2026-09-12
PLOT
Birdie Thibodeaux, eaten hollow by resentment, aches for reconciliation with Leandro Gomes, the husband who can no longer bear her rage. Their shared devotion to young Cléo softens them both—until Leandro abandons everything, running off with Sutton Prewitt into the pine barrens. But Cléo’s night terrors pull Leandro back like a fishhook in flesh. He returns to the child, to Birdie, to the house that reeks of forgiveness neither can quite speak. Birdie, however, cannot forgive Sutton. She tracks him to a hunting camp with her grandfather’s revolver. In the struggle, Sutton fires in self-defense. Birdie dies in the leaf litter, blood pooling dark as delta water, her cherished ideal of love finally and terribly met.
Show the Plotto chain
- Person
- A Resentful Person
- Action
- Seeking against difficulties to realize a cherished ideal
- Outcome
- Meets any fate, good or evil.
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#563a
Marriage
The protagonist, estranged from their spouse, whom they dearly love, seeks a reconciliation.
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#499a
Marriage
The protagonist and their spouse, estranged from each other, undergo a character transformation through love for their child and become reconciled.
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#507b
Marriage
Their partner, married to the protagonist, elopes with the rival. Their partner's love for the child, left with the protagonist when they deserted them, draws them back to the child and the protagonist.
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#568d
Marriage
The protagonist attempts to kill their partner's lover, the rival. The rival, murderously assaulted by the protagonist slays them in self-defense.
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 more info, check out the project page and say hello.
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.
Lynn Cherny wrote an in-depth analysis of Plotto in 2018 that quantified the gender and race issues as well as other structural problems.