2026-10-05
PLOT
Rusudan scandalizes society by dissolving her family fortune, convinced destitution alone offers genuine happiness. When she proposes to Þóra, a weary midwife bound by vows to care for her dying sister, Þóra refuses—not from lack of love, but from devastating clarity: Rusudan doesn’t truly love her, only the romantic martyr’s vision she represents. Þóra’s quiet sacrifice—choosing duty over desire—eventually brings her austere peace. But when Chetachi, Rusudan’s devoted companion, drowns saving young Lumi from the flooded mill race, Rusudan finally understands: nobility isn’t found in grand renunciations or theoretical poverty, but in the unseen acts of those who give everything without philosophy or witness.
Show the Plotto chain
- Person
- Any Person
- Action
- Resisting secretly and from an honorable motive a mandate considered discreditable
- Outcome
- Achieves a complete and permanent character transformation.
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#958
Idealism
The protagonist takes issue with the accepted belief that poverty is the source of discontent, and conceives it to be the true source of happiness. The protagonist struggles against difficulties in seeking to avoid wealth.
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#326
Love’s Rejection
The love interest loves the protagonist with all their heart but refuses their proposal of marriage because they are so much older than the protagonist; they discover that the protagonist does not love them; they consider the protagonist an impractical dreamer; they feel themselves under a compelling obligation.
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#268
Love’s Rejection
The love interest refuses marriage with the protagonist because of an obligation. The love interest sacrifices happiness when, faithful to an obligation, they refuse marriage with the protagonist. Their sacrifice, in time, brings the consolation of spiritual joy for a hard duty nobly done.
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#893
Deliverance
The co-protagonist performs an act of great heroism in rescuing a child from death, but sacrifices their own life in making the rescue.
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.