Large Pipes]

Now, however, after both have acquired this knowledge of screen
requirements, the trained fiction writer and the untrained photoplay
writer cease to be on common ground. The writer of novels and
short-stories has the advantage of years of--training, is the best
word, meaning, in the present instance, both experience and special
education. He has a tutored imagination; he has the plot-habit; he has
an eye trained to picture dramatic situations; he sees the
possibilities for a strong, appealing story in an incident in everyday
life that to ninety-nine other people would be merely an incident seen
for a moment and in a moment forgotten; he has at his command a dozen
different ways of assisting himself to discover plot-germs for his
stories--he is, in short, a workman knowing exactly what to do with
the tools already in his possession, and when he acquires new tools he
can, after some practise, use them with equal proficiency and skill.
Furthermore, there can be no doubt that, once each has mastered the
working rules of photoplay construction, the chances for quick and
continued success are quite evidently in favor of the trained fiction
writer--notwithstanding the fact that one man in a thousand without
any previous knowledge of writing may become extremely successful.


_3. What Chance Has the Novice?_

Should the foregoing fact discourage the novice who has not had this
previous literary training? The answer is, emphatically, YES! It
should, it ought to--_unless_ (and this is the secret of it all),
unless he has ideas, and is the kind of novice who vows with every
grain of determination in his make-up that he will soon cease to be a