PAGE

VOL. XXXIV.

ENTERED AT THE BOSTON POSTOFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MAIL MATTER

CONTENTS:

AROUSING THE READER'S SYMPATHY. David Raf

felock

JOSEPH ANDREW GALAHAD. John Bolling LITERARY SHOP TALK

17

19

20

20

21

21

Author's Confession, 28

How Editors Handle Manuscripts, 26-An

Sonnet

LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS

NEWS AND NOTES

31

AROUSING THE READER'S SYMPATHY.

I am not going to talk about arousing the reader's personal sympathy. This article will consider sympathy as it applies to the characters in a photoplay, story, or play. Whenever one reads a well-written story, one consciously or otherwise enlists virtually all of his vital interest in a few persons whose destinies he is to follow.

That is sympathy as meant here. It is interest that centred interest which the audience or reader has in the few dominant char acters of a work. It must be unified sympathy; that is, it must not change unless the change is properly prepared for. The reader or audience should actively want these characters to receive justice, whether in the end they do or not.

The most simple way of directing sympathy

No. 2.

is in the melodramatic type of story, where we have clearly marked the persons who will hold our sympathy. It may seem obvious that in a play there should be a "leading man and lady," and though most beginning authors realize it, yet in the actual writing many ignore this necessity. In reading a number of plays written by students I have found that in most cases an outstanding fault was tha: no one or two of the characters remained clearly, through the three acts, as the ones who were the dominant beings and the raison d'être of the whole play. Instead, one character would hold prime interest in the first act; in the others, he would be subordinated to some else, and so on. Yet there was very plainly intended to be a leading man and

woman.

In such a piece there could be no unified sympathy, and it is difficult for the audience to be interested in a hodge-podge of leading characters. So, you can see it is necessary to look into this matter of sympathy and res what it does and how it does it.

In the first place, as already mentioned, sympathy centres interest in the principal characters of your cinema, story, or play. So, very early in the piece there should be definite indications who are to be the persons who shall enlist the reader's or audience's sympathy. If it is a play or photoplay you are writing, this information is very often known long before the audience sees the play, for it knows that the star, if there be one, will have the likeable role. Some plays are written especially for stars and written -tailor-made, almost so as to bring out the best histrionic qualities of the actor, making sympathy-winning most easy. In the past season, "One Night in Rome" for Laurette Taylor, and

"

Pietro for Otis Skinner, were such plays. Scenarios for Mary Pickford, William S. Hart, Charlie Chaplin, and such stars incorporate antics which these celebrities are most capable of doing to win ready sympathy.

However, this obvious and mechanical device of gaining sympathy is vastly preferred to a lack of any direction of sympathy. In a recent release, a five-reel photoplay entitled "The Little Shop," even the star part failed to hold interest, for the onlooker was not made to sympathize with the character. It is a most stupid picture play. Throughout the fatiguing, tiresome five reels, interest jumps from one character to another, making the whole thing a mess. About the only suspense is that one wonders when the picture will end. It is seen, then, that in order to sustain interest you must have one or two real characters who stand out from among any number of others and in whom the reader or audience will be most interested. For example in Dickens's "The Tale of Two Cities," Lucy and Sydney Carton are the leading characters. The reader remembers them though he forget everything else; there is no butterflying of attention. It is the same with the old 46 dime novels"; the dominant characters were plainly marked and the reader's sympathy is constantly increased by hook or crook until each new difficulty of the hero or heroine is an actual pain to the peruser of the tale.

It is not difficult to direct sympathy if the author does not lose his sense of proportion. In fact, sympathy is as much a device, especially in the cinema or drama, as is the setting. A scene may be made so elaborate or startling that the audience will forget the play for a time, and sympathy may so be scattered. made conspicuous by its abundance — that the audience's attention is constantly diverted. If the author finds that one whom he intended to be a subordinate character is growing too prominent, it is better to make him the hero or else keep him out entirely and hold him over for another story.

Sympathy being a device, it is sometimes used to create suspense. In this case the reader, or audience, is led to desire a certain ending until a new character is introduced who

causes a demand for an entirely different result. This was excellently handled in the fivereel cinema, Out of the Storm." In the opening of the picture is shown a young woman on the verge of operatic success, made possible by a man who, in the same breath that he tells her he loves her, confesses also that all of the money he has given her to train her voice, he had stolen. The girl promises to wait for him until he is released from prison. Later, she meets an English nobleman who saves her life. As the plot develops the spectator is made to sympathize more and more with the Englishman, who has now fallen in love with the girl; but the spectator still feels that the woman, now a famous operatic singer, owes loyalty to the other man. Before long, however, either he or the Englishman must win the spectator's complete sympathy. The author selects the latter device and very deftly switches sympathy to the nobleman in the following manner: Before his term is up, the prisoner manages to escape, but not without killing five men. We learn that he has become coarse and brutal. By now the Englishman has confessed his love for the opera singer and she is willing to accept him, but the man who had gone to prison for her arrives and confronts the singer. The audience no longer wants the prisoner to win, for he has proved himself a villain. Sympathy is with the Englishman, not especially for what he has done, but because sympathy has been so thoroughly estranged from the escaped convict.

It is seen that this method worked in excellent fashion in this cinema to secure suspense and interest, but the device is sometimes misused. It is permissible to bring about a change in sympathy if the change is prepared for properly. That is the way in life which makes us love people whom we formerly hated; or shun those once our friends. It is an unfair device to create interest or suspense by setting up certain character sign posts in the early part of a story or play and later suddenly reversing them. The persons in life whom you like or dislike you like or dislike because you have seen them in many phases and you take all into account. It is improb

able that you see a villain only at times when he appears to be a saint. So, in a story you must indicate, ever so slightly perhaps, just what manner of man your characters are to be. In the recent stage success, "The Acquittal," by Rita Weiman, an abrupt change is made in character that is very jolting. In this play a man has just been acquitted of a crime. In the first act the audience is made to feel that the decision was a just one. The man makes a pretty speech to the press representatives; he is even friendly to the reporter who still believes that the verdict was wrong. The audience completely sympathizes with the acquitted man, but the people are misled, for in the second act they find him to be a brute; he is no longer suave and gracious, but a swearing ruffian, who abuses his wife. This comes as a distinct jar to the audience, since the change was not prepared for.

There is one other phase of this matter of sympathy. Unless the author is writing a tragedy, it is better to make the leading characters with whom the audience will sympathize likeable and able to retain sympathy through to the last curtain. In order to attain this end, we have carefully written plays revolving about a star. Actors want that kind of role, for it is easier to play and is more ingratiating to the audience. Some actors will refuse an unsympathetic part.

Rachel Crothers, author of "He and She," had great difficulty in producing that play, for

the leading feminine character loses sympathy in the last act. Three actresses attempted this. role at various times, and each in turn quit. They maintained that they did not want to impersonate a character with whom the audience would not unhesitatingly sympathize and whom it would not like; not that there is au unhappy ending to the play, only that in the plot the wife, the leading feminine character, at the end of the play decides to give up her work as a sculptor in which art she excels her husband-in order to take better care of her well-nigh grown-up daughter. The audience was not in sympathy with such. a procedure, these actresses claimed, and so they refused to continue in the role. Finally Miss Crothers brought the play to New York. City, herself essaying the lead, but "He and She enjoyed only a brief run.

This matter of sympathy, it is thus seen, is a vital consideration in every story, cinema, or play. Sympathy must be directed to give unity; so handled it can be used as a device to create interest and suspense. Lastly in the photoplay and drama sympathy is to be considered from the actor's point of view, in order to make good acting parts. All in all, this matter of sympathy is very important. It is a retoucher of the photograph which blurs out the unimportant and plays up the main features of your story or play. DENVER, Colo.

David Raffelock.

William McFee, who is a nautical engineer as well as an author, says: "Strictly speaking, the word knot means a nautical mile an hour. It is correct to say: 'She is steaming at ten knots.' It is incorrect to say: 'She is doing ten knots an hour."'"

- The New York Evening Post, in defending its use of "Santo Domingo" for San Domingo, "Chili" for Chile, and " Santa Fé " with an accent by saying that it finds author

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tonight I should like to walk around a towered city, blowing a blue silver trumpet." After Miss Lowell got through blowing the blue silver trumpet around the towered city, she might sit down and study a rhetoric or a grammar for a while.

Editors, criticised for what they print as poetry, sometimes retort: "Yes, but you ought to see what we don't print!" As an illustration, the poetry editor of a big city daily has sent to THE WRITER a letter and manuscript that he received. They read : Dear Sir Enclosed find Poem of which I have wrote an am sending you for your inspection to see if it is suitable for publication in your paper, and I also wish you would give me information on how poems or songs are accpted and how much is payed for writeing them I suppose it depends on the song or poem what they bring if it is not suitable for publication will you Please send it back informing me why,

I remain Respectfully Mr

The Ship that was Guided Safely to the Old New England Shore. Verse I The blue waves were mountain high. upon the ocean

When a large vessel looked like a

row boat upon that mountain of blue,
In that large vessel there is a sweet-
heart that will return to you
Some one that will guide you safely
through the roads of life and help
me remember the one that was true
Verse 2
The rains they may beat,

The winds they may blow against
the Cabin door

But the true one feels that the ship

will be guided safely to the shore of Old New England

'Tis there I will stay and roam no more.
Verse 3

The night was dark, the wind was high
The old bough pitched towards the sky
The Captain said, without a sigh "I
will reach the shore or die
His words were bitter and cold, but
his heart was brave and strong
He knew it wouldn't be long before
he would reach the shore.

A writer whose letter is printed in the New York Tribune complains: "It is my exper

ience that editors rarely see many manuscripts sent them. The assistants first read them and measure them by the rules. If they don't fit, no matter how new or original they may be, they are returned with the printed slip: The enclosed is not precisely what the Magazine requires.'" The editors now have the floor.

JOSEPH ANDREW GALAHAD.

Joseph Andrew Galahad, whose poems often appear in Life and other magazines, and who has had two articles in THE WRITER, was born in Portland, Oregon, something more than thirty years ago. His mother died when he was born, and his father a few years afterward. Today he has no living relative, with the exception of a half-sister, with whom he makes his home, and who is devoted to him. He was frail in youth, and the early failing of his eyesight prevented his finishing school. In his early manhood he tried to get into the army and after three attempts succeeded, and served for some years on the Mexican border. He still refers to that time as "glory years." He received his discharge and intended to reenlist, but a violent attack of pneumonia left his lungs badly impaired, and since then his life has been a hand-to-hand fight with death. For ten years now he has been in an almost continuous state of pain, and operation after operation as last resorts have not in any way lightened his trials. He has not left his bed since May, 1920, and now sees no one, living on a wide sleeping porch, entirely cut off from the world. Mr. Galahad has been avid for books all his life, and has spent more time in reading than, perhaps, was entirely good for him, but in this way he has gained a wider education than many of those who sought their education in the classroom. He is particularly fond of reading poetry, and Poe, Browning, Tennyson, Keats, Shakspere, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, and others have been close to him. From his boyhood he has held Kipling in high esteem; of late years his favorite has been John Masefield. He began writing poetry himself when he was ten years

old, and he has kept at it continuously ever since. He has a great love of the out-ofdoors, and has spent many hours on the beach with some of his beloved poets, and a pencil and a scrap of paper. Most of his earlier poetic efforts he has destroyed, but here and there a few remain. Mr. Galahad began to sell his poetry about five years ago, and now he has but one ambition -to write steadily on and on, and to leave behind him something of the beauty of life and living that he sees with such clear eyes. All that is tolerance; and unselfish love of his brother man; all that is kindly and gentle; all that is born of sincerity, beauty, and truth; all that is steady and unflinching in the stand he has taken toward his faith in his friends and in God all these things belong to Joseph Andrew Galahad. John Bolling.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.

LITERARY SHOP TALK.

[This department is open to readers of THE WRITER for the relation of interesting experiences in writing or in dealing with editors, and for the free discussion of any topic connected with literary work. Contributors are requested to be brief.]

Writers who undertake to deal with facts should know them and not depend upon imagination. For instance, take the story in which the writer says: "The certified wireless operator spelled out, letter for letter, 'Where are you bound from?' to the quaint craft lying in the harbor." A wireless operator would never think of spelling out, "Where are you bound from?" In the International Signal Code, a code of wireless abbreviations with which all operators are familiar, the abbreviation of the question is "ORF," and the answer, supposing the ship comes from Shanghai, is "ORF Shanghai." In wireless work an operator knowing only English may, by using the international code, carry on a limited conversation with an operator knowing only German, French, Italian, or any other language. The abbreviations have the same meaning in every language, and the operator's code book, if he does not know them by heart, will tell him what they mean.