{"id":417,"date":"2016-01-03T18:07:46","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T02:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/?p=417"},"modified":"2026-10-18T08:49:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T15:49:34","slug":"william-wallace-cooks-plotto-featured-on-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/william-wallace-cooks-plotto-featured-on-bbc\/","title":{"rendered":"William Wallace Cook&#8217;s Plotto Featured on BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.ncp-book{text-align:center;float:right;clear:right;margin:.375em 0 1.75em 1.75em;}.ncp-book--left{float:left;clear:left;margin:.375em 1.75em 1.75em 0;}.ncp-book--center{float:none;clear:both;margin:1.5em auto;}.ncp-book--none{float:none;margin:1.5em 0;}.entry-content .ncp-book a{box-shadow:none;text-decoration:none;}.entry-content .ncp-book a.ncp-book__cover{display:block;margin:0 0 .6em;}.ncp-book img{display:block;max-width:100%;height:auto;margin:0 auto;box-shadow:0 1px 4px rgba(0,0,0,.25);}.entry-content .ncp-book a.ncp-book__btn{display:inline-block;padding:.618em 1em;border-radius:3px;background:#1b4411;color:#fff;font:700 13pt\/1 Montserrat,sans-serif;letter-spacing:.046875em;text-transform:uppercase;white-space:nowrap;}.entry-content .ncp-book a.ncp-book__btn:hover{background:#003300;color:#fff;}@media (max-width:599px){.ncp-book,.ncp-book--left{float:none;clear:both;margin:1.5em auto;}}<\/style><div class=\"ncp-book ncp-book--right\" style=\"width:190px;max-width:100%\"><a class=\"ncp-book__cover\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/product\/plotto\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/plotto-cover.jpg?fit=675%2C1024&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Plotto book cover\" width=\"166\" height=\"252\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"><\/a><a class=\"ncp-book__btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/product\/plotto\/\" aria-label=\"Get the Book: Plotto\">Get the Book<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/other-books\/plotto\/\" target=\"_blank\">Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots,<\/a> and its author, William Wallace Cook, were recently featured on BBC Radio, in a program called &#8220;Miles Jupp and the Plot Device.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b06sny8v\" target=\"_blank\">Listen to it here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jupp goes into Cook&#8217;s tremendously prolific writing life, the difficulty of getting a copy of the original printing of <em>Plotto,<\/em> and the fact that Plotto does not drop a finished plot into your lap, but takes some effort to master. (Cook later wrote a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plamondon.com\/plotto_instruction_book.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Plotto instruction manual<\/a> to clarify how to use the book, which I&#8217;ve posted to this site.)<\/p>\n<p>Jupp also discusses Plotto&#8217;s influence on at least one other writer, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Erle_Stanley_Gardner\" target=\"_blank\">Erle Stanley Gardner<\/a>, the creator of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Perry_Mason\" target=\"_blank\">Perry Mason<\/a>. Every story introduced a new crime and new characters, which required a new plot.<\/p>\n<p>How prolific was William Wallace Cook? At one point he worked with one, two, or even three stenographers at the same time, dictating one story to each in rotation, and filling in any gaps by sitting down at his typewriter and working on a different story.<\/p>\n<p>Is <em>Plotto<\/em> a magic plotting device? I think it is, sort of. It&#8217;s not going to write your novel for you, but when I took Linda Hamner&#8217;s excellent scriptwriting course, it was clear that any movie has enough twists and turns to cause serious brain-freeze, and a TV series or a novel is even more daunting. Personally, I think <em>Plotto<\/em> is a magic device for subplots, especially if you expect not to cut &#8217;em out and paste &#8217;em down, but to use them as a starting point, or even just to jog your brain into coming up with something better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots, and its author, William Wallace Cook, were recently featured on BBC Radio, in a program called &#8220;Miles Jupp and the Plot Device.&#8221; Listen to it here. Jupp goes into Cook&#8217;s tremendously prolific writing life, the difficulty of getting a copy of the original printing of Plotto, and the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/william-wallace-cooks-plotto-featured-on-bbc\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;William Wallace Cook&#8217;s Plotto Featured on BBC&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plotto","category-fiction"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>William Wallace Cook&#039;s Plotto Featured on BBC - Norton Creek Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nortoncreekpress.com\/wordpress\/william-wallace-cooks-plotto-featured-on-bbc\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"William Wallace Cook&#039;s Plotto Featured on BBC - Norton Creek Press\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots, and its author, William Wallace Cook, were recently featured on BBC Radio, in a program called &#8220;Miles Jupp and the Plot Device.&#8221; Listen to it here. 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