The second is based on the common-sense understanding at which you yourself will arrive if you will take the trouble to notice how the slightest movement made by one of two persons to whom you are telling a story distracts the other’s attention.  Briefly, never indicate business for a character during the moments when short and vitally important speeches are conveying information to the audience.

Both of these minor suggestions may be summed up in this sentence with which I shall dismiss the subject:  The box sets in which the playlet is played in vaudeville are usually not very deep and are so arranged that every part of the scene is in plain view from practically every seat in the house, therefore you may forget that your story is being played in a mimic room and may make your characters move as if the room were real.  If you will only keep in mind you should have little trouble.

6.  How “Business” is Indicated in Manuscript

In the old days before the boxed set, the manuscript of a play bristled with such cryptic signs as R. U. E., and L. F. E., meaning, when reduced to everyday English, “right upper entrance,” “left first entrance,” and the like.  But as the old “entrances” of the stage have been lost with the introduction of the box set, which closely mimics a real room—­being, indeed, a room with the fourth wall removed—­the modern stage directions are much simpler.  “Right door,” “centre door,” “left door,” are the natural directions to be found in a playlet manuscript today.

It is a good general rule to avoid in your stage directions expressions which show you are dealing with a stage scene and not a scene of real life.  In the first place, if you attempt to be technical, you are very likely to be over-technical and confusing.  In the second place, you will be more likely to produce a life-like playlet if you are not forever groping among strange terms, which make you conscious all the time that you are dealing with unreality.  Therefore choose the simplest directions, expressed in the fewest possible words, to indicate the effects you have carefully thought out:  Never forget that reality and simplicity go hand in hand.

And now it may be of advantage to sum up what has been said about stage business in this chapter.  We have seen how business may be used to condense the story of a playlet; how business is often—­though not always—­the very heart of the dramatic; how pantomime may be skillfully used to condense salient parts of the playlet story and illumine character; how business may be employed to break up a clumsy but necessarily long speech—­thus sometimes saving a playlet from the failure of the tedious;—­and why business is more productive of comedy than is dialogue.  We have concluded that the playlet writer must not ape what has already been done, but can win success only in the measure he succeeds in bringing to his playlet new business which makes his new situations all the more vivid and vital.  Finally, we have seen that entrances and exits must be natural and effective, and that all stage business should be conceived and thought of and indicated in the manuscript as simple expressions of reality.