The one thing that you cannot do, unless you are actually on the staff of a certain company, is obvious, and has been referred to in the chapter on “The Synopsis”:  You cannot write any story with the certainty that it will be entirely unchanged after being accepted for production.  Any one of a dozen very good reasons may demand that some alteration, addition to or elimination of certain scenes or parts of scenes in your story must take place while it is in the director’s hands.  There is a vast difference between the necessary changes carefully made by an artistic and painstaking director and the indiscriminate slashing to pieces of a writer’s story common among a certain variety of directors in the past.  Fortunately for the writer, this class of director is rapidly being outlawed, and the photoplaywright should write at all times in the confident belief that his perfect-as-he-can-make-it story will be adequately “put on” by a director who knows his business and is, as Mr. Merwin says, an interpreter of the author’s plot.

We need only repeat here one other thing that we said in Chapter VIII:  No matter what the length of the story, today, it is always run through—­in all but the very smallest and most out-of-the-way theatres and towns respectively—­without interruption, because two projecting machines are used, and another reel is started as soon as one finishes, there being no perceptible break in the action on the screen.  For this reason, if you are writing a five-reel feature-story with, say, forty scenes to a reel, you start with Scene 1 and number straight through to Scene 200.  There should be a series of rising climaxes, but no special forward-looking climax exactly at the end of each thousand feet.

Also, of course, it is quite unnecessary to have an equal number of scenes to each part.  The action of your first reel—­more or less introductory—­may demand only thirty or thirty-five scenes, whereas when your story gets to moving rapidly you may see the necessity for running up the number of scenes by introducing several short scenes, or “flashes.”

17.  Serials

We advise a rereading of the definition of the term “serials” given in Chapter III.  In addition to what is there said, it may be stated that, as a rule, it is best not to write a complete serial—­even though only in synopsis form—­unless you have what is beyond question a sure market.  As a matter of fact, most serials are written at present by big-name writers of fiction—­such as Arthur B. Reeve—­or “inside” writers, such as George B. Seitz, who has been responsible for several successful Pathe serials.  The comparatively few “outside” writers who have “made good” with serials follow the plan of writing the synopsis of the first four or five episodes (which in film form would mean eight or ten reels), which they submit for the editor’s approval in the regular way.  If the editor likes the idea, or theme, of the story, and thinks it would make a successful picture, he will commission you to finish it.  Four or five episodes of well-planned, suspense-holding plot will be sufficient to assure him that you are capable of keeping up the same speed and making the story consistently interesting all through.