubt this, look at a good advertisement. So do
not only dispense with every needless insert, but cut out from each
insert every needless word.

_3. The Danger of Over-Compression_

In cutting, do not go too far. Use enough words to be clear and
definite. Vagueness is an abomination and confusing pronouns make an
author as ridiculous as his scene is unintelligible. Remember that the
leader is shown on the screen for only a moment, and it is for you to
assist the spectator by making your leader so plain "not that it _may_
be understood," as Quintilian used to say, "but that it _must_ be
understood."

It is quite as possible to use too few inserts, especially leaders, as
it is to use so few words in them as to mar their meaning. Young
writers are often more eager to follow the advice of their mentors
than they are bold to use their own common-sense; and having had the
importance of brevity well pounded in, they produce scripts with the
double fault of not having enough action to make the plot clear, and
not enough inserts to help out the action.

As an example of this tendency toward over-compression, take the
script of one amateur writer. It contained a scene in which Mary, the
heroine, constantly abused by a drunken step-father, steals out of the
house at night as if about to start for some other town where she can
make her own living and be free from the step-father's abuse. In Scene
7, Mary, carrying a suit case, leaves the farm-house where she had
always lived. Scene 8 shows her "plodding wearily" along the road
leading to town. Then in Scene 9 we are back in the kitchen at the
farm-house. "The room is deserted. (Everyone supposed to be in bed.)
The door opens and Mary enters, carrying suit case, which she puts
down just inside the door. She staggers to the rocking chair and drops
wearily into it, as if completely fatigued." And so on.

On reading the script, o