The main incidents of a prominent court trial may supply you with an idea for a strong, original story, but you should not think of following the facts of the case just as they occurred in real life.  To copy a story from a newspaper item and to get a story from the same source are two entirely different things.  Press clippings, as an author once remarked, “are not first aid to the feeble minded.  They are merely sign-posts that point the way to the initiated.”  And another has said:  “It is the art of seeing and appreciating just a line or two in some newspaper item and working it up that makes newspaper study pay.”

The really practised writer realizes that the best plot-suggestions are to be found in the shorter news items—­the five-to-ten-line fillers—­and not in the big sensations of the day.  But then, the practised writer can find ideas anywhere.

One thing of which the beginner should beware is the practise of writing stories from plots suggested by friends.  As a rule, the young writer, not yet having learned to think for himself, is quick to accept these friendly suggestions.  He is told the outline of an unusually good story and straightway turns it into a photoplay.  It is accepted, but a short while after it has been released someone recognizes in it a short-story that has appeared in a popular magazine.  It is not difficult to imagine the result—­before very long the film manufacturing company is compelled, whether by a sense of justice or by law, to make settlement with the magazine company holding the copyright on the original story, and the beginner finds that he is decidedly persona non grata with at least one manufacturer.  Should the matter become generally known, he is likely to find himself barred by other companies also, as every editor has an inborn dread of the plagiarist, even though he may have been innocent of any thought of wrong doing.

5.  Keeping Well Informed

The best means of avoiding unconscious plagiarism and the use of old material is to keep informed as fully as you possibly can of what is released week by week.  You cannot be too well posted on what is going on in the photoplay business-world.  Your selling-average will be higher as a result.  The editor knows what is old and what is new, and so must you, though doubtless not so perfectly.  Every editor’s office is stocked with books, reference works, magazines, trade publications, and files of newspaper clippings.  These all contain something of practical value in working up the bare ideas bought from contributors or in writing his own story—­for editors as well as producers often write photoplays.