Plotto

The Master Book of All Plots

ISBN:
9781941040553
Pub Date:
11/01/2016
List Price:
$18.95
Page Count:
480
ISBN:
9781935639183
Pub Date:
12/13/2011
List Price:
$24.95
Page Count:
350
ISBN:
9781935639244
Pub Date:
11/21/2011
List Price:
$18.95
Page Count:
350

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

A classic how-to manual, William Wallace Cook’s Plotto is one writer’s personal method, painstakingly diagrammed for the benefit of others. The theory itself may be simple—“Purpose, opposed by Obstacle, yields Conflict”—but Cook takes his “Plottoist” through hundreds of situations and scenarios, guiding the reader’s hand through a dizzying array of “purposes” and “obstacles.”

The method is broken down into three stages:
1. The Master Plot
2. The Conflict Situation
3. Character Combinations

In the first stage, Cook demonstrates that “a character with particular traits . . . finds himself in a situation . . . and this is how it turns out.” Following this, each Master Plot leads the reader to a list of circumstances, distributed among twenty different Conflict Groups (these range from “Love’s Beginning,” to “Personal Limitations,” to “Transgression”). Finally, in Character Combinations, Cook offers an extensive index of protagonists for what serves as an inexhaustible reservoir of suggestions and inspiration.