Suspense! Ah, there’s the rub! To tell a dramatic story by means of pictures to a miscellaneous collection of movie fans, wise in the niceties of this new method of narration, in such a way that the interest of the on-lookers is won at the outset, maintained throughout succeeding scenes, and intensified as the climax is reached, is to accomplish a feat requiring a combination of technical skill and imaginative inspiration that places a real triumph of the continuity writer’s art high upon the list of worth-while creative achievements. That such a large percentage of picture-plays have failed to satisfy the demand of audiences for drama that stresses the Inevitable, conforms to the logic underlying real life, and preserves to the final screen-curtain the suspense that it is the mission of dramaturgic art to beget is not strange, therefore, when we take into consideration the natural and acquired powers demanded of the ideal continuity writer. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that the scenario-maker has been, and will continue to be, blamed for shortcomings of the screen that cannot be justly laid at his door. He is more or less at the mercy of the director and the film-cutter, a victim frequently of exigencies against which his devotion to the underlying principles of dramatic exposition cannot prevail. A picture play that may be effectively complete when presented in a metropolitan theatre may be so eviscerated for provincial use that the continuity writer, lauded in the cities, is often forced to undergo unjustified suburban censure. But, as is suggested in another chapter, the comparatively new art of the continuity writer is bound eventually to overcome its earlier handicaps and, in its bestowal upon the race of a novel medium through which creative genius can manifest itself, will beget a type of super-scenario-maker to which the screen’s future splendid achievements must be, of necessity, largely due.