This Book Will Help You Write A Thousand Novels (Plotto Review)
I’m going to break with scheduled programming.
After yesterday’s post on finding a buying audience, and the day before’s post on using your competitor’s weakness against them, I fully intended to explore some of the possibilities and implications of those posts.
However, in the post today, I received a book.
It’s called Plotto.
Plotto is a book for writers to learn about how to construct plots.
I read about it about a week ago when I was reading about pulp writers for a project I had in mind.
The author, William Wallace Cook, is considered one of the most prolific writers of all time. As people who frequent my Twitter account know, I occasionally post about how writers today need to “up their game” and then post about how writers back in the day would write astonishing amounts.
William Wallace Cook wrote fifty four novels in one year.
Let that sink in, and if it doesn’t, just think: Stephen King has written about that many novels in his entire career.
So, William Wallace Cook obviously walked the walk. Does he talk the talk though?
Most books for writers are actually pretty shoddy.
If they don’t have words that’ll kill your creativity dead, then they’ll be full of fluff. Things like, “Write what you know” and “Let the character take you where they want to go.”
Maybe that sort of thing appeals to you. If it does, then great! I prefer to be fully in control of my output though. I’d imagine most people trying to make a living writing are in the same boat as me.
Plotto By William Wallace Cook Review.
Plotto arrived in my post this morning. I was pretty excited. After all, this book is a collection of 1400+ plots, or every plot that William Wallace Cook thought possible.
I opened it, and the small text hit me first, I’m not going to lie. The thing is a pain to read.
The second thing that hit me was that it was complex. Really complex. We’re talking numbers in brackets, descriptions like “A-3 goes to MB8-B to find that…” and a confusing structure.
I thought that it would take me a life time to decode the book, let alone actually write anything with it.
I was wrong.
After an hour or two, I got the hang of it.
That hour or two was mostly due to the somewhat arcane language; it was written in 1928 and it is very old-fashioned in its language. A lot of the plot scenarios need updating as well, but if you want to be a writer, then I think you’ll be able to manage that sort of thing.
The system is a bit complex until you’ve read the introductory sections a few times. Then it makes perfect sense.
Plotto by William Wallace Cook is a Choose Your Own Adventure style affair where you’re given a plot in a few sentences, and then the numbers in brackets show you possible plots to lead on to from that sentence.
It’s genius.
The 1400+ combinations are just a starting point. You could stack one conflict after another and basically go on forever if you wanted.
When you also add in that this book doesn’t account for settings, characters(*,) genre, time, length or anything else, you have more combinations than you could possibly ever think of writing for.
In fact, this is a gold mine for people who outsource their writing.
(* – the asterisk is because the book does go into characters. In detail, in fact. But it doesn’t mention specific characters. For example, it might say, “A woman in distress.” This could be a teacher in 2011 Chicago, or it could be a Unicorn Princess from Space.)
This book is easily worth getting if you really want to write fiction.
There are also things that it could be used for outside of fiction, but they’re bubbling in my head and some of them I’ll need to check out professionally as well.
In short:
Get Your Copy Of William Wallace Cook’s Plotto Here.
You will not regret it…
“But Jamie! There are some people who gave it a negative review on Amazon!”
Just before I finish, I want to talk about that.
I read loads of reviews before I bought this book (That’s just who I am – I do that for every book.)
The critical ones fell into three camps.
- Too arcane in its language.
- Too arcane in its plots.
- Too complicated.
I can tell you without a doubt that those people are suffering from a common ailment: They are all looking for a magic bullet.
Could the writing be simpler to understand? Sure… but give the guy a break. It was written in 1928. We’re not throwing out Shakespeare for his outdated phrases, are we?
Too arcane in its plots?
That is a stupid, stupid reason for not finding this book useful.
Firstly, plots are the same across all ages.
Plot and setting are not the same.
“A child who is destined to become king, through a series of troubles, runs away. He then struggles with coming to terms with his destiny, before going to set things right.”
That story about Jesus is so archaic, right?
Or is it Hamlet? I mean, either way… it’s still old hat.
Unless you put it in space, then it’s Star Wars.
Or, set it in African Sahara and have no humans in it whatsoever, then it’s the story to The Lion King.
“But Jamie, what about the ones about a girl not remaining a virgin until she’s married? They’re old-fashioned!”
Firstly, not in a lot of cultures around the world.
Secondly, the idea that you can’t spin a plot to make it seem that a girl is inappropriately sexual when she shouldn’t be even set in modern times is ridiculous.
Too Complicated?
Magic bullet thinking.
It’s a complex system because categorising every plot possible is a complex process.
Writing itself is a complex system, and if you’re not willing to spend an hour or two working out how to fashion a great plot, then you’re going to have a lot of trouble bringing that plot to life for your potential reader.
Besides, the more complicated it is, the better.
If there were Harry Potter-style magic books that you just opened and they came up with amazing plots that you didn’t have to write, writers would be obsolete.
Luckily, most people will look at a book which is really close to being a magic key and think, “That’s too complicated. I’m going to go back to daydreaming about writing my book.”
Of course, if you don’t want to be one of those people, and do want to get a great guide to plotting fiction work, then you should get a copy of Plotto.