The same rule, naturally, should be followed by the young writer whose
home is in a large city. If you can turn out a good, original story
truthfully portraying New York's East Side, Broadway, or Wall Street;
Chicago's "Loop" district; the social and political life of
Washington, or any other such background, there is an editor waiting
to purchase that story.
All this is _not_ to say that you must write only of things which are,
or have been, within the range of your personal experience. Many a
writer has successfully built his story on well-verified second-hand
knowledge. If you are not familiar with the subject at first-hand, and
cannot get direct, personal information, get the knowledge from books
and periodicals, _but get it exactly--squeeze the last drop of
information_ from the subject. If there is no library in your town,
search your own as well as borrowed books and magazines until you find
at least enough correct data to enable you to turn out a script that
will not betray second-hand knowledge. Jules Verne had only indirect
knowledge of most of the countries which he depicted, yet to read his
books one would believe that he had travelled everywhere. Because he
had read up on and investigated his subjects he was able to produce
such thoroughly convincing, and always interesting, books as "A Tour
of the World in Eighty Days," "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,"
and "The Clipper of the Clouds," in which he wrote, and apparently
authoritatively, of almost every country on the globe.
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