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76 HOW TO GET A PLOT 12. Imagine a circle with a dot in the centre. The dot represents your start or your ending as the case may be. From that dot you can reach any part in the circumference, each point representing a differ- ent ending, and you may go in a straight Hne or waved as will best suit your need. At no time are you required to follow the straight line or to strike any particular point in the circumference of climax. 13. Plotting is much like writing figures. The greater the number of factors used, the greater your choice. There are nine digits and a naught. These in combination can be made to express any sum. With a single figure you have but nine variants. With two you have nine- ty-nine, with three points you have a thousand more. There may be a thousand endings to any start or as many starts to a single ending. It is your task to find a combination that has not been used before. 14. These two forms of plotting are those most commonly used. A third is to take a definite suggestion and see what you can do with it. You tell yourself that you will write about a country parson, a dash- ing actress, a story of army life or something about an automobile. Then you think of all the things you can do and do that which best pleases your fancy. 15. A fourth way is to work from a press clipping or similar sug- gestion. This differs from the preceding method only in that you have more material to start with. This other suggestion may even be some other story if only you will be careful to take a suggestion and not the story itself. You are supposed to get a hint but not a complete plot, just as the press item should suggest something else and not itself if you would avoid the risk of writing something that someone else un- doubtedly will write and try to sell. There never was a promising press clip that has not been seized upon by some would-be author and merely transferred to paper without translation. 16. Every great catastrophe is immediately followed by a flood of stories more or less accurately relating the incident. If a great ocean liner sinks a thousand stories may be written. This is not an exaggeration. There may be one thousand stories actually written dealing with a disaster such as that of the Titanic. The Editor will not take a single one. Unless he has rushed one into production a few hours after the first extra came out, he will be afraid that some other studio will get one out ahead of him. In no case is there time for the free lance author to write and submit such a story with the slightest chance of acceptance. Anything of a like nature will have the same result in proportionate degree. Authors with no imagination will pounce upon these ready-made stories and send them out, perhaps thinly disguised, in the conviction that the story must sell because it is so timely, oblivious to the fact that others must have done the same and to the counter-fact that it will not be timely six months from now, although the film will still be making the rounds of the smaller the- atres then. 17. To get the best results, do not use the clipping for a story but to suggest something else. If an excursion steamer burns to the water