Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1893 — Device of a Story Writer. [ARTICLE]

Device of a Story Writer.

Ponson du Terrial, a French story writer for newspapers, invented a singular device in order to prevent confusion in his numerous plots. His practice was to dress up small wooden dolls to represent the several characters in his stories, and to place each set of figures in position on its own stage. Whenever a new installment of the romance was called for, he would thus see at a glance how and where he had left the children of his brain when he last wrote of them. But even this ingenious scheme was not without its disadvantages, for it is related that he once killed off one of his heroes, without removing from the board the doll that represented the character, and, consequently, the young ruan reappeared in the story, much to the astonishment of the readers who had so recently mourned his loss.—[New York News.