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78 HOW TO GET A PLOT he was fired that same evening. The story was suggested by the first, but they were utterly unlike in plot as well as facts. 23. It is permissible to derive inspiration but not plot from tlie work of another, as will be more clearly set forth in the chapter on copyrights. To take more than this will be stealing. There may be no copyright prosecution, but the author may be recognized as a "bor- rower" and his work avoided in future. In this connection it should be remembered that most studios have someone whose business it is to keep in touch with new literature as well as others who know the classics. If a story does by any chance escape scrutiny, there will be many who will write the company advising them of the theft. 24. Old vaudeville acts, the so-called nigger acts, specialties, sketches and similar material of the stage are known to Editors and can be used only with material alteration. They are made but generally they are not purchased, but written by someone in the studio who has a good memory. This is particularly true of comedy. 25. Sometimes inversion works well. It will recall Charles A. Dana's advice to a new reporter whom he told that a stor^^ of a dog biting a man was not very newsy, but if the man should bite the dog it would be worth a column. You expect a man to enter through the front door when he comes home. If you can find some reason why he should climb to the roof and drop through the chimney you have a better or at least a more original plot. In the same way if a bridal couple are married and live happily ever after it does not make as good a story as though the man turned from the altar to find that he was not mar- ried at all because the bride was a man or because she was already married, and her husband, whom all supposed to have been lost at sea, was waiting at the entrance to the church. Inversion is a decidedly valuable aid, but it should be used only by those who have first learned to write straight plots, since it requires an ample knowledge of plotting to turn plots inside out and make the wrong side look like the right. 26. In the same way combination of ideas or combination with in- version works well when expertly done. Straight combination is the merging of two ideas to obtain a third. To take a magazine story, here is the original plot of one story: A grain speculator corners wheat, forcing up the price of bread. He is kidnapped and held prisoner. Fabulous prices are charged for bread and water, and he must pay these to eat and drink. When he has disgorged his profits, he is permitted to depart. This story is perhaps too old to be remembered by many. A second story has been used more than once with slightly different treatment. These are the essential facts. There is a shipwreck. A financier who has been amusing himself tellins: the crew of the niceties of high finance is cast ashore. He is too flabby to do hard work. The men salvage much of the cargo, hut anplving his own laws of supply and demand make him pay fancy prices and are taken off the island comparatively affluent.