Plotto: The Classic Plot Suggestion Tool for Writers of Creative Fiction

Have you struggled to expand your initial idea into a complete story? Plotting can be frustrating work What if there were a tool for this very problem, so you could navigate these uncharted waters as quickly as possible? A tool that starts with what you have (a situation, perhaps, or a group of characters) and sets you on the road to new possibilities?

Plotto does all this. Created by a master of "organized creativity," William Wallace Cook (one of the most prolific writers in history), Plotto has been prized by professional authors and screenwriters since its publication in 1928, and is still in demand today, with copies of the original edition selling for up to $400.

This Norton Creek Edition is an exact reproduction of Cook's work. To keep the book down to a manageable size (300 pages of very small type) while retaining its powerful features, Cook uses a telegraphic format that takes some getting used to. To get up to speed quickly, get Plotto's companion volume, the Plotto Instruction Booklet. This is the key to avoiding false starts and getting professional-quality results quickly.

What is Plotto? Let's start by what it is not: it's not a random plot generator. There is no randomness in Plotto. Instead, Plotto is a well-indexed catalog of character situations, especially character conflicts. Each conflict has suggestions for both backstory and future developments. Plotto also has multiple indexes. For example, you can enter through the combination of characters in the conflict (such as the male protagonist and the female protagonist), the situation (needing money to get out of a scrape), or starting at the end and working backwards (becoming involved in the weird and occult and coming to a tragic end). Thus, Plotto is equally useful for plots, subplots, and backstory.

Because Plotto was written in the Twenties, its situations can seem old-fashioned and its terminology politically incorrect. These problems are more apparent than real. Cook himself wrote both westerns and early classics of science fiction, so you see how replacing "stagecoach" with "star ship" or "dance hall girl" with "male stripper" are within the reach of anyone using the Plotto system. In fact, this kind of substitution is an ordinary and expected part of the Plotto system, and is essential to the fruitful use of the Plotto system, and is the key to its flexibility and enduring popularity.

This Norton Creek Press edition of Plotto is an exact replica of the original edition. Visit our Web site at http: //www.nortoncreekpress.com for more classic reprints, including William Wallace Cook's Plotto Instruction Booklet and his autobiographical The Fiction Factory.

Author: William Wallace Cook
Publisher: Norton Creek Press
Published: 08/02/2011
Pages: 308
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9780981928470

About the Author
Cook, William Wallace: - William Wallace Cook was a pulp fiction writer whose output was so prolific that he was called "the man who deforested Canada." He was an early adopter of many then-new technologies. He was one of the first writers to compose on a typewriter and to use card files to index an enormous collection of magazine and newspaper clippings. Plotto is an extension of Cook's passion for efficiency and method in writing. Norton Creek Press has also published Cook's autobiography, The Fiction Factory, (under the pseudonym of John Milton Edwards), which covers the first half of his writing career in detail. Born in Michigan 1878, at one point Cook moved to Arizona for his health, and the Old West ambiance he soaked up there allowed him to become a much-sought-after writer of Westerns. Cook's interest in technology no doubt was the source of his science fiction novels, such as "A Round Trip to the Year 2000," written before SF was an established genre. And this means that it will come as no surprise that Cook wrote screenplays for early silent movies, starting in 1912 with "It All Came Out in the Wash." Cook's most famous work is the Plotto plot-suggestion tool. Cook died in Kansas of pneumonia in 1935.

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