Plottomatic — 2026-03-27

2026-03-27

PLOT

Magistrate Bjørg Haugen adopts a vagrant’s disguise to walk among the criminals they judge. When they uncover plans for a major heist, Bjørg warns their newfound ally Tamir Okonkwo—but must rob him themselves to maintain cover. After mastermind Zarina Petrov’s crew strikes, Bjørg double-crosses her, stealing back Tamir’s valuables. When Tamir suspects betrayal, Bjørg orchestrates a dramatic reveal, exposing Zarina’s larger conspiracy that would have destroyed them both, proving their loyalty through deception.

Theme: Noir

Category: Enterprise

Conflict: Idealism Conflict: Helpfulness Conflict: Craftiness Conflict: Deliverance

Show the Plotto chain

Person: A Lawless Person
Action: Embarking upon an enterprise of insurrection in the hope of ameliorating certain evil conditions
Outcome: Foils a guilty plotter and defeats a subtle plot.

#949b Idealism
The protagonist is a police magistrate with lofty humanitarian ideals. The protagonist, a police magistrate who wishes to know more of the private lives of those who are brought before them for judgment, disguises themselves as a vagrant and plunges into the underworld.
#834 Helpfulness
The protagonist, becoming secretly aware of the plans for a holdup, endeavors to prevent it.
#1227a Craftiness
The protagonist's ally is waylaid and robbed by three people; and one of the people is the protagonist. The protagonist's ally is robbed by the protagonist and the criminal; then the protagonist, in turn, robs the criminal. The protagonist robs the criminal of valuables stolen from the protagonist's ally, and returns the property to the protagonist's 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.

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.