We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
CHAPTER XXI 69 If you would see a fairly complete catalogue they are all to be found in Mrs. L. Case Russell's "Here Lies," a graveyard of antiquated plot suggestions, not one of which cannot be lifted from its last cold home if there is breathed into it the resurrecting spirit of the new twist. The new twist is all that saves the complete list of plots from being prohibited. 6. The new twist is simply the viewing of an old plot from a really new angle. Stories have been told for years of the man who was faithful unto death. In Chapter XVIII are given two workings of the old plot made new through a war coloring. In the same way any old story can be taken and given a new setting and trimmed up so that it looks new, because! the work has been skillfully done. Old schoolbooks loved to tell of the little Dutch boy who stopped the leak in the dyke. He froze to death as he held his post, but he saved all Holland. He does not differ materially from the wireless operator who sends out the SOS from the sinking ship, nor do either of them vary greatly from Horatius at the bridge. The basic plot is unchanged. The top structure is new and modern. Paul Revere made a gallant ride, but he differs little from the engineer who rushes his locomotive through the burning forest to rescue the helpless, and presently we shall have aeroplanes performing the same errand of mercy or one better adjusted to the carrying capacity of the winged ship. 7. At one time it was a popular device to do Shakspeare into modern dress. Leai' was given a dressing gown in an attic instead of the setting Shakspeare used, but the basic plot was the same that Shak- speare took from "The History of the Kings of Britain." It is all a matter of handling, and unless this is well done the Editor will not see why he should pay top prices for indifferent work. 8. The true story is so dangerous a trap that it will be more fully treated in the next chapter, but it may be said here that it should be avoided. The new story is apt to be old and is not new merely! because you never heard it before. 9. To sell a story you must have either a new plot or a new use of an old idea. Since the new idea scarcely^eems to e.xist, you must learn to make old ideas look so new that spectators are convinced that they are new. You must take part of one story and part of another, put a new thought with the two old factors and get something that will not look like either of your sources. It has been shown above that a story that sounds modern and up to date may be traced back until it becomes lost in antiquity. Stories in which a person is persuaded that he is not himself but a potentate as in "The Taming of the Shrew" are generally traced back to the Elizabethan period, but it can be taken further back than that to the story of Hassan the Wag in the "Thousand and One Nights," and most of these Arabian and Indian tales are but a (then) new arrangement of still older legends, 10. Some themes have been so sadly overworked that only the most brilliant and highly original treatment can cause them to appear to