Plotto Instruction Booklet

This Plotto Instruction Booklet has been out of print since 1934, which is a shame, since it's difficult to figure out how to use Plotto without it!

Originally used by William Wallace Cook as the textbook for a course in using Plotto, it goes through both the mechanics and the philosophy of creating plots with Plotto.

The Plotto Instruction Booklet in its original form is almost impossible to find, and in fact I owned a copy of Plotto for years before even realized that it existed. I was fortunate enough to track down a copy only 60 miles away and borrow it long enough to copy it. The result, reformatted and lightly edited, is what you're reading now.

Plotto is the opposite of a random plot generator: using it will not write a story for you, or even structure one. It offers suggestions that you are expected to-required to-customize to fit the needs of your story. Plotto is a structured way of stimulating your imagination into creating the situations and conflicts you need, whether for a short story, a screenplay, or a novel.

A century ago, William Wallace Cook was a pulp fiction writer famous for his immense output, solid creativity, and his use of organization and technology to ease the task of writing stories at high speed. His non-fiction books, Plotto and The Fiction Factory, are available through Norton Creek Press.