g, working, working--cannot fail to find
that his reward will justify the effort.

CHAPTER XV

WHAT YOU CANNOT WRITE

The caption of this chapter must be taken as a serious warning that
there are certain things which you cannot write into a script unless
you wish to insure its rejection. These specific warnings are based on
the experiences of amateurs who have had their scripts returned with
the brief and unsatisfactory statement that they were "not available
for present use," or that the "cost of production is too great."

_1. Asking the Impossible or the Impracticable_

It is a constant source of mingled amusement and dismay to editors to
read some of the impossible or impracticable things that amateur
photoplaywrights wish to have done in the course of the action of
their stories. Three things are responsible for this common fault in
photoplay plotting: the writer's very limited knowledge of the
limitations of the photoplay stage; an intense desire to be original;
and the fact that, having seen in the pictures themselves so many
evidences that the manufacturers do not let the question of expense
stand in the way of attaining spectacular and realistic effects, they
go blindly ahead and introduce scenes to take which would so
enormously run up the cost of producing the picture that the expense
involved would be out of all proportion to the value of the scene as a
part of the story.

Better to illustrate these points, we reproduce a paragraph from an
article by Mr. R.R. Nehls, manager of the American Film Manufacturing
Company:

"Ordinary judgment should tell a writer about what is possible in the
way of stage equipment to carry out a plot. We can provide almost
anything in reason, such as wireless instruments, automobiles, houses
of every description, cattle, etc., but we cannot wreck passenger
trains, dam up rivers, and burn up mansions merely to produce a single
picture. There is no rule to guide you in these matters save your own
common sense."

Now, the foregoing paragraph was written by Mr. Nehls some six years
ago. We include his opinion in this volume, however, because it is
absolutely necessary to consider expense when planning a story for the
screen. On the other hand, it must be said for the benefit of the new
and talented writer who really has or can evolve big situations for
his stories that never in the history of the motion picture have
manufacturers been so ready to do the big thing