If you are unable to tell every bit of your story by dramatic means and therefore face a long speech that may seem tiresomely wordy, break it up with natural movements which lend a feeling of homely reality to the scene.  For instance, don’t let the character who is delivering that long speech tell it all uninterruptedly from the chair in which he is sitting.  Let him rise after he has spoken two or three sentences and cross to the other character, or do something that will illustrate a point in his story, or have the one who is listening interrupt now and then.  Inject motive into the interruptions if you can; but in any event, keep your characters moving.

But make the movements natural.  To this end, study the movements of the men and women about you.  Try to invent new ways of expressing the old things in movement.  Strive not so much to be “different,” as to be vividly interesting.  You can make the movements of your characters about the stage as brilliant as dialogue.

Above all, make sure that you do not let your characters wander about the stage aimlessly.  To make it a complete unity every little scene demands as careful thought as does the entire playlet.  A playlet may be suggestively defined as a number of minute-long playlets moving vividly one after the other to make a vivid whole.  Remember this, and you may be able to save a tiresome scene from ruining the entire effect of your playlet.

4.  Why Business is More Productive of Comedy than Dialogue

As a playlet is nothing if it is not action, so a comedy playlet is nothing if its comedy does not develop from situations.  By “action,” as the word is used here, I mean that the story of the playlet is told by the movements of its characters.  In real life, you know, comedy and tragedy do not come from what persons say they are going to do—­but from what they actually do.  Therefore, the merry jests that one character perpetrates upon another must be told not in words, but by showing the character actually perpetrating them on the victim.  In a comedy playlet, the playwright must be a practical joker.  Every funny happening in a playlet is a “scene that must be shown.”

For instance, in “Billy’s Tombstones,” the football player who is in love with the girl, whom he has followed half around the world, is shown first as losing his “tombstones”—­his false teeth, made necessary by the loss of his real ones in a famous college game; then he is shown in his wild efforts to pronounce his sweetheart’s name without the dental help.  Much of the comedy arises from his efforts to pronounce that loved name—­and the climax comes when the lost tombstones are found and Billy proposes to her in perfect speech that lingers fondly on her name.