good reason; but the material has been subjected to such excessive exaggeration that the illusion of truth cannot survive. The book appeals only by reason of its sensational content. It is the cry of the propagandist rather than the voice of art. This is a pity. It is high time that the Negro produced his own literature showing lights and shadows in their true value.

Turning from fiction to poetry, I will cite but a single case. Not because it stands alone as an example of excellence, but because in "Chills and Fever", by John Crowe Ransom, published last autumn, I find this new note most evident. In fact, I know of nothing quite like it in American poetry. It is highly intellectual, and possessed of an almost diabolically humorous quality. Unlike the drama, and fiction, it does not turn inward upon its environment for inspiration, but is in

clined to be metaphysical. Christopher Morley has liked it for what he described as its "pretty and intricate savagery".

Among critics, and writers of special articles for the magazines, the names of Gerald W. Johnson, Frances Newman, and Howard W. Odum stand out for their courageous, and not invariably popular, utterances upon matters vital to the south.

And so, I believe that we are due for a new phase of southern letters. The skies may not be as blue, nor the women as universally beautiful, as when yesterday was at its high noon. Its good taste may be questioned when the standard of the Victorian drawing room is applied, but it will at least have the virtues of honesty and simplicity, and it will attempt to leave an authentic record of the period that produced it.

To

F you read the last article and did the home work conscientiously, you will remember that it concerned itself with the movie story the original, unadapted, simon pure scenario. day we shall take up, in a serious way, the adaptation: that is, the screen dramatization of the original author's work, whether play, novel, short story or synopsis. Already you have been shown the gilded hells where prosperous novelists and famous scenario editors talk turkey à la King. Now let us slum for a while in the continuity department, the slave quarters where the boys who do the dirty work toil and sweat and plot revolutions and sometimes, when the warder nods, devour some weaker brother. By way of compelling attention at the start, let it be stated that work in this field pays better than any other form of professional writing. But, of course, it costs more to live, in the exact sense of the word.

In the dark days, when the movies had not yet reached the age of consent, they called it "the idea". About eight o'clock of a summer morning in 1908, almost any budding director might be seen rolling up the highways and byways of Old Hollywood to somebody's converted car barn, lately rechristened the Titanic Studios, with a used automobile and some more or less unused actors. His producer would allow him one reel of precious film and a camera man, with some such casual remark as, "Good weather for westerns, Joe. Get yourself a real snappy

idea and have it cleaned up by five o'clock, positive!" Whereat the director, if worth his fifty dollars a week, mentally measured off an idea for a screen drama (probably about the sheriff who loved the sinless dance hall girl) exactly one thousand feet long, and presently returned not later than six o'clock with the same complete in celluloid form. Those were days when such gay pastels as "Ten Pounds of Limburger" might be filmed impromptu, under God's blue skies, and this nonsense about dramatic technique, closeups, pantomimic art, and the like had not yet contaminated a simple, primitive people.

Celluloid grew cheaper and pictures grew longer. Presently the more radical directors began to sketch out their ideas on a cuff or envelope. You can see how intricate art becomes. That was the first scenario. Very soon it became convenient to employ underlings for these literary labors.

Now nobody with any business sense is going to let a job simplify itself. On the contrary, the scenario form speedily became complicated beyond the comprehension of any except trained minds. Salaries went up and trade mysteries developed apace. "The idea" became "the story" a thing apart from the scenario.

the same thing.

Today a smarter phraseology divides the continuity into "the treatment" a detailed synopsis in which the original story is recast for screen production with the episodes and business indicated-and "the breakdown", which splits this recast version into 360 or more individual scenes with the captions, camera angles, and locations described and numbered in most technical language. You can see why we continuity writers are indispensable, what with knowing the meaning of such words and inventing new ones each year.

The larger studios buy a story from the original author and employ a treatment writer to shape it up as a whole. The treatment writer develops the dramatic structure of the piece, absolves it of censorable scenes, and tries to translate words into picture business. Then the breakdown man rewrites it into closeups, long shots, and the like

the sort of thing that you read about in textbooks on scenario writing. The total result is the continuity or scenario. Apparently this procedure is followed in an effort to secure the safety of numbers. You put three people on the job and get three times as fine a product, maybe.

The majority of continuity writers still doubt the efficacy of community story writing. That the original author's ideas must be subjected to translation is bad enough. But to pass such fragile stuff through two other hands, to inject three personalities into the total - ah me! Results too often prove that three times one equals just nothing at all. The best continuity writers endeavor to handle all phases of the adaptation, even to editing the completed picture.

A shortage of continuity writers has

tough job. Writing a continuity is rather like crossing the British Channel, an experience no one would repeat did not a gracious nature erase the horrific memories. The sustained effort of carrying a photoplay, with all its manifold problems of story, acting, exploitation, and technical production, complete in one small scenario writer's brain all in a nutshell so to speak for weeks at a time softens even the most leathery mentality. Your tale's psychology may be simple as the Silver Prize Story in the "St. Nicholas" magazine, but its structural problems are those of higher mathematics.

For another thing, the business is really hard to learn. Anyone with six months' experience about a studio can write the breakdown form. But facility in dramatic construction, a knack at inventing picture business, a talent for terse, witty title writing, those are other matters.

I know of no work requiring the same resourcefulness. No one would ask a novelist or playwright to face a battery of hardboiled critics, knowing little of the problems of his work, and invent instantly upon request. Yet a continuity writer does much of his work before this sort of audience, "in conference". He is regarded as a convenient mechanism which, once the penny has been inserted in the slot, delivers on the spot a suggestion. tors and directors work to the strain of a studio orchestra, with a tonic of optimistic comment to keep their spirits up, and frequently vacations to make them fit. A continuity writer attends to the purely creative side of production under the hypercritical eye of the staff on the one hand, and the original author on the other, working as a rule for fourteen hour stretches every day in the week just before the picture goes

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into production. Continuity writing may not be an art, but it is certainly a skilled and strenuous craft.

Finally, the opportunity to write that initial continuity knocks seldom and softly, and then no matter how quickly the door may be flung open is usually to be seen vanishing derisively around the corner like small boys on Hallowe'en. No business man is going to trust a green hand with a function which, within our little circle, is probably the most important phase of picture making.

Draw close while I answer the burning question. Salaries for this work range from $200 a week to $100,000 a year, depending on the standing of the company and the writer. There are staff jobs with a weekly salary; and there are free lancers who are paid piece work.

Continuities take from three weeks to two months to write. Men and women are equally successful, as otherwise, in this work. Should you then desire to sell yourself into bondage, charge at first about $300 for your body with, say, $2.50 extra for your soul—but plan to spend at least two or three years learning your job and another two years breaking into it. You will not earn while you learn. Unless, of course, you have made a name as poet, baseball player, aviator, or something of the sort.

Let us suppose that you have succeeded in persuading someone to trust you with a continuity - probably one which will not be filmed this season and which you are attempting on a double or nothing basis. First, you will read the play, novel, or short story under the most favorable conditions, trying to absorb the maximum voltage, to see its best points and get the author's angle. Then go into reverse and, for a day or so, try to discover its weaknesses.

A continuity writer gets the same thrill out of punching holes in somebody else's story that the wrecking crew gets out of breaking up a De Mille setting after the film is finished. For real relaxation, give me a few hours of wholesome, health giving, destructive criticism.

Fault finding is easy, genuine distinctive criticism is difficult. Few stories are ideal screen material. From a continuity writer's viewpoint, they're all the same fine words and false hearts, each one imposing as a glass eye and just as impracticable. Anyone can spot foolish little errors like anachronisms, the things that fans call to the attention of movie magazines; but the fundamentals-inconsistent characterization, counter plots that take us jaunting afar, censor baiting scenes, morbid endings, and a thousand others require considerable critical analysis to perceive and remedy.

And

It is a curious fact that, although construction in novels, in short stories, even in plays need not attain perfection, a movie plot requires the most modern plumbing. Words make clear the inner purposes of a stage or literary author; and clarity covers a multitude of structural sins. But movies are wordless. You cannot explain. when your characters are actually seen, silently moving through improbabilities, each illogical act, each unconvincing change of mood and character, stands forth conspicuous as a coal heaver's nails. You must make a good, serviceable, heavy duty plot that won't break down anywhere along the six thousand foot stretch ahead.

Moreover, your continuity will

doubtless be written for a star on whose favor your bare thread of existence depends since any sensible producer will settle long drawn disputes by firing

the writer rather than a million dollar box office asset. And if the home office has bought "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with a view to starring Childe Harold perhaps with a slight change of locale to Death Valley in order to profit by the success of "The Covered Wagon"

or perhaps wishes to build up Ophelia's part in "Hamlet" in order to give the ingénue star a chance, again you must take thought. For Hamlet must not run away with the story if the star is to play Ophelia. And Uncle Tom must not steal sympathy from any priceless infants. My advice is to cut him out entirely. The southern territories don't like black face parts anyway.

May I suggest in passing that diplomacy is a first requisite? You must please from two to six persons, to convince each that your script is in accordance with what he wanted. Inasmuch

as each will champion radically different ideas, the ideal continuity writer should possess the combined talents of Machiavelli, Lord Chesterfield, Zada the Hypnotist, the late Mr. Tweed, and the man who studied salesmanship by correspondence. Perhaps it were best to take up the concert stage after all. Let us presume that you have studied the story, have hunted down each of the other fellow's mistakes and joyously crucified it. Now you must plot out a treatment.

During the war, when picture production ceased in Europe, American studios enjoyed an unprecedented boom which kept the few experienced scenario writers very busy. Since almost any sort of picture made money, unusual latitudes in script writing were permitted. With new millions pouring in and new scripts to be written each month, experimentation became possible. Such writers as John Emerson and Anita Loos, June Mathis, An

thony Paul Kelly, Jeanie MacPherson, Francis Marion, Lloyd Sheldon, and others developed, in those happy hectic hours, the complicated and highly effectual scenario form of today. To explain what it is all about, we must leave this idle chatter to become ponderously definite. A few sketchy comments on the technique will not teach you to write continuities, but may perhaps induce you to appreciate them.

There are two schools of continuity writing, the narrative method and the dramatic method. The narrative writer marches straight ahead from the start of his story, without great regard to form or final destination, always, however, making sure that the road is interesting. This division is discernible in other fields. Most novelists and short story writers use the narrative technique. It is a much more flexible - and less difficult medium than dramatic writing. Consequently, there is an ever present temptation to progress easily from situation to situation "shot to shot" in studio terminology

after the manner of a pulp paper magazine melodrama, and to depend upon purely physical action rather than to develop the characters logically and convincingly. The narrative form is highly effective for loosely knit stories of the epic type ("The Covered Wagon" or "The Birth of a Nation"), for action melodramas, and of course for action comedies.

The dramatic form of treatment requires the structural foundation of a play to give tone to our little gathering, let us say an Ibsen play. It is much more compact than the narrative style. Its parts interlock. "Plants" in earlier scenes blossom in the later episodes. The story mounts, as a rule, to a single big scene, with the typical stage dénouement, followed by a quick finish or "tag", as it is called in