Chapter XVI

shows, it is no longer serviceable for photoplay purposes.

Obviously, these facts are cited not to discredit the companies referred to, but solely to emphasize the difference between the genuinely new twist as exemplified in Conan Doyle's "The New Catacomb," and the dangerously close similarity as exhibited in at least one of the two photoplays just referred to as following the plot of the _Strand_ story.

It must not be inferred, however, that all cases in which the themes of short-stories are developed into photoplays with very little change are plagiarisms, either conscious or unconscious. Many important companies are negotiating constantly with the magazines for the right to photodramatize their most suitable short-stories. Sometimes this is done with the consent of the author and the plot of the story used substantially without change, while in other instances the plot is freely changed, only the germ being used. It is particularly in such cases that we must be careful not to charge plagiarism.

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.

"The formula upon which the plot is built is of venerable antiquity," says Frederick Taber Cooper, in _The Bookman_, in reviewing a certain novel. Then, although he commends the purpose of the story, he concludes: "But the book is not really an important one, because there have been scores of books equally well written which have already said much the same thing. The author has not had any new twist to give to the old theme--and, worst of all, we know from wearisome past experience just how the plot will work out, just how inevitable it is that Kenneth will achieve fame, and his father will be reconciled, and Jean, convinced of her injustice, will tearfully plead for forgiveness." Don't lay yourself open to such a criticism.

_3. What Is Originality?_

"Popularly, we call that man original who stands on his own feet, uses the thoughts of others only to stimulate and supplement his own, and who does his best to color borrowed thought with the hue of his own personality. Such a man, if he be not a creator, is at least a thinker, and a thinker need never be a literary thief. The entrance of any thought that will set the mind to working should be welcome indeed."[34]

[Footnote 34: J. Berg Esenwein, _Writing the Short-Story_.]

Speaking of the way in which a writer may take an old plot and work it over, Frank E. Woods, the former "Spectator" of the _Dramatic Mirror_, says:

"That is precisely what every author does in nine cases out of ten. He utilizes and adapts the ideas he has gained from various sources. It is when he follows another author's sequence or association of ideas or arrangement of incidents so closely as to make his work appear to be an obvious copy or colorable imitation, that he is guilty."

_4. The New Twist Illustrated_

As an example of the way in which an old theme may be given a new twist, let us compare the plot of Browning's "Pippa Passes"--which, by the way, was wonderfully well produced in motion-picture form by the Biograph Company in 1909--and James Oppenheim's photoplay, "Annie Crawls Upstairs," produced by the Edison Company.

In each, the theme is the spiritual redemption of several different characters through the influence of the heroine, who in each case accomplishes this worthy end quite unconsciously. Pippa, the mill-girl, spends her holiday wandering through the town and over the countryside, singing her innocent and happy-hearted songs. It is the effect of those songs upon those who hear them that gives the poem-story its dramatic moments and makes up the plot. In Mr. Oppenheim's story, the heroine, Annie, is a tiny, crippled child who, wandering out of the tenement kitchen where her half-drunken father is quarreling with his wife, crawls painfully up one flight of stairs after another, innocently walking into each flat in turn, and in each doing some good by her mere presence. On one floor a wayward girl is so affected by meeting with the crippled child that she remains at home with her mother instead of going out to join a party of friends of questionable character; on another floor she is instrumental in preventing an ex-convict from joining his former pals in another crime; in the flat above, she brings together two lovers who are about to part in anger; in the next flat she comforts a busy dressmaker who has lost patience with and scolded her little girl for being in her way while she is at work, and who realizes on seeing Annie that she should at least be thankful that her child has health and strength, and does not, therefore, add the care and worry of sickness to the burden of poverty. Finally, on the top floor, a young man, heart-sick and weary of the vain search for work in a strange city, coming out of his room finds little Annie asleep, her head resting against the frame of the door. As he carries her down to her own flat, he picks up courage, banishes the thoughts of suicide which a few moments before had filled his brain, and resolves to try again. The picture ends with the mother and father, their quarrel forgotten, bending over the child.

[Illustration: Preparing to Take Three Scenes at Once in a Daylight Studio]

Thus, consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Oppenheim has used the same theme that Browning used; but he has given it a new twist with the introduction of each new incident in the story. The little lame child of the tenements does not seem to speak a word in the picture, and the scene between the two young lovers parting after their quarrel is totally unlike the scene between Ottima and Sebald in Browning's poem, yet we feel that the good influence that changes the heart of the burglar, as he sits there planning the new crime, is the same as that which shakes the guilty wife and her lover when Pippa passes beneath the window of Luca's house, singing:

_God's in his heaven-- All's right with the world!_

We have read of a Western script in which the outlaw, wounded and bleeding, is given shelter by the heroine. When the sheriff arrives, he sees the basin containing the bloody water and inquires how it comes there. Even while he is looking at it, the girl cuts her hand with a knife, and declares that, having cut herself before the Sheriff's arrival, she has just washed her hand in the basin.

This incident, or situation, is almost identical with one in the Ambrosio Company's "After Fifty Years," which won the first prize of twenty-five thousand francs ($5,000) at the Turin Exhibition, and which showed as one of its many thrilling situations the Italian heroine gashing her hand with a knife held behind her back, to explain to the Austrian soldier who is in search of her lover the presence of blood on her sleeve.

Yet this could not be called a theft, or even a re-arrangement of another writer's plot. The plot, characters, and setting were entirely different in each play--it was only that one situation that was made use of; and it seems likely that it was from the Ambrosio picture, or the account of it, that the author of the Western story got his inspiration. Yet who can really tell? Thoughts are marvellous things, and both writers may have gotten their ideas from some other original--or even conceived them in their own brains.

After all, as has 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 mediæval 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.

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