Plottomatic — 2026-03-19

2026-03-19

PLOT

Idealistic Dato Kvirikashvili disappears from their Georgian community, adopting the alias ‘Nico Petrov’ to secretly fund underground newspapers in a distant city. After years in hiding, they return home as a wanted fugitive, only to discover Esperanza Uriarte—a former neighbor now desperate for work—about to leap from a bridge. Dato saves her, but she’s already fallen under the influence of smooth-talking Boubacar Ndiaye, who’s lured her into working at his exploitative dance hall. As Dato fights to free Esperanza from Boubacar’s grip while dodging police, their idealistic mission transforms into something more personal and redemptive.

Theme: Noir

Category: Enterprise

Conflict: Idealism Conflict: Deliverance Conflict: Misfortune

Show the Plotto chain

Person: A Person Subjected to Adverse Conditions
Action: Seeking to conceal identity because of a lofty idealism
Outcome: Emerges happily from a serious entanglement.

#917 Idealism
The protagonist mysteriously disappears from their own community; and when they reappear among strangers, they bear a fictitious name. The protagonist, seeking to forward an enterprise which those who know them might consider absurd or unworthy, changes their name and goes secretly to a place where they are unknown.
#967 Idealism
The protagonist has been mysteriously absent from their home for long years. The protagonist, for many years mysteriously absent from their home, seeks a happy renewal of old ties by returning suddenly and unheralded to their native place.
#869 Deliverance
The protagonist, a fugitive from justice with a price on their head, prevents the co-protagonist from committing suicide.
#647 Misfortune
The co-protagonist, a respectable worker seeking employment, follows the advice of a supposed friend, the criminal, and finds themselves in an exploitative dance hall where they are compelled to dance with patrons and serve drinks.

Hello, what is this?

Plottomatic is a daily plot machine designed to demonstrate a new and modernized version of Plotto, William Wallace Cook’s 1928 book and system for generating plots.

What's Plotto and why a modernized version?

William Wallace Cook was a prolific writer who created a strange and ingenious system for building plots: Plotto. I rewrote the manuscript to remove the antiquated 1928 discriminatory language while preserving the original structure and logic.

More info on making this: Plottomatic: rewriting a 1928 plot machine .

How does Plottomatic work?

Plottomatic walks through this new version of Plotto and chooses a protagonist, an action, and an outcome. Then it builds a series of dramatic situations that are chosen using the original Cook logic. Finally, it transforms the finished plot structure into a readable synopsis that adds characters, theme, and setting. That’s the daily plot you see above.

Are you making a new book or an app?

I’m glad you asked! Not yet – but wouldn't that be great? If you want to follow along this little adventure, subscribe to the weekly email.

Acknowledgements

William Wallace Cook wrote Plotto in 1928.

Gary Kacmarcik digitized the original book and created the original and foundational hyperlinked edition.

David Eyk created an XML version using Gary’s work and fixed some cross-reference links. I used this as the source file.

Pankaj Agarwal built a Flutter implementation that helped me shape the data model.