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.
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