THE NEW SUCCESS FOR APRIL A FEW IMPORTANT FEATURES: Are You a Successful Salesman? An article that every person interested in salesmanship will want to keep. Optimism and Hard Times What many of the leading bankers of the country have to say regarding the present financial depression. Great Business! A new story by Floyd Meredith which proves that a man may sell himself against his will. The Great Medical Men of the World and What They Have Accomplished By Frank Winslow Special Interviews with Men and Women Leaders of World Affairs Don't Miss The article by Arthur F. Porter, formerly cartoonist of the Marion, Ohio, Star, owned and edited by President Harding. Mr. Porter gives a very intimate study of his old boss, now President of the United States. How Up-to-Date Methods Are Driving Romance and Idleness Out of the Fictionists' Paradise-the South Sea Islands By Thomas J. McMahon, F. R. G. S. The interview with the new governor of New York-Nathan Miller. A forceful man who is making things hum. Orison Swett Marden's inspirational editorials, illustrated by Gordon Ross's cartoons. Dewitt Howard Clinton's humorous article about Blue Laws old and new. Illustrations and Art Work by A. L. Bairnsfather, John R. Neill, Robert A. Graef, Charles F. Jaeger, Joseph F. Kernan, Alton E. Porter, Gordon Ross, Johnson Vreeman. And a cover design you will want to frame: "Who Said Panic!" by William Grotz. THE JOIN THE PASS-IT-ON CLUB HE NEW SUCCESS invites all its readers to become members of The PassIt-On Club, and to pass on to the editors quotations, mottoes, maxims, poems, or other cherished bits of literature,-little anecdotes, humorous stories, bits of wisdom-in fact anything that has helped, inspired or cheered you— anything that you have saved for your scrapbook, or that you would like others to share with you. THE NEW SUCCESS will print the best of these, and thus pass on from one member of the Pass-It-On Club to another-and to all our readers—many things that will help them in some way. THE NEW SUCCESS also wants short stories of young men and women who are on the road to success, the climbers of to-day, those who are not at the top of the ladder, but on the way up. THE NEW SUCCESS also wants little stories of success obtained under great difficulties, and stories of human sacrifice and kindness. Address: THE PASS-IT-ON CLUB, THE NEW SUCCESS, 1133 Broadway, New York TH RESOLVED: HAT I will not add to the momentum of the hard-times talk by my own dire predictions. That I will not go about among my fellows with an expression which indicates that life has been a disappointment, or express a lack of faith in my country or in its industrial supremacy. That I will try to convert the pessimist, the gloom peddler, the down-talker and down-dragger to sane and wholesome thinking and talking. That I will keep a stiff upper lip and a stiff backbone; that I will believe in the best, look for the best, think the best and work for the best. America has never remained very long in a fit of the blues, and the length of her blue fits grows shorter and shorter. She also grows more progressive, and assumes a more and more commanding place in the affairs of the world. The booster helps this forward movement; the knocker retards it. RESOLVED: That I will henceforth be a booster, and not a knocker; a lifter, not a kicker, a prophet of good, not evil. THE HE day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. Amen.-Robert Louis Stevenson. Picture Play A Successful Scenario Author Tells THE NEW SUCCESS SAYS THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE O many people come to me and ask "How do you go about writing a motionpicture play? I wish you'd tell me how you do it." I don't know how I do it. I just do it. I never took a lesson in my life and never expect to. A few directors have warned me what to do and have told me the sort of stories and effects they personally like, but that is all. I don't know how to write a motion-picture play any more than I know how to write a story or a letter to a friend-I simply write it. I get the plot just as fifteen years ago, I used to gather news when I was a reporter, return to the city room, sit down, and write out the story. That's all there is to it. First get a real story. Next tell it. TH HIS is not a lesson in a correspondence course on motion-picture writing, nor is it a formula for preparing a scenario for the "screen." It is a plain statement of how a motion-picture manuscript is prepared by one who successfully sells motion-picture plots. There are no set rules and no sure guides to securing a check for your manuscript. If you have it in you to write motion-picture plays, all you need do is sit down and write. If you haven't the natural talent, all the advice and instruction in the world won't help you and you will never become a scenario writer. The greatest art-instructor in the world couldn't teach me to draw a cartoon or paint a portrait. A motionpicture director could and did develop my work to a point where it became profitable, and I am glad to set down here a few of the things he told me and more that I have learned. But I do believe that it is possible to instruct beginners to write salable plots. sider. Never mind the various inside phrases which, so many amateurs, seem to add an air of expert knowledge to their work. Don't concern yourself with such terms as "fade out" or "iris in" or "dissolve into" and the like. Forget them and tell your story. Think it out carefully-then tell it as you would tell it to me if we were sitting comfortably in the living room. You know, I will be interested in the story if you present it to me properly-if you recite it in proper sequence, with just the proper detail and the proper amount of suspense to keep my curiosity aroused. DON ON'T indulge in "post mortems." Don't add too many unimportant side lights. Don't trace the ancestry and doings of each character back to antiquity. You know how annoying such comments are in ordinary conversation. They have no place in a "screen plot." The idea is that you want me to hear the story through to the end, and you want me to want to hear it. You don't want me to keep looking at my watch, look restlessly at the clock, or fidget about while you're talking. The length of your story depends entirely upon what you have to say. I have written a scenario in fifteen ordinarily typed pages and I have written one in thirty-five pages. There's absolutely no rule for length except the story itself. A skillful story-teller can certainly give the complete action of a five-reel photoplay in from ten to fifteen pages. Some can do it in less; but if you need more pages to make your idea clear, take all you want of them. WH it is far from it. Many people do not know a good story when they read one; but far more folks imagine they have a good story when, in reality the idea lacks in probability, in interest, in dramatic value and action. There is a vast difference, too, between a dramatic situation and dramatic material. Sheridan's Ride was an intensely dramatic incident, but it wasn't a play in itself. Augustus Thomas, the American playwright, took the incident and developed it into a successful play, and there is where the playwright's art asserted itself. KEEP SCRAPIN' By Esty Quinn HEN you're sick as the deuce, and you think, "What's the use?" Don't attempt to limit yourself to any fixed number of words. Remember that you are writing a picture and, consequently, must make your words convey a picture to the mind of the reader. If you are a born storyteller, it won't take five thousand words for you to describe what can be said adequately in one thousand words. Tell it all, clearly and vividly, describe in detail each essential action, then-stop writing! And you're tired out, discouraged, afraid; And you keep asking why they don't let you die And forget the mistakes you have made; When you're chuck full of pain and you're tired of the game, And you want to get out of it all— That's the time to begin to stick out your chin And fight with your back to the wall! WHEN you've done all you can to scrap like a man, But you can't keep your head up much more; And the end of the bout leaves you all down and out, Bleeding, and reeling, and sore; When you've prayed all along for the sound of the gong To ring for the fight to stop Just keep on your feet and smile at defeat: That's the real way to come out on top! WHEN you're tired of hard koocks and you're right on the rocks, And nobody lends you a hand; When none of your schemes, the best of your dreams Turn out in the way you'd planned; And you've lost all your grit and you're ready to quit For Life's just a failure for you, Why, start in again and see if all men occurrence or a series of occurrences that amuse, thrill, or excite varied emotions in the mind of your auditors. Writing a picture plot is simply telling a tale on paper. That is the only difference between writing a script and sitting down beside the scenario editor's desk and telling him your idea. If you are convinced that you can tell a story well, then ask yourself whether you know what a story is. That may sound like nonsense, but IT any special aptitude to discover bases for plots. Perhaps the only essential is what newspapermen call a "nose for news"-the ability to know what makes a story and the skill to make a story of such material. The great basic requirement of a film play is struggle a battle against odds-a conflict of wits a well-sustained suspense that keeps the audience entertained and eagerly awaiting the finish of the story. What the struggle is to be and how it is to be worked out is your task. It may be that two of your characters will struggle against each other, or that one character will battle against his environment, the rocks in the road of life, or against his own conscience or sense of duty and honor. Struggle means action, and action is the prime essential of the screen play. You introduce your characters and tell the audience what they are like. Then your comments are ended-or should be. What these characters say and do for the next hour and a half, is the test of the play's merit-of its success or failure. You can draw your character in any way you like-make him loved or hated-but whichever you do, having thrown this mantle about his shoulders, you must make him live up to the reputation you have given him. D% ON'T seek some new twist to an old idea. It's probably been done before better than you can do it. Start afresh. Take a situationperhaps one from real life. Try to imagine what is going to happen. For instance, you are standing in a railroad station. A well-dressed young woman is walking up and down nervously before the train gate, looking at her wrist-watch every few seconds. Just as the train is about to depart, a messenger boy rushes up and calls out that he has something for Miss Brown. The young woman eagerly takes a package from him, signs for it and boards the train. As the entrance gate slams, the messenger boy disappears and, a moment later, another young woman and an excited man rush up to the gate too late to catch the train. They ask the porter if a messenger boy has been there asking for a Miss Brown. Now go on. You finish it. That's a plot You can end it in any one of a hundred ways. You are welcome to the "germ" if you germ. want it. HIS leads to another vital suggestion. Don't take your ideas from the newspapers or things you see in print. Don't rely too much on "personal experiences" of friends. Others may see and develop the same idea, or you may be developing an idea that has been done before. Then you may be accused of plagiarism. Once that occurs, your writing days are over. It is this danger the danger of innocent or unconscious plagiarism-that makes the scenario editor wary of the unknown writer. He must have the word of some one he knows, and can trust, to assure him of the first-hand originality of the script. Libel suits and heavy damages have resulted where screen editors have been imposed upon by unscrupulous plot-stealers or innocent offenders who unconsciously committed literary piracy. Be careful to make your characters human. Ask yourself if you have ever seen any one like that, if a man or a woman would really act as you have made them act under given conditions: Be careful not to make them stilted, unnatural— unreal. Their acts may and should be original and the chances are they will be, because your own point of view on life is individual, and so long as you build from your own imagination it is likely you will develop something worth while. If you are planning to write for the screen, study the screen. Find out what sort of stories people like and what screen stars they flock to see. Have a definite star in mind when you write your play. In writing your scenes, imagine what this actor would do in the situations you have devised and how he or she would do it. Consider whether they could or would do such things at all, whether the part fits the personality. By doing this, you enhance your chances of selling your script. Will the great "movie star" ever see your work? Yes-if it passes the screen editor and he thinks it is worth showing to the star. But now comes the problem of getting the scenario to the proper scenario editor. If you are an outsider and do not know how to market your plays, don't sit down and fatten the revenue of the PostOffice Department by sending your script to this and that studio. To do so is a sheer waste of time. THE HERE are many reputable and successful manuscript brokers who will read your story, tell you frankly whether it has merit, and if it has value, to place it for you. They will charge you a reasonable commission and save you many heartbreaks and a great deal of time. But be sure you pick a reputable agent. Investigate the one you select, and be sure you will receive upright treatment. Successful moving-picture writing is nothing more or less than the ability to know what others want to see and hear and to tell them that story pleasantly and entertainingly. Nobody teach you to do that. Either you can do it or you can't. If you are fair with yourself, you can soon find out where you stand. The present tendency of the producers is to get away from dramatizations of successful books and plays. The prices which must be paid for such works are usually out of proportion to the sum which should be paid for a script; and the author must remember that, after his check has been signed, many thousands of dollars must be paid out to prepare the actual film. And every picture turned out is not a success. Many go "on the shelf." |