On pictureplay writing Author:James Slevin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV What Is Dramatic? CRISIS or conflict is the very essence of the dramatic in the picture-play. The play itself is a more or less rapidly developi... more »ng crisis in .. destiny, or circumstance. The big dramatic scene of a play is a crisis within a crisis. Picture-play making in a way is the art of presenting a crisis, just as story writing is the art of gradual developments. Its slowness of method is one of the principal points in which the story is different from the play. The story writer gives you great sections of life with gradual unfolding of character and conditions, while the playwright gives you only the culminating points or climaxes, the rapid and startling changes. However, it is quite obvious, that not every crisis is suitable drama. A surgical operation, a civil service examination, an ordinary marriage, may present an actual crisis in a man's life without being fit material for presentation on the screen. Now wecan recognize the dramatic crisis in this way: First of all it comes about as the result of several minor crises, involving emotional excitement, and the unfolding of character. Take for instance one of the most ordinary and hard worked of crises, a bankruptcy. Most people who figure in the daily accounts of bankrupts simply drift to leeward by slow gradations, experiencing discouragement, fear, hopelessness and despair, in a more or less degree, according to their particular temperament, or the condition of their livers. In all this there may be matter for a good story, though not even one really dramatic scene. But bankruptcy sometimes occurs in the form of one or more sudden sharp crises, and so has been made use of to excellent effect. In many of the old melodramas we've seen the business man, glance at the news ticker, open a telegr...« less