so changed and reconstructed the original
that it is absolutely yours.

Here is a paragraph by Mr. Eugene V. Brewster, in _Motion Picture
Magazine_, of which he is editor: "It is extremely difficult to think
out a plot that has not been done before. You may not have seen it
before, you may have invented the whole thing out of your brain, but
the probabilities are that the manufacturers have done the same thing,
with slight variations, time and time again, and that the same idea
has been submitted to them dozens of times. You may think you have
worked out something entirely new, but you should remember that the
regular writers employed by the manufacturers have been reading and
thinking for years in an effort to devise something new, and that they
have been trained to do this very thing."

True, it _is_ difficult to think out a plot that has not been done
before; but this very fact, instead of discouraging the writer, should
offer him the greater incentive to discover original ideas for his
stories. That the manufacturers are once in a while forced to make
over their old plays should convince the photoplaywright that they are
more than willing to buy new ones if they are the kind they are
looking for, and that he should study the market to see what the
manufacturers want, and then write the kind they _are_ looking for.

Lastly, we would say most emphatically that the staff-writers employed
by the different companies have absolutely no advantage over the
trained and intelligent free-lance author in the production of
original plays. It is just as hard to think up original plots if one
is on the salary list of one of the manufacturers as it is for you who
do your work at home and turn out only one script a month. The
important fact is, that the staff-writer would never have been offered
the position he holds had not the editor recognized his ability to
keep up a fairly steady output of plays with plots and technical
points of more than average merit. He was an original writer _before_
he became a member of the staff, _not because_ he is in the employ of
the producer.

The field is wide and growing, but nowhere is there room for
untrained, incompetent, hit-or-miss dabblers. The man who is in
earnest, who keeps in touch with what is going on in the trade, who
watches the pictures to gain ideas and inspiration, who studies the
life about him to find plot-suggestions and motives, and who, once
started, keeps at it--workin