Simply because the word “scenario” has been so long used loosely as a name for the full written outline or story of the photoplay, it has come to mean the entire manuscript—­or photoplay script, as we prefer to call it—­completed and ready to be submitted to the editor.  Accurately, however (see the preceding chapter, Photoplay Terms), the “scenario” is only one of the three or four distinct parts of a photoplay script, as will be developed in full presently.  “The Photoplaywright,” a department conducted by Mr. Epes Winthrop Sargent in The Moving Picture World, was at first called “The Scenario Writer;” however, Mr. Sargent, like most writers and editors, has abandoned the use of the word “scenario” as applied to the complete script.  “Scenario” is the name now properly given to the continuity of scenes, or “the continuity,” as many are calling it in these days of more precise nomenclature.  Furthermore, various trade publications are now urging writers and all others interested in the work to substitute the word “photoplay” for “scenario,” as being more comprehensive and exact when applied to the complete manuscript.  In strict accuracy, however, even “photoplay” is not a sufficiently explicit term when applied to the manuscript only, while either “photoplay manuscript” or “photoplay script” is; for, as all writers may learn to their cost, the “script” is not always destined to become a “play.”  To some, however, this distinction may seem like splitting a hair nicely between its north and northwest corners.  At all events, the “photoplay script” is an exact and descriptive term and may well be used by all interested.

What is of fundamental technical importance in a novel, a short-story, or a play?  The story itself—­the plot.  And so also it is in the photoplay; only, and the reasons must be obvious, its importance in the photoplay is even greater.  Without the plot, the writer’s script will remain forever a script, a mere piece of hand- or typewriting; it will never be transformed by the magic wand of the director into a film picture.  Remember always that the photoplay is nothing but a series of scenes in action which make up a story.  How can you expect to have action without a sufficient cause for every effect shown and the scenes arranged in such order as to produce a complete illusion of a connected, progressive, climax-reaching story? (And it is just this connected, progressive, climax-reaching arrangement of the events of a story which we call the “plot.”) A novel may be largely a study of character; a short-story may deal with action which takes place wholly unseen in the soul of man; a play or a musical comedy may be chiefly a series of scenic pictures or tuneful caperings; but a true photoplay must act out a story—­a story with a big central point, supported by contributing points, or situations.