素材 (sù cái): source material (in literature and art)

To write this novel, he spent three years going deep into rural areas and collected a large amount of first-hand material.

The material for this film comes from a true event, a point the director emphasized many times in interviews.

The painter often goes to the vegetable market to sketch, using ordinary people's life scenes as creative material.

Before writing your thesis, you need to organize all the relevant literature materials first; otherwise, your argument will lack support.

The screenwriter used amusing anecdotes from childhood memories as material and incorporated them into a warm family comedy.