Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots

by William Wallace Cook, Paul Collins (Foreword)

A classic how-to manual, William Wallace Cook's Plotto is one writer's personal theory--"Purpose, opposed by Obstacle, yields Conflict"--painstakingly diagrammed through hundreds of situations and scenarios In the 1920s, dime store novelist William Wallace Cook painstakingly diagramed and cataloged his personal writing method―“Purpose, opposed by Obstacle, yields Conflict”―for the instruction and illumination of his fellow authors. His effort resulted in an astonishing 1,462 plot scenarios, and The Master Book of All Plots was born. A how-to manual for plot, hailed by the Boston Globe as “First aid to troubled riters,” Plotto influenced Erle Stanley Gardner, author of the Perry Mason books, and a young Alfred Hitchcock.

At first glance, Plotto operates with a machinelike logic, but from its endless amalgamations writers will find inspiration for narratives with limitless possibility. Open the book to any page to find plots you may never have known existed--from morose cannibals to gun-wielding preachers to phantom automobiles.

Equal parts reference guide and historical oddity, Plotto is sure to amaze and delight writers for another hundred years.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Reference, Language

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

US newspaper reporter and writer, sometimes as by John Milton Edwards, under which name he published The Fiction Factory (1912), a detailed account of his early career in magazine publishing; most of his many stories appeared after the turn of the century in such magazines as The Argosy, some of them only reaching book form after a decade or so, in a stapled format reminiscent of Dime-Novel SF; they are all, however, full-length novels.

Reviews

[Greg]

NaNoWriMo 2012 - November 1.

This isn't a review.

It's November first, so that means it is the start of National Novel Writing Month. I've decided to take part again, but I had no pressing idea that I wanted to write about. So taking the gimmicky quality of writing a novel in one month I have decided to multiply the 'gimmick' by adding two additional gimmicks of my own.

One, I'm going to share the entire novel as I'm writing it, but I'm going to do it in reviews. Obviously, these won't be reviews, but quite a few things I've written aren't so it should all be ok. I'll try to at least choose un-reviewed books that thematically match up in someway to what the days writing is.

Two, I'm using (used really, since I've already mapped out the structure of his train wreck of a story before I sat down to write anything) this book to make all the major plot choices about what I'm going to write in my novel. Well technically this book and a random number generator app that I installed on my phone this afternoon.

This is the start of the novel. I have taken some liberties and started somewhere in the middle of the proscribed series of conflicts and events. But it's a part of the overall structure that this book and chance have laid out for me.

The novel starts with conflict/action (whatever you call it) number 865. A, about to commit an act of folly is abducted by his friend A-2, and held a prisoner as the only means of restraining him. Because of the actions before and after this I have changed A-2 to B-2 (or is it 3?) I know this is breaking with the strict restrains, but it makes much more sense in light of the events leading up to this moment and the ones to follow.

This story is going to be totally ridiculous, I blame myself for putting all choices out of my hands.

This Novel Will be Fucking Awesome (a working title)
by Greg Stahl

“What the fuck were you thinking?” she yelled.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I asked back. Not as calmly as I thought I sounded in my head.

This could go on and on indefinitely. A mobius strip of accusations that each was predicated on us both thinking just about the same exact things, but probably for different reasons. I hope that the reasons were different.

She didn’t answer my question. I didn’t answer hers. She didn’t ask me again. At least not right now. She just walked out of the room, showing with every part of her body how irritated she was at me. But, fuck her. I didn’t ask her to save me. I didn’t ask her to do any of this and seriously, do you think I want to be locked in this fucking basement?

Is this better than death? Couldn’t she just have left me to kill myself in fucking peace.

*

“Are you ready to tell me why you were going to kill yourself?” she asks.

“No. Are you going to tell me why you were going to?” I answer.

“No.”

“Can I please leave?”

“No.” she says. “I can’t let you go. You might do something rash.”

“Maybe I’ll just bash my head in against one of these walls. Cave the front of my head in like a fucking melon. Did you ever think of that?”

“You wouldn’t. You couldn’t do it.”

“Is that a dare.”

“Whatever,” she says.

“What if you go off and kill yourself while I’m trapped down here? What happens to me then?”

“You’ll probably die of dehydration.” She says this very matter of a factly. “But that won’t happen. I’m not going to go off myself, I have to make sure you are ok.”
This is stupid. Maybe it was a week ago. I don’t know how long. There is nothing here to tell how much time passes. She visits me quite often, but there doesn’t seem to be any set schedule to her visits. Sitting in a 1970’s decorated finished basement with nothing to do except stare at the shag carpet and admire the macaronni art on the wall, or is it macrame? doesn’t help for the time to pass quickly. Or maybe the time does pass quickly. I have no idea.

Before you judge me about how did I not just escape. How I didn’t just run off when I wasn’t bound, cuffed or restrained in anyway, and how come I didn’t just overpower her, since I probably outweighed her by almost seventy five pounds. Well, because as much as I was annoyed with being held in this basement, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I would go. This is a stupid reason. Yeah. She also had a taser, and it hurt pretty bad when she used it. I’d been tazzed a few times already.

“What if something happens to you though, then I’m still stuck here with nothing to eat.” I ask.

“There are some chips in the cabinet over there,” she answers.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I didn’t want you to eat them right away, then you’d have nothing to eat if there were an emergency.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says. We were raised properly. Manners-wise at least. I’m not sure if you could say we were raised properly since we are each apparently suicidal, and the only thing keeping either of us alive is that she is holding me captive in the basement of what I’m guessing is her parent’s house. I wonder sometimes if her parents are still alive, are they wandering around upstairs, watching Pawn Shop reality shows or whatever it is that her parents would watch on TV while about fifteen feet below them is a nearing middle-aged man spending his days sitting on a putrid looking sofa staring at faux-wood paneling and asking himself if he is grateful to still be alive.

“But what if something happens to you while you’re out?” I ask.

“What were you thinking? Why did you want to die?” she asks with the only inflection in her voice being the slight raise at the end signifying a question. At least she isn’t yelling at me right now.

I don’t answer her question. “What if you get hit by a car? Or in a car accident. Or storm comes and you are trapped in a flash-flood, and while trying to get out of your car a tree branch falls and kills you.”

“I don’t drive.”

“Or you are on a bus and it crashes. It happens. A can falls on your head at a grocery store. Two tweakers rob the liquor store while you are in it, and you get caught between them and the clerk shooting it out. A satellite falls to Earth and hits you. There are many ways to die everyday.”

She sighs. “I’m not Donnie Darko. I don’t drink anymore, so I wouldn’t be in a liquor store. I also have all of my groceries delivered. Have you heard of the internet? It can do amazing things. I also don’t drive, or take a bus anywhere. So it looks like you don’t have to worry about any of those things happening. So why were you going to do it?”

*

This went on and on for a long time. Long enough that I grew a beard, and for the first time in my life the beard didn’t look like the ass of a dog stricken by mange. I found this out later, because there were no mirrors in the basement. I guess I could tell you how long I was in the basement. Even if I didn’t know how many days were passing while I was being held captive, obviously I would have found out the date when I got out and then did some mental calculations to get a general idea of my captivity. This would have been fairly easy, right? Even if I didn’t figure out the exact number of days, I could give a rough estimate of something like, well I was taken prisoner in March, and now (hypothectially) it’s July so I was held prisoner for four months. I could do that but I won’t. I know, and that is all that matters to me.

We didn’t exactly overcome our stalemate. I never really told her why I was going to kill myself, not because it was some big fucking secret, but it was the only thing I could think of doing that would irritated her, and I was more than a little put-out being a prisoner here in a basement. She never told me why she was going to do it either, but I had my suspicions that maybe she wasn’t going to, that she just affected some suicidal chic and went through life looking for someone about to do it so that she could save them.

She finally asked me if I would marry her after I’d been living in the basement for quite sometime.

By the time she proposed I’d gotten quite comfortable down there. She had brought me a TV and even allowed me to have cable, with the warning that I better not try to hang myself with the cord. I told her I wouldn’t, but I thought that there were actually lots of things down here I could probably use to hang myself with. I wasn’t feeling like ending my life any longer, but I liked holding on to the idea that I could do it without breaking my promise to her about using the cable supplying me with five hundred channels to end my life with.

It’s important not to lie.

I should have been something: surprised, shocked, incredulous? when she asked me to marry her, but I wasn’t feeling anything like that. Nothing was shocking me any longer. Not about her. Not about that I was being held captive in a suburban basement, not that my life had led me to this ridiculous state I was in.

She said, “I want you to marry me.”

And I said, “Does this mean I’ll get to leave the basement?”

“Yes, you will no longer have to live in the basement, but I need you to promise you won’t leave me. Marriage vows are sacred.”

“They are,” I agreed.

“Not because it’s a covenant with God or anything like that, but secularly sacred. It’s your word. And that is important. You need to be true to your word.”

I agreed. Marriage vows were important.

“I won’t run away,” I told her.

“Do you think I’m attractive?” she asked. “I need to know if you are attracted to me, or are you just saying yes so you can leave the basement.”

“Yes, you are beautiful,” I told her and I wasn’t lying. She didn’t at all look like the type of person who would lock someone up in her basement and then after a while had passed offer marriage in exchange for being let out of the basement.

She seemed satisfied by the answer. “Ok, then we’ll get married. You better not make me regret this though,” she said.

And then we fucked like teenagers in a parents’ gaudily done up finished basement.

*

I don’t believe that omissions are lies. And since she never asked I never told her that I was already married. But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself there. She never asked though. I think it is important to get it straight if the person you are marrying is already married before you go through with any ceremony. I didn’t think it was so important though to ask her if she was already married, I thought it was a safe bet that someone who took someone prisoner and kept them in their basement probably wasn’t already spoken for.

Opps.

But we got married, if you can call the ceremony and stuff that we went through official. There was a person officiating the ceremony. And there were a few witnesses and supposedly it was all on the up and up, but she didn’t believe that the state had any right to tell her who she could and couldn’t marry so until anyone could get married to anyone they pleased she wasn’t going to acknowledge the authority of the state for her own marriage. I wasn’t actually sure what she was talking about, she seemed pretty worked up on this issue, so I kept it to myself that gay-marriage had been legalized in this state a few years ago, that pretty much anyone could marry whomever they liked, but I thought it was better if we didn’t let the state get too involved or go through all the formality of licenses and that nonsense.

I’d discover that there were quite a few things that she just had no idea about, that she lived in a time warp of sorts and the present, with it’s new news and current events and all of that stuff just didn’t make it into her awareness. This was sort of endearing about her. Especially because she could get so worked up about things that were no longer relevant.

------

This continues here.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

NPR

Cook, like many pulp novelists of the day, clipped ideas straight from the headlines. He kept them in a specially designed card catalog, which Collins says is "basically the larger version of this book."

"It was sort of like a filing cabinet with all these plot elements," he says.

Some of the plots are just plain wacky. In plot 227, "B is unable to marry A because her father, F-B, in using B for his subject in a scientific experiment, has instilled a poison into her blood."

But, says Collins, as off-the-wall as Plotto can be, it was actually quite influential in its day — and not just to aspiring novelists. A young Alfred Hitchcock, just getting started as a silent film director in Britain, sent away for a copy.

"It's had a particularly strong afterlife, I think, among screenwriters," Collins says. "A lot of this whole idea of formulaic plotting, especially in its early versions, like Plotto, actually was associated with movies, as much as with novels."

"You really do get a strong sense of how plot works," he says. "Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the Perry Mason books, said that he basically learned about plotting from Plotto."

[Zora · Rating 1 out of 5]

My library had this on Overdrive. It's a pulp writer's book from 1928 of how to string plots together via flow charts. It's a bit like choose your own adventure for writers...or like Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations on steroids. I thought it would be great fun, but it wasn't. The concepts are dated and the plot complications are highly dependent upon coincidence and accident, which is weak. Characters' choices/actions should cause plots to develop, not pianos falling from the sky or packages mis-delivered. The situations were very similar to one another: "Man loves woman but." After pages and pages of only slight variations on that, in hopes of finding something different, I skipped ahead to the "trouble in business" section, and all of those situations were "man gets into trouble in business because he loves woman, but." As you can see from "gets in trouble in business," the suggestions he did make were so vague as to be useless.

You'd probably get better inspiration from googling "plot twists list."

[John Herrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, such an invaluable resource for writers of fiction. The book was first published in 1928 and, according to history, was used by storytellers as far back as Alfred Hitchcock. (You can see its influence in his dunks when you read this book, which was a fascinating plus!) I will say it helped to have an IT background, where I'm used to thinking in terms of codes and flowcharts, prior to paging through this book. It's very logic-based.

For newer fiction writers, or even nonfiction writers whose work involves the telling of a story--such as biographers or fund development writers--read the instruction lessons at the back of the book, and practice until it becomes second nature. It will open your eyes regarding how to tell an effective story and what engages readers. Obviously, nonfiction writers can't craft the story's events as they wish, but it will provide the framework in which to think about how you approach the story.

If you're a mature fiction writer, you've already established--through years of practice--a sixth sense for the book's contents, in which case it will serve as an invaluable resource for inspiration to help you generate ideas or get unstuck. For such writers, you probably only need to read the key pages that show what all the codes mean and bookmark those pages. I'd recommend making the sections with a highlight along the edge of the book for easy access--that would be a helpful addition to future printings.

If you're a writer and don't have this book, add it to your shelf! Don't know how I went this long without hearing about it!

[Juan Maestas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well... I'm not sure how to review this. The plot points and situations are dated, though could be modified to suite modern sensibilities. It took a while to figure out the convoluted cross-referencing of tables—luckily, playing D&D in junior high paid off. If you're truly blocked, it might kick start some ideas. Whether or not they're good ideas will be up to you.

The 'dust cover' is a thin strip of paper that is extremely unwieldy. If a designer thought they were being clever when they conceived it, they should know that it fails in functionality. One could use it as an improvised book mark, I suppose.

At best, this book is a curiosity that you can cull some decent situations out of; at worst, you'll find it filler for the donation bin.

[Marcus Speh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frenzied "Tour de force" I think is the term for an undertaking such as this. I frequently browse through Plotto though I haven't felt the need yet to copy one of its schemes for a plot of my own. This is surprising given that I find plotting difficult and cumbersome...it's almost an affectation with me and, as I know, with other writers of "literary" fiction, too. Unfortunately, "literary" means all too often that the story doesn't meet John Gardner's brilliantly conceived criterion of story as a " vivid and continuous dream" in the reader's mind...Plotto makes plot seem if not easy but at least doable, it takes away some of the mystery and replaces it by craft. Wholly recommendable!

[Virginia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an interesting book...it offers structured suggestions on how to outline a plot. It also provides exercises and examples.

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

What if someone wrote out all the plot points for stories from 1 to 1462? What if they did it in 1928?
Note: reviewers who say you need to know math to read this, haven’t actually read it. You don’t need math to read a number ffs. What you do need is logic and enough understanding of story to get when a plot suggestion won’t fit, or will break previous plot points. You can either cut it out, or amend it accordingly. For example if the situation is ‘dies while on the way to make a new will’ then grandfather of protagonist might fit better.
So plot #1 is: 1: (a) (112) (117) (148) (656) A, poor, is in love with wealthy and aristocratic B
* A, poor, in love with wealthy B, pretends to be a man of wealth * (187) (28) (23) (347a)
And #1462 is: 1462: (1) Confronting a Situation in Which Courage and Devotion Alone Can Save the Fortunes of One Beloved 1462 (85a; 340) (540; 589)
B's friend, B-2, makes an important revelation regarding A which causes B to correct a serious error (94a) (506a) (546b)
It’s not exactly a random generator; you choose options from within each category.
But each of the numbers in brackets is a suggested different option. Above, 112. A loves B; and B's father, F-B, promises him B's hand in marriage if he will successfully carry out an enterprise of great difficulty and danger.
If that doesn’t help your story or won’t fit in it, leave it out. OR choose another plot option. But really, you could make it fit, especially with the starter idea that he’s just pretending to be rich. To do the task, he doesn’t need money, just his wits and determination. It’s kind of perfect. [Cook knows what he’s doing, eh?]
At it’s most simplistic, you choose one option from:
A, the character or status of the protagonist; [with 15 options]
B, initiates and carries on the action, [with 62 options] and
C, terminates the action. [with 15 options]
Pick one from each column, and voila.

To give an example:
A, a person in love - easy enough, no?
But… what if the qualifier for the B clause, is ‘a married person in love’. Ah-ha… now we have some issues. Are they in love with their spouse? With someone else? [so many possibilities]
And C is: pays a grim penalty.
So: A married person in love pays a grim penalty. That’s Anna Karenina; is it not?

To make it more complex, add more than one qualifier.
Example: let’s choose three from A. a person in love…(plus) a person of ideals… (plus) a person influenced by the occult…
Two from B: engaging in a difficult enterprise when promised a reward for high achievement… (plus) seeking to overcome personal limitations in carrying out an enterprise.
Finishing with a couple of C options: Reverses certain opinions when their fallacy is revealed, (plus) achieves success and happiness in a hard undertaking.
Oh now… THERE’S a story. The reversal of opinion fits with the occult bit. Maybe their high ideals came into conflict with their love when they were asked to fabricate the spirit of her dead grandfather contacting her. [no, brain…]

The asterisks mark the end of act 1, 2 and 3. He suggests some conflict situations that can only fit up to the end of act1, these are ’lead-ups’ to conflict. They just won’t fit in later parts.
Two asterisks should be part of act 2 and be dealt with in that part. You can't resolve conflict in part 1; it's just a waste of storytime.
The letters also correspond to a code.
A= a man
B= a woman
X= a thing
F= father.
M= mother
D= daughter
S= son
Ch= child
And so on… So FB is father of woman B, chB her child, GFB her grandfather.

Numbers denote other things
2= friend
3= rival
4= stranger
5= criminal
6= officer of the law
7= inferior, or employee
8= utility symbol [nurse, janitor etc]
9= superior

So aB2= a male friend of a female protagonist.
As I read through it I see so many recognisable plots. 1,258: "B, a woman criminal arrested by A-6, a detective, seeks to effect her escape by artful strategy." Cook notes that this can be preceded by plots 448 and 1,309b, and followed by 3b, 10a, and 16a — which involves A-6 finally catching up to B, but then falling in love with her.
Swap the genders, make her a parole officer and that’s the story of Out of Sight, the George Clooney & Jennifer Lopez movie. Which is awesome, btw.
It is pretty old so there are some out of date things: maids, tainted blood, inferior people and so on. But really, if you change the ranch to the martian potato farm, the superior to an alien overlord and the stagecoach to a spaceship you’ve got a sci-fi rather than a western. Or switch your genre to historical regency and it’ll fit.
William Wallace Cook wrote 54 40k word pulp stories IN ONE YEAR. On a typewriter. The man wore them out.
The stories that result will be anything but formulaic because every person brings their own experiences and ideas to it. So while I may imagine trinket X is a treasure map, you might think it is child’s favourite toy, or a valuable necklace, or a statuette shaped like a falcon, or whatever.
There are also different qualifiers for the stages of each category. Say you want to write about love. Pick one of these: love beginning, misadventures, proposal, rejection, or marriage. And then choose from a situation under each sub-heading. If your characters haven’t met yet, you’re obviously in ‘love beginning’. If they have met but face an obstacle you might be in ‘misadventures’.
[what about divorce, breakup, death]

The best way to deal with this would probably be in a card catalogue which is how Cook had it before he wrote it all down. [no, brain!]
And of course, he never meant it to be a static record. He clipped ideas from newspapers to add to it. At least if it was in a card file you could add to it. [NO, brain!]
Recently I saw a news story about a young man who had come to Australia to meet his father for the first time. He went for a swim and nearly drowned. He was rescued by an older man walking on the beach. Yep… it was his father. How cool it that? Add that one to the files, William!
My copy of this is a scanned pdf version from Gutenberg and it is kind of hard to flip back and forth and some of the tables are a bit hard to follow. Might be worthwhile getting a hardcopy of this one to add to the writing books shelf. It was good enough for Hitchcock and Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the Perry Mason books!
4 stars

[Karla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, a classic to understand the gist of what goes into a plot. It helps if you have an understanding of math (algebra) but it's not completely necessary. I have read many books on the subject and this is pretty much the granddaddy of them all.

My only complaint is that it is very difficult to understand, let alone to master. It definitely takes time. If you can download the pdf with the instructions on how to use it, all the better.

Another book, Plots Unlimited, is pretty much a variant of this book. It's a little easier to understand. But all the info is the same.

Great to have in the arsenal when searching for inspiration or to see how modern day films get it done.

[Mary]

I know it's around here somewhere, as I can recall seeing it, but have no idea where it might be at the moment. Apparently, it's been re-released by Tin House and old original copies are going for a pretty penny. Maybe I should make a serious effort at finding my copy (which was probably purchased by my paternal grandmother).

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A valuable brainstorming resource. Would be better to have it in physical form instead of digital form, just for leafing through. A good idea-generating read.

[Jenny Chisnell]

Not really meant to be read cover to cover but a fun little reference book

[Chris Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy the concept presented by it. It reminds me of something else I read by Stephen King where the plots are determined by a spinner (similar to that used in the game Twister).

However, it's still not something I'd use - and I gave that serious thought.

On the other hand, it may come in handy sometime as a "writing prompt".

I gave it four stars because I know others have found it useful, and I've seen the results of that use. Alfred Hitchcock used it, according to some reports. Who would I be to question a master?

[SmarterLilac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complicated. And these plot ideas should be inspiring to me, but something about this system just isn't.

[Thomas Gizbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

That this Borgesian creation exists at all is madness.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this more as a brainstorming book rather than the way it's specified. Interesting though.

[R · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is basically a computer that writes books. Fascinating concept and interesting to play with, but many of the writing prompts it produces do not fit well into today's society.

[Diane Nagatomo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't actually put this book to use yet, so my rating may change later if I find it to be useful. It's a very confusing puzzle to put together, requiring more time than I have at the moment.

[Darcy Conroy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This classic story structure how-to is, at the least, a fascinating insight into one prolific writer's creative process. Originality, Cook insists, is the aim of his method and so the "plot suggestions", which make up the majority of this book, are meant as prods to the imagination, rather than to be used literally. The complex notation is likely to seem too cold or calculating for many, but there can be no denying that Cook understands the importance of conflict in story and how to create it.

[Sarah Boyette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE THIS BOOK! It breaks down writing stories into a formula. A little from here, a little from there, and voila! I can't wait to get writing! Also fascinating to read because I recognize many books and film plot lines.

[S]

Hahahaha! The preface of the book mentions that Cook was referred to as the man who deforested Canada. Because he churned out so many works of fiction.

This is it, boys. This is the Owner's Manual to the Fiction Factory.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible amount of work went into this. Reading through it is like getting hit with every story ever written in a blur.

As for the system itself, it's straightforward to understand if you go through the tutorial section at the end of the book.

[Sara Q]

Found on http://anynewbooks.com/staff-picks/
Waiting to see if it shows up in any other reviews -- sounds interesting, but could easily be done in a bad way.

[Kyle Cameron Studstill · Rating 3 out of 5]

A reference manual to turn to here-and-there with starting points for types of stories & conflicts

[Natverse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty good casual read. :)

[Fred Arcuri · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great way to get your next creative writing project going. Also gets you through those plot stalls that have a tendency to wreak havoc.

[Adrienne]

you wanna fuck dramatica so bad it makes you look stupid