CHARM AND DISTINCTION

CHARM AND DISTINCTION

CHARM AND DISTINCTION

TWO other qualities should be brought under consideration before the creation of a plot can be intelligently undertaken. These

are charm and distinction. It must be admitted that many successful plays wholly lack either charm or distinction, but the story that possesses either is better than the story which lacks this quality. A story with a proper punch that has either charm or distinction stands a far better chance of selling and to good advantage.

2. Charm, in a photoplay, is a certain gracefulness of thought, a simple directness of plot or perhaps a certain suggestion of intimacy. It is difficult to define with any degree of exactness because it is an evanescent quality that cannot be reduced to words. It must be sensed. It cannot be explained by any exact definition. It may even le that the manuscript of the story will possess a charni that the produced play lacks or that the screened play will possess the charm that is not shown in the written scenes. This is either because the director has failed to grasp and pass along the charm or because he sees deeper into the story and gives to it something the author has failed to contribute.

Two plays may be seen on the screen. At a glance it would seem that they were of equal value in plot and punch, yet one gives you infinitely more pleasure than the other, though perhaps you cannot tell why. One has charm and the other lacks it, but of what does this charm consist? You cannot tell, at least in words. You cannot, as a general thing, isolate the particular thing that gave you pleasure. You only know that one play was far more to your taste than the other.

If you will look a little deeper you will probably find that the pleasing story is more spontaneously told. It rtins from one scene to the next, from one development to the succeeding crisis, with no appearance of labor. The story seems to tell itself, rather than to be told. It is more like a happening than a narrative of past events. There are no lapses where the interest falls because the telling is not exactly right; no moment when you are conscious of a feeling of slight irritation because you can hear the creaking of the wheels as the machinery grinds away. It is all so smooth and pleasant; so utterly lacking in the appearance of artificiality, that you are carried along by the movement of the story, hardly conscious of the grip in which you are held until the story ends.

It is the highest development of artistry to select a proper theme and to so tell it that you hide the fact that a story is being told. It means not only the selection of a good theme, but the elaboration of that theme into a play with the utmost skill and its narration in action with the least annoyance to the spectator through the intrusion of foreign matter. You make your people seem flesh. and blood and not merely parts assumed by men and women who act the roles you create.

A study of photoplays on the screen will present to you only occasionally instances of charm, but you can add this factor to your stories, not always, perhaps, because it is not always possible, but with reasonable frequency, even if the director does not carry the charm over td the screen, and this charm will not be without effect, for the Editor will know and credit you even if the public is not permitted to see. Even without attaining full charm you can at least invest your story with a suggestion of this element through care in the selection of the plot and its development. To do this you cannot use the first plot-suggestion that comes to hand nor yet the first development of suitable material, but it will pay you in the end to send to Editors only such stories as at least possess some charm.

7. To almost all authors, and certainly to all authors possessed of discrimination, not all stories appeal alike. Some stories will seem almost to write themselves. If you will seek to find the reason for this greater ease, you will probably find that it was because the story presented no difficulties, from which it is to be deduced that the way to attain charm is not to seek to commit your story to paper until in your mind you have become so certain of your line of progression and on such intimate terms with your plot and its possibilities that your only labor is the mechanical one of manipulating the typewriter. You do not have to stop to think ahead nor to look back. You know what has gone before and what is to come later because you have mentally arranged and rearranged your thoughts in your mind so that all is clearly and simply provided for.

From this the further deduction may be made that the better your technical equipment, the more intimate your knowledge of the various elements of photoplay form and the more advanced your practice in their use, the better qualified you will be to write plays with charm. This is one of the reasons why this book is so insistent upon work as the stepping stone to success. You cannot write a play with charm until you no longer have to stop and consider what will come next and whether to use an insert or a leader to explain a point.

Charm may exist upon the screen without reference to the play if the story is so well acted that the personality of the players blinds the spectator for the time being to the faults of the story, but this is a point with which we have no concern, save, perhaps, that we may gain undeserved credit.

Distinction is almost the exact opposite of charm. Distinction inspires respect where charm engenders intimacy. The story may in a sense also charm, but it will be the grandeur of the theme rather than the simplicity of thought.

Distinction may be slightly awe inspiring or it may merely be a play of dignity and lofty thought, but it cannot be as intimate as the play with charm. It is a play apart from the generality of offerings because of its unusualness. This does not refer to novelty of plot so much as to individuality of the theme.

Most readers of Dickens are agreed that of all his novels "David Copperfield" is—up to a certain point—possessed of the greatest charm, just as most are disposed to regard his "Tale of Two Cities" as his work of greatest distinction. In his introduction to "Copperfield" in Everyman's Library Gilbert K. Chesterton has thrown an unusually clear light 'upon charm when he writes:

—for although this is the best of all Dickens' books, it constantly disappoints the critical and intelligent reader. The reason is that Dickens began it under the sudden emotional instinct of telling the whole truth about himself and gradually allowed the whole truth to be diluted, until toward the end of the book we are back in the old pedantic and decorative art of Dickens, an art which we justly admired in its own place and on its own terms, but which we resent when we feel it gradually returning through a tale pitched originally in a more practical and piercing key.

In other words "David Copperfield" has charm so long as it has naturalness and fidelity to fact and loses that charm in the exact proportion and degree in which the story teller becomes in the ascendant. The story does not have charm because it is the life of Dickens, but because it is the natural and unaffected story of life

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and not the tricky work of one who seeks to improve upon life through recourse to artifice.

Charm, then, is the absence of visible and conscious effort. Distinction is that quality in a story that raises it above other stories through its unusualness.

You see several persons passing along the street. Here comes an old lady, a lovable old lady. You feel that hers is an interesting, though possibly uneventful life story. Two pass, youthful sweethearts, ' too young yet to be ashamed to advertise in their happy faces their love for each other. Here surely lies a story of charm. Comes a man, tall, distinguished, soldierly; mustache and imperial white as the thick thatch upon his head. You feel that here is a man who has lived, who has both seen and done great deeds. His air interests you and you feel an unusual curiosity as to his story. He may be a carriage opener, selected because of that very air of distinction, but you would not believe it if you were told. His manner is too impressive. He interests you, but you feel as well a slight awe. His is the most comtnanding, the most marked presence, but you cannot feel toward him the same attraction that the old lady or the boy and girl inspired. You are impressed, you are interested, but somehow you feel that it would be a task to be his friend, to have to live up to his dignity.

16. It is the same with plays. You are attracted by the charm of some, impressed by others. The rest are like the general run of passers-by, they are there but they do not impress. You can give to some plays charm and to others distinction. These are the ones that you will sell most promptly and to the best advantage. The others you may or may not sell. If the studio needs scripts they may take these others, but your most certain approach to the editorial approval is with a story that has either charmor distinction, that is in one way or the other a thing apart from the generality of plays.