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CHAPTER XLIX 245 precisely the type of plays in which they appear to the best advan- tage and he knows the supporting players and their capabilities. He knows the style of story preferred by each director and the style of story that is preferred by the business heads. In a word he has the advantage of being able to give the studio precisely what it wants, working from knowledge and not from guesswork or deduction. If he has a costume play he may change the period of that play to. suit costumes on hand or easily obtainable. If the company is going to Cuba or Nova Scotia he can write or change stories to fit the new location. 6. From this it would appear that the free lance writer has but small chance to sell his stories. He would have, were it not for the fact that no one man or small body of men can supply sufficient variety within the production limits. Each man has his own pe- culiar mannerisms of thought. He is apt to write stories of a general type, no matter how he seeks to vary the idea. To obtain variety the free lance writers are invited to submit. The best of the work offered is purchased to give change from the studio-produced scripts just as a coffee may be blended or real whiskey may ,be added to a synthetic product to improve the flavor. The staff cannot think of all the good ideas nor of a sufficiently wide variety of ideas. They are there to insure a supply of scripts for the directors, no matter what may be the supply from the outside, but they are also there to get into practical shape the stories that come in from the outside; good in idea but impossible in form. Naturally they must be both writers and reconstruction men. It is hardly possible that room will be found for a man who cannot write his own stories in an emer- gency, and the editor knows that the man who cannot think of stories for himself lacks the proper imagination to grasp the stories of others. 7. ]Most staff writers are selected from the ranks of the men who can do the best average work on the outside, whose submitted ideas are seldom below a certain standard. 8. Adaptations are another matter. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by purchasing adaptations from the free lances. The staff man can write to suit the studio more exactly than can the out- sider. If an adaptation is to be made he is told precisely how it is to be made and he turns in precisely that sort of a script. If the story is taken from American history, the studio has several copies. It would be foolish to let a staff man lie idle and give some outsider twenty-five or fifty dollars for the story of how Washington crossed the Delaware. If it is standard fiction the studio probably knows of it. Some manufacturers even have men who watch for the expiration of copyright on desirable books that they may use them at the first possible moment that it can ,be done without cost. If it is copy- righted material, the company prefers to deal directly with the holder of the rights and not through some outside author who may have