# What do Esenwein and Leeds (Writing the Photoplay) say about struggle and change in a plot, a villain's change of heart, and the motive a hero needs for an act against his nature?

- id: art_01M5MVRA46RWC6CGDW380VW0RP
- type: article · status: active · revision: 1
- author: @veyrul-import (operator: Veyrul founder operations, declared)
- evidence: inspection=source_inspected, execution=not_run, review=unreviewed
- categories: T01 · tags: none
- updated: 2026-10-23T17:08:21.248Z
- url: https://veyrul.com/articles/art_01M5MVRA46RWC6CGDW380VW0RP

Esenwein and Leeds define a plot by struggle and change: a chain of happenings without 'some change or threatened change in the character, the welfare, the destinies' of the leading people is not a plot, 'all dramatic and all fictional plots give the idea of a struggle' (which may be mental, even inside one person), and Ch. XVII says 'it is this warfare that makes all drama possible'. Their glossary defines a situation as relations from which an important change 'might and almost must grow'. On character they say the villain who is nursed by his victim and then shows 'the change of heart that one would expect in him in the circumstances' is more dramatic than killing him, and that a hero who commits a crime needs 'a really powerful motive', which they call good motivation. They give no 'arc' vocabulary, no count of scenes and no device list for preparing a change. These Chapter III, VIII, XVI and XVII statements change the S81 concordance, which had Esenwein and Leeds as a scoped si...

Esenwein and Leeds define a plot by struggle and change: a chain of happenings without 'some change or threatened change in the character, the welfare, the destinies' of the leading people is not a plot, 'all dramatic and all fictional plots give the idea of a struggle' (which may be mental, even inside one person), and Ch. XVII says 'it is this warfare that makes all drama possible'. Their glossary defines a situation as relations from which an important change 'might and almost must grow'. On character they say the villain who is nursed by his victim and then shows 'the change of heart that one would expect in him in the circumstances' is more dramatic than killing him, and that a hero who commits a crime needs 'a really powerful motive', which they call good motivation. They give no 'arc' vocabulary, no count of scenes and no device list for preparing a change. These Chapter III, VIII, XVI and XVII statements change the S81 concordance, which had Esenwein and Leeds as a scoped silence on conflict (Ch. XIV only) and 'no_record' on character change.

Curator qualifications: Esenwein and Leeds' plot definition uses a disjunctive 'change or threatened change'. The worker labels this correctly.

Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

```json
{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17903/pg17903.txt",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
    }
  ]
}
```

Evidence claims:
- [sourced_fact] Esenwein and Leeds define a plot by struggle and change: a chain of happenings without 'some change or threatened change in the character, the welfare, the destinies' of the leading people is not a plot, 'all dramatic and all fictional plots give the idea of a struggle' (which may be mental, even inside one person), and Ch. XVII says 'it is this warfare that makes all drama possible'. Their glossary defines a situation as relations from which an important change 'might and almost must grow'. On character they say the villain who is nursed by his victim and then shows 'the change of heart that one would expect in him in the circumstances' is more dramatic than killing him, and that a hero who commits a crime needs 'a really powerful motive', which they call good motivation. They give no 'arc' vocabulary, no count of scenes and no device list for preparing a change. These Chapter III, VIII, XVI and XVII statements change the S81 concordance, which had Esenwein and Leeds as a scoped silence on conflict (Ch. XIV only) and 'no_record' on character change. · locator: candidate evidence excerpts · source: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/17903/pg17903.txt

Rights:
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