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, one’s natural supposition is that Mary has thought it over while “plodding wearily” toward town, and, remembering the comfortable bed which awaits her at the old home—­even though the next morning will bring more ill treatment at the hands of the step-father—­has returned to make the best of it.  After reading three more scenes, however, we learn that Mary had not only reached the town, but had gone so far as “the big city,” from which she had returned after a fruitless search for work.  Scene 9 is really supposed to take place two weeks after Scene 8!

Now, laying aside the fact that no scenes are introduced to show what happened to her after she went to the city, the script does not even give a scene showing her boarding a train to go, so there is nothing even to hint that Scene 9 did not take place on the same night that Mary left home.

The point of all this is that, had this script been accepted at all, and even had not the producer chosen to introduce any scenes showing Mary in the city, a leader of some kind between Scenes 8 and 9 would have been absolutely necessary.  This, of course, was an amateur script, and the whole story was impossible from the standpoint of logic and the sequence of events; but in more than one picture that has been shown on the screen we have noticed the omission of a leader at a point in the action where one was very necessary, as a consequence of which the spectator was left—­for the space of two or three scenes at least—­to guess at what was what.

It is worth remembering that you are not an accomplished photoplaywright until you can produce a story that is thoroughly understandable all the way through by action and inserts.  You are a clever writer, undoubtedly, if you can produce a “leaderless” script.  But it is no indication of cleverness merely to leave out a leader—­only to find, when your story is produced, that the director has found it necessary to add what you have simply cut out or never put in.  He is a foolish and short-sighted writer indeed who gives any director such an opportunity to doubt his knowledge of photoplay technique.