but be sure
that you adhere closely to historical facts. It is far better to spend
a week in the reference room of the public library than to have to
suffer a rebuke from a manufacturer, even though the director be also
to blame for not being familiar with the subject before attempting to
make the picture. And the loss of your prestige may prove harder to
bear than the rebuke.

_5. Write on What Interests You_

Next in importance to writing on a subject with which you are familiar
is to write about that with which you are in sympathy. You cannot
interest your audience unless you yourself are interested in your
theme when the story is written. If you would arouse fire in your
spectators you must first feel fire within you. To write a story
merely because it is timely is not to do yourself justice. Suppose,
for instance, it is about time for a new president to go into office.
It may occur to you that to send in a script bearing upon that timely
subject will be a sure way of "coaxing a check from the editor." You
have some slight knowledge of politics and of Washington life, but
you are not particularly interested in either. You are, however,
anxious to sell a script, so you read up on the subject and work up a
photoplay. The chances are that you will continue to own the script,
for you did not put the snap into it that you would have done had you
been both familiar with your theme and genuinely interested in it.

_6. Write on Unusual Themes_

Many a writer is deterred from developing an unusual theme for fear
that no company will be found to produce it. Enough has been said on
this subject to warn the photoplaywright against writing impracticable
scenes. But with this limitation in view every effort should be made
to strike into untravelled fields. In a day when most of the big
manufacturers have two or three, or even more, field-companies
operating in different parts of the country, when almost every maker
of films has an Eastern and a Western organization, and when several
companies have a "globetrotting" troupe working in some distant part
of the world, there is very little chance of a thoroughly good and
desirable photoplay plot's failing to find acceptance, provided it is
intelligently marketed. No matter where you may live, no matter what
you may write of, if it is good it will sell--_some_ editor is waiting
for it. But you must find that editor.

_7. Write Stories Requiring Only Action_

In selecting