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 all I would say. Your first story is not going to be accepted because it has the grace and polish of a master-hand, but because it has something in it worth the telling. This does not mean that it must be sensational or impossible, by any means, but that it is something out of the rut, something that has not been repeated again and again since the beginning of time, something that shall interest the editor and make the public glad that it has been written.

The prime requisite in the manufacture of all such plots is imagination. You may get your suggestion as you will, in the night-time staring hard into the darkness, from a stray paragraph in a paper, from a scene on the street, or in any other way; but you must dress it up, and smooth off the corners that are impossible, and the edges that are not to be told, and build up the hollow places, all with your imagination.

Your plot must be simple enough to meet the requirements of a short story. In novels and in dramas there are a dozen skeins to be untangled, and a