Plottomatic — 2026-03-22

2026-03-22

PLOT

Rain-soaked streets of 1950s Detroit. Ex-cop Brahim harbors old grudges but can’t abandon partner Taavi, who’s drowning under Detective Kowalski’s systematic harassment. Brahim’s covert efforts to gather evidence against Kowalski backfire when Taavi discovers the surveillance, convinced Brahim’s become another enemy. After Taavi’s apparent suicide, a devastated Brahim uncovers Kowalski’s frame-up just in time to save Taavi from a staged accident. The revelation of Kowalski’s elaborate conspiracy forces Brahim to confront his own bitter assumptions about loyalty and redemption.

Theme: Noir

Category: Enterprise

Conflict: Misfortune Conflict: Helpfulness Conflict: Deliverance

Show the Plotto chain

Person: A Resentful Person
Action: Seeking secretly to preserve another from danger
Outcome: Reverses certain opinions when their fallacy is revealed.

#671 Misfortune
The protagonist's ally is helpless against the persecutions of a powerful enemy, the rival. The protagonist decides to undertake a secret enterprise for the purpose of protecting the helpless ally from the powerful enemy, the rival. The protagonist's ally commits suicide before the protagonist can help them overcome their misfortunes.
#807 Helpfulness
The protagonist, trying to be of service to the ally, is suspected of treachery by the ally.
#867 Deliverance
The protagonist, suspected of treachery by their ally, in a daring rescue saves the property and perhaps the life of the ally, and proves their faithfulness by a revelation of the danger to which the ally, unknown to themselves, was exposed.
#839 Helpfulness
The protagonist seeks to correct a character weakness in their friend, the ally. The protagonist seeks to correct a character weakness in their friend, the ally, by telling them a story which subtly suggests a method of self-correction.

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.