his job), the photoplay-loving
public knows only too well that there is a lamentably close
relationship between 'A Wall Street Romance,' shown at the Novelty
Theatre last night, and 'Love and Business,' produced by the same
company and 'featured' at the same theatre three weeks ago. Therefore
the constant demand in nine out of every ten studios for good material
from outside writers. Since the writer of photoplay plots must write
action-stories constantly, and since, as has been said, the staff
writers are just as apt to run dry of new plots as are any other
writers, it follows that there must be a market at all times for the
really original and highly interesting story, no matter by whom
written. If the big photoplay producing companies are to remain in
business, if their various stars are to be kept working, and their
rate of production up to schedule, there must continue to be a fairly
steady flow of good, new stories into the scenario department."[2]

[Footnote 2: "What Chance Has the 'Outside' Writer?" by Arthur Leeds,
_Moving Picture Stories_, October 5, 1917.]

No, the field is not overcrowded--with _capable_ writers; nor is it
likely to be. With incapable amateurs it undoubtedly is. Every walk of
life has contributed its share to the thousands who are _trying_ to
write photoplays. Hundreds fail because they are both illiterate and
totally unfitted for the work. Hundreds more struggle on without a
sufficient knowledge of dramatic values and plot building, not knowing
precisely what can and what can not be presented successfully in the
silent drama. Lacking this knowledge, it is impossible to succeed. But
the great majority of the ones who fail, and who, otherwise, would
almost certainly have succeeded sooner or later, owe their failure to
their inability to hit upon and develop original, ingenious and
dramatic or truly humorous plots and plot-situations. Many a man of
brains and of excellent education who in any other calling might
easily make his mark, finds himself totally unable to win success in
short-story writing and photoplay writing simply because, not having
an imaginative or (in the literary sense) creative mind, he neglects
the thousand-and-one opportunities to stock that unimaginative mind
with ideas furnished wholesale by the life he sees about him every
day, or by available books of reference, magazines and daily papers;
and, last, but far from least in importance, the pictured stories seen
on the