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350 THE STOLEX STORY talk wildly about suits and all that sort of thing. It may be that an Editor, having to write a story a week as part of his contract, has re- membered, consciously or sub-consciously, the idea of your story, but it is far more likely that the Editor found a script he liked and put it in work. It is possible that you and the author of this second story both derived inspiration from the same source and tliat the other did his work in better fashion. His story was taken because of its de- velopment where yours was passed over and forgotten. We have seen in a single week's batch of stories three to five scripts so nearly alike that they might all have been copied from a common source. More than that, perhaps two or three more came in the next week and the next. If any one of these stories had been purchased, possibly fifty other authors would have cried that they had been robbed. They make no allowance for the fact that the idea is commonplace and like- ly to suggest itself to anyone. They-know only that their story is just like that on the screen except a few scenes where the Editor had fixed it up. And that is just where the answer lies. The "fixing up" was done to the same idea by another author more careful or more experienced and his idea sold on that fixing up. 4. A farcical story was written and sent direct to a producer in the field nearly a thousand miles from the studio, the work being done by an author another hundred miles from the home office. The story was produced and immediately another writer declared that she had been robbed as she had sent that story to the studio some time before. Investigation showed that she had sent such a story in after the director had gone south. There was no possibility by which the other author or the director could have seen this script, and the fact was explained to her, but immediately she amended her com- plaint to add the charge that her idea had been sent the other author, who really had worked over one of his old fiction stories written and published about eight years previously. 5. It is inconceivable that of the thousands of scripts turned out yearly by authors many of whom are not practiced hands at plot devising there should not be much duplication of idea. It may be that your idea has been duplicated by another, but with a better technical development, so that the other is taken where yours is de- clined. It may be that the other was in work when yours was sent back and that the editor did not advise you of this fact. 6. In time most authors encounter a duplicated story under cir- cumstances that make it impossible that their idea has been stolen. After that they are cured of this hallucination, but few are immune from an attack at some time in their writing experience. 7. Give the Editors the benefit of the doubt. The probabilities are that they are without blame in the matter. No matter what the manager of the picture theatre may tell you, or the man who used to work for a company says, the chances are that neither knows any more about it than you do. You seem to want to have your doublts confirmed and it is easier to say "Yes" than to argue "No."