“The ability to create a plot from this idea,” we have stated as the second important quality. “Plot”--there is the stumbling-block that halts the majority of beginners. “The biggest defect of the plays submitted by outsiders,” says Lawrence McCloskey, a photoplay editor who has handled thousands of such manuscripts, “is that they do not contain real plots. They are usually abstract incidents, more or less interesting, but without complications sufficient to hold the attention of an audience. Or else they are in the nature of long histories, telling the life stories of their characters, without definite beginning, climax, or ending.” What is plot? In Editor McCloskey’s sentence you have the outlines of a definition. It is not an abstract incident, or even a series of such incidents. It is a story woven around a central theme, which is usually a crisis in the lives of the characters. It has a definite beginning, which is at the time when the causes are born which gradually increase in strength and at the last give rise to the events which produce the climax, the height of the suspense and interest. It has a definite ending, which should come as soon as it has been determined whether the crisis overwhelms the characters or whether they pass through it successfully. The ideal plot is the plot of struggle, whether physical or mental. The struggle may be that of two men for the favor of a girl, a poor man against starvation, an avaricious one for wealth, or it may be the struggle of a woman to keep steadfast her faith in a worthless husband. The climax is the point at which the struggle becomes most bitter, the outcome of which is to decide whether the characters win or lose in their fight against odds. The climax may be in sight to the audience soon after the beginning; in fact, a grouping of the early incidents so that the audience fears the climax produces suspense, but the outcome, the author’s solution of his climax, must be in doubt. Or, if it be sensed by the audience, the means by which he is to bring it about must be the author’s secret until he is ready to say the word. There are students who go further in the analysis of the subdivisions of a plot, and in dividing the different types, but the beginner who uses this definition as a test of his stories will not go wrong.