In this connection it is important to note that the photoplaywright cannot be too careful in respecting the rights of publishers and authors in their fictional properties.  To many writers it is not clear precisely what rights an author parts with when he, without any other stipulation, sells a short-story or a longer piece of fiction outright to a magazine, so he must be careful in offering moving-picture rights to a company unless he is sure, from a clear understanding with the magazine publisher, that he is at liberty to do so.  If these points are not altogether in the clear to you, nevertheless it is certainly wise to be definite in securing your own copyright on stories, when that is possible, by agreeing with your publisher for the release to you of all dramatic rights.

To return once more to the subject of originality, in W.W.  Jacobs’s story, “The Monkey’s Paw,” the thrillingly terrible crisis begins when the father, much against his will, makes use of the second wish granted to him as the possessor of the fatal paw and wishes his dead son alive again.  In the night he and his wife are aroused by a familiar knocking on their door.  The mother, believing it to be their son returned to life, rushes to let him in, but while she is trying to unlock the door, the husband, remembering the terrible condition of the son’s body, he having been crushed to death by some machinery, utters the third and last wish.  The knocking ceases, and when the woman succeeds in getting the door open, the street lamp flickering opposite is shining on a quiet and deserted road.

Substantially the same plot is used in a story published in The Blue Book, “The Little Stone God,” the principal difference being that, when those in the house hear the knocking on the door, they refuse, in utter terror, to answer the summons.  The knocking ceases; and the next morning they learn that a telegraph messenger boy called at the house with a message on the previous night and, after knocking several times in vain, went away again.

The foregoing are only a few examples of plots which strongly resemble one another.  How it comes that they resemble one another it is not our province to discuss any further—­the point is that if your story is inspired by the work of another writer, give it such an absolutely original treatment that you can conscientiously refer to it as original.

“Don’t waste time in rewriting other people’s brain-children, for the scenario-editor goblins will catch you sure as fate, and once you get a reputation for plagiarism, not a film-maker will dare to buy any manuscript from you for fear it is copyrighted."[33]

[Footnote 33:  Herbert Case Hoagland, How to Write a Photoplay.]

In photoplays as in novels and short-stories nothing is so disappointing as a story whose title is inviting, and the first few pages—­or scenes, as the case may be—­interesting, but which soon begins to reveal itself as nothing more than a story with which we are already familiar, though slightly changed in a few particulars in the hope that it may be welcomed as an original work.  We say “slightly changed,” for if the all-important new twist is not given the story cannot escape detection as being what it is—­a mere copy of the original.