your theme, ask yourself if either dialogue or
description may not be really required to bring out the theme
satisfactorily. If such is the case, abandon the theme. The
comparatively few inserts permitted cannot be relied upon to give much
aid--the chief reliance _must_ be pantomime.

For this reason it is inadvisable to write detective stories, unless
you have a plot that can be easily and convincingly told in action.
The average fictional story of this class depends more upon dialogue
and the author's explanation of the sleuth's methods of deduction than
upon rapid and gripping action. In a fictional detective story, the
crime usually has happened before the story opens. In a film story,
this would be impracticable, unless a long explanatory insert were
introduced either before or after the first scene or two. But long
inserts are not wanted, even in multiple-reel stories. Since events in
a photoplay must appear in chronological order, you cannot depict
murder without showing the murderer in the act, and that will soon
bring you counter to the censors.

Aside from the consideration of the censorship is this point: in a
fictional detective story the real murderer is not revealed, in most
cases, until the last chapter. In the photoplay, on the other hand, it
would be necessary to show the spectator almost at the first who the
real murderer is--the other characters in the picture, and not the
spectators, being the ones in doubt as the story progressed.

This is a difficult condition to bring about effectively. Still, it
can be done, and there is a chance for a writer who can produce
logical and interesting detective scripts, as there is always a
market for any uncommon theme that is both original and handled with
technical correctness.

An author who is anonymous has said "While the story may have for a
plot a subject involving complication, or mystery, each scene must be
easily understood, or the audience, taxed by trying to fathom motives
or emotions with which it is unfamiliar, or with which it is not in
sympathy, loses the thread of the story, and consequently pronounces
the photoplay lacking in interest. Remembering the brevity of the film
drama, compactness and simplicity in every feature are to be desired.
It does not require a great cast of characters nor unusually
spectacular scenic work to produce the big idea. The depths of human
woe and suffering, or the very heights of joy and attainment, can be
picture