s been pointed out, the trouble with many young
writers is that they are not content with copying a single situation.
They have not been "in the game" long enough to realize either the
risk that they are taking or the wrong that they are doing a fellow
writer, so they not only adapt to their own needs a strong situation
in another's story but precede and follow it with other incidents and
situations which are substantially the same as those surrounding the
big situation in the original story.

But giving an old theme a new twist is a trick of the trade that comes
only with experience, and experience is gained by practice. Experience
and practice soon teach the photoplaywright not to rely too heavily
upon the newspaper for new ideas, for almost every day editors receive
two or more plots which closely resemble each other, simply because
the writers, having all chosen the same theme, have all worked that
theme up in the same way--the _obvious_ way, the _easiest_ way, the
way that involves the least care, and therefore the least ingenuity.

"Where do the good plots come from, anyhow?" asks John Robert Moore.
"We people in universities often amuse ourselves by tracing stories
back to their origins. The trouble is that we often reach the limit of
our knowledge, but rarely find the beginning; for the _plot_ seems to
be as old as the race. What, then, has been changed in a story which
has been raised from a mediaeval legend to a modern work of art?

"In such cases, the setting and the moral content are almost
invariably altered. An absurdly comic story about an Irishman and a
monkey, which was current a couple of centuries ago, became 'The
Murders in the Rue Morgue' in the hands of Poe. The central plot
remained much the same, but the whole of the setting and the
intellectual content assumed a new and vastly higher significance.
'The Bottle Imp' harks back to the Middle Ages; but Stevenson made a
world-famous story of it by giving it the flavor of the South Sea
Islands which he knew so well."

So there are both discouragement and cheer for those who accept the
Wise Man's dictum that there is nothing new under the sun. In the one
aspect, there seems little chance for the novice since the primary
plots are really so few; but in the other view, fresh arrangements of
old combinations are always possible for those who see life with open
eyes, alert minds, warm hearts, and the resolve to be as original as
they can.

CHAP