Plot variation

Plot variation
AnExample from Fiction
As a concrete example, let us compare Poe's short- story, "The Cask of Amontillado," with Conan Doyle's "The New Catacomb." In both of these the theme is revenge, brought about by having the one seeking to entomb his enemy alive—the same theme, precisely, as Balzac had used earlier in "La Grande Breteche," and Edith Wharton in later years in "The Duchess at Prayer." In "The Cask of Amontillado," Montresor desires to be revenged upon Fortunato because the latter has both injured and insulted him. Exactly how he has been insulted we are not told; nor do we know the extent of his "injuries." It is sufficient for the purpose of the story that we know that he has been roused sufficiently to make him eager to compass the death of his enemy—who is none the less his enemy although, up till the very moment when Fortunato realizes the awful fate that is to be his, he (Montresor) pretends friendship for his victim. After Montresor's revenge has been accomplished by walling up Fortunato in a subterranean vault, the perpetrator feels no remorse. He has completed what he set out to do, and is satisfied. He has "punished with impunity" and he has made the fact that he is the redresser felt by "him who has done the wrong."
What chiefly impresses the reader is the lack of motive for Montresor's crime—for crime it surely is, whatever his real or fancied wrongs—other than the motive of a madman. At the conclusion our sympathy
The dramatic intensity of Doyle's story is just as great as in that written by Poe; the "hero" is as much deserving of our sympathy as the "villain" merits our condemnation ; and the treatment of the theme, from first to last, makes Doyle's an absolutely original story, although there is little doubt that it was suggested, or, at least influenced, either by the one written many years before by the American master of the short-story, or by Balzac's remarkable tale referred to above.
The discriminating photoplaywright will have no difficulty in making the application of this illustration of how an original story may grow out of an old theme. But be careful not to turn this liberty into an excuse for adhering closely to a borrowed theme.
2. Plagiarism
In justice to writers in general it is only fair to believe thatmost cases of plagiarism are quite unintentional. The fault usually is in the writer's memory. Turn your eye inward, and form the habit of tracing the origin of your inspirations—sometimes it may chagrin you to find how near to unconscious imitation you have been. You may get the inspiration for a story and write it ;it may be accepted and produced; then, after its release, some friend will casually remark that it reminds him of a Vitagraph picture that he saw a year or two ago. And only after he has called your attention to it do you realize that that Vitagraph story, seen and forgotten, was the source of your "inspiration"—and perhaps you have committed an unconscious theft.
his pockets with different delicacies from the table, and has taken them home to his sick grandchild. Subsequently it is discovered that the Hindoo servant has taken the jewel, and he is arrested and punished. In the moment that the attention of the guests was directed elsewhere, after the old gentleman had laid it on the table, the servant had snatched up the jewel and dropped it into a half-filled water glass, where it remained undiscovered while the servant was searched with the others. It is pretty generally known that an unset pure diamond, if dropped into a glass of water, becomes invisible.
Some time during 1911, one of the producing companies released a picture entitled "The Class Reunion." To get the plot of the photoplay story, simply substitute an impecunious professor for the old gentleman in the short-story. Instead of the Hindoo servant, have one of the pupils—if our memory serves—turn out to be the thief, and have him drop the jewel— which is a ruby, and not a diamond—into a glass of red wine instead of into a glass of water. In all other particulars the two stories were identical.
Only a few months later, this plot cropped up again —in fiction form—in a prominent American magazine. Then, in the release of another well-known company, of January 13, 1913, it again did service in the photoplay "The Thirteenth Man," where the inevitable banquet is the annual reunion of "The Thirteen Club." The theme has now become so hackneyed that, as the list given in Chapter XVI shows, it is no longer serviceable for photoplay purposes.
curing your own copyright on stories, when that is possible, by agreeing with your publisher for the release to you of all dramatic rights.
To return once more to the subject of originality, in W. W. Jacobs's story, "The Monkey's Paw," the thrillingly terrible crisis begins when the father, much against his will, makes use of the second wish granted to him as the possessor of the fatal paw and wishes his dead son alive again. In the night he and his wife are aroused by a familiar knocking on their door. The mother, believing it to be their son returned to life, rushes to let him in, but while she is trying to unlock the door, the husband, remembering the terrible condition of the son's body, he having been crushed to death by some machinery, utters the third and last wish. The knocking ceases, and when the woman succeeds in getting the door open, the street lamp flickering opposite is shining on a quiet and deserted road.
Substantially the same plot is used in a story published in The Blue Book,"The Little Stone God," the principal difference being that, when those in the house hear the knocking on the door, they refuse, in utter terror, to answer the summons. The knocking ceases; and the next morning they learn that a telegraph messenger boy called at the house with a message on the previous night and, after knocking several times in vain, went away again.
The foregoing are only a few examples of plots which strongly resemble one another. How it comes that they resemble one another it is not our province to discuss any further—the point is that if your story
is inspired by the work of another writer, give it such an absolutely original treatment that you can conscientiously refer to it as original.
"Don't waste time in rewriting other people's brainchildren, for the scenario-editor goblins will catch you sure as fate, and once you get a reputation for plagiarism, not a film-maker will dare to buy any manuscript from you for fear it is copyrighted." 1
In photoplays as in novels and short-stories nothing is so disappointing as a story whose title is inviting, and the first few pages—or scenes, as the case may be— interesting, but which soon begins to reveal itself as nothing more than a story with which we are already familar, though slightly changed in a few particulars in the hope that it may be welcomed as an original work. We say "slightly changed," for if the all- important new twist is not given the story cannot escape detection as being what it is—a mere copy of the original.
"The formula upon which the plot is built is of venerable antiquity," says Frederick Taber Cooper, in The Bookman, in reviewing a certain novel. Then, although he commends the purpose of the story, he concludes : "But the book is not really an important one, because there have been scores of books equally well written which have already said much the same thing. The author has not had any new twist to give to the old theme—and, worst of all, we know from wearisome past experience just how the plot will work
out, just how inevitable it is that Kenneth will achieve fame, and his father will be reconciled, and Jean, convinced of her injustice, will tearfully plead for forgiveness." Don't lay yourself open to such a criticism.
3.WhatIs Originality?
"Popularly, we call that man original who stands on his own feet, uses the thoughts of others only to stimulate and supplement his own, and who does his best to color borrowed thought with the hue of his own personality. Such a man, if he be not a creator, is at least a thinker, and a thinker need never be a literary thief. The entrance of any thought that will set the mind to working should be welcome indeed." I
Speaking of the way in which a writer may take an old plot and work it over, Frank E. Woods, the former "Spectator" of the Dramatic Mirror, says :
"That is precisely what every author does in nine cases out of ten. He utilizes and adapts the ideas he has gained from various sources. It is when he follows another author's sequence or association of ideas or arrangement of incidents so closely as to make his work appear to be an obvious copy or colorable imitation, that he is guilty."
4. The New TwistIllustrated
As an example of the way in which an old theme may be given anew twist, let us compare the plot of
Browning's "Pippa Passes"—which, by the way, was wonderfully well produced in motion-picture form by the Biograph Company in 1909—and James Oppenheim's photoplay, "Annie Crawls Upstairs," produced by the Edison Company.
In each, the theme is the spiritual redemption of several different characters through the influence of the heroine, who in each case accomplishes this worthy end quite unconsciously. Pippa, the mill-girl, spends her holiday wandering through the town and over the countryside, singing her innocent and happy-hearted songs. It is the effect of those songs upon those who hear them that gives the poem- story its dramatic moments and makes up the plot. . In Mr. Oppenheim's story, the heroine, Annie, is a tiny, crippled child who, wandering out of the tenement kitchen where her half- drunken father is quarreling with his wife, crawls painfully up one flight of stairs after another, innocently walking into each flat in turn, and in each doing some good by her mere presence. On one floor a wayward girl is so affected by meeting with the crippled child that she remains at home with her mother instead of going out to join a party of friends of questionable character; on another floor she is instrumental in preventing an ex-convict from joining his former pals in another crime ; in the flat above, she brings together two lovers who are about to part in anger; in the next flat she comforts a busy dressmaker who has lost patience with and scolded her little girl for being in her way while she is at work, and who realizes on seeing Annie that she should at least be thankful that her
child has health and strength, and does not, therefore, add the care and worry of sickness to the burden of poverty. Finally, on the top floor, a young man, heartsick and weary of the vain search for work in a strange city, coming out of his room finds little Annie asleep, her head resting against the frame of the door. As he carries her down to her own flat, he picks up courage, banishes the thoughts of suicide which a few moments before had filled his brain, and resolves to try again. The picture ends with the mother and father, their quarrel forgotten, bending over the child.
Thus, consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Oppenheim has used the same theme that Browning used; but he has given it a new twist with the introduction of each new incident in the story. The little lame child of the tenements does not seem to speak a word in the picture, and the scene between the two young lovers parting after their quarrel is totally unlike the scene between Ottima and Sebald in Browning's poem, yet we feel that the good influence that changes the heart of the burglar, as he sits there planning the new crime, is the same as that which shakes the guilty wife and her lover when Pippa passes beneath the window of Luca's house, singing:
God'sin his heaven—
All's right with the world!
We have read of a Western script in which the outlaw, wounded and bleeding, is given shelter by the heroine. When the sheriff arrives, he sees the basin containing the bloody water and inquires how it comes there. Even while he is looking at it, the girl cuts her
hand with a knife, and declares that, having cut herself before the Sheriff's arrival, shehas just washed her hand in the basin.
This incident, or situation, is almost identical with one in the Ambrosio Company's "After Fifty Years," which won the first prize of twenty- five thousand francs ($5,000) at the Turin Exhibition, and which showed as one of its many thrilling situations the Italian heroine gashing her hand with a knife held behind her back, to explain to the Austrian soldier who is in search of her lover the presence of blood on her sleeve.
Yet this could not be called a theft, or even a rearrangement of another writer's plot. The plot, characters, and setting were entirely different in each play —it was only that one situation that was made use of ; and it seems likely that it was from the Ambrosio picture, or the account of it, that the author of the Western story got his inspiration. Yet who can really tell? Thoughts are marvellous things, and both writers may have gotten their ideas from some other original—or even conceived them in their own brains.
After all, as has been pointed out, the trouble with many young writers is that they are not content with copying a single situation. They have not been "in the game" long enough to realize either the risk that they are taking or the wrong that they are doing a fellow writer, so they not only adapt to their own needs a strong situation in another's story but precede and follow it with other incidents and situations which
are substantially the same as those surrounding the big situation in the original story.
But giving an old theme a new twist is a trick of the trade that comes only with experience, and experience is gained by practice. Experience and practice soon teach the photoplaywright not to rely too heavily upon the newspaper for new ideas, for almost every day editors receive two or more plots which closely resemble each other, simply because the writers, having all chosen the same theme, have all worked that theme up in the same way—the obvious way, the easiest way, the way that involves the least care, and therefore the least ingenuity.
"Where do the good plots come from, anyhow ?" asks John Robert Moore. "We people in universities often amuse ourselves by tracing stories back to their origins. The trouble is that we often reach the limit of our knowledge, but rarely find the beginning; for the plot seems to be as old as the race. What, then, has been changed in a story which has been raised from a medimval legend to a modern work of art?
"In such cases, the setting and the moral content are almost invariably altered. An absurdly comic story about an Irishman and a monkey, which was current a couple of centuries ago, became 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' in the hands of Poe. The central plot remained much the same, but the whole of the setting and the intellectual content assumed a new and vastly higher significance. 'The Bottle Imp' harks back to the Middle Ages ; but Stevenson made a world
famous story of it by giving it the flavor of the South Sea Islands which he knew so well."
So there are both discouragement and cheer for those who accept the Wise Man's dictum that there is nothing new under the sun. In the one aspect, there seems little chance for the novice since the primary plots are really so few ; but in the other view, fresh arrangements of old combinations are always possible for those who 'see life with open eyes, alert minds, warm hearts, and the resolve to be as original as they can.