PLOTTO Genie
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About this ebook
What if all story ideas were able to be boiled down to a single formula?
Wycliffe A. Hill had this idea in the 1930's when no less than Cecil B. DeMille rejected one of his stories because "it had a good narrative, but no drama." This led Hill to research what made a dramatic story. That study lead to a 1920's author who claimed (based on even older research) that there were only 36 possible conflicts through all dramatic works.
Diving into the problem that the growing movie industry had for volume treatments to feed their industry, Hill's name became synonymous with what Slate called the "Hollywood schlock machine."
But Hill never intended it to become a mass-production device for plots. The original "Robot" he produced was to explore the idea of formulaic basis for stories. Not too long after, Joseph Campbell produced his "Hero With a Thousand Faces" which prescribed the monomyth as a base for all stories. Chris Vogler then championed this idea through Hollywood. And the Star Wars saga, as well as multiple Disney hits followed that generic model.
Hill himself cautioned against using the results on its own, but to use it as inspiration to ferret out new combinations of stories never before attempted. He claimed that author output had become hackneyed as they had been repeatedly explosed to the same few element combinations over and over.
For Flash Fiction, the work is even more daunting, as it's not a question of filling in more conflict, action, or romance by adding words. The author must start out with a well-developed synopsis and then whittle that down, carving out the core story and limited action into a very tiny wordage.
Every single word has to now forward the plot, character, or emotional response of their thousand-word story. The Plot Wizard now assists with generating a dramatic synopsis, so that the inspiration and perspiration of the author can go to work.
Research into the plot problems of the short story also unearthed another classic from the 1920's, "The Plot of the Short Story." Its author, Henry A. Philips, also dissected the problems and solutions to short story plots, and excerpts from his book are included.
The object of this book is more for education of the author in the basics of how to string a plot together, and perhaps a tentative solution to his "writer's block."
At any rate, it gives some very amusing stories. In fact, Hill mentions that it can also produce comedies.
Robert Silverberg reviewed Hill's work and recommended:
"Pick one up, follow the instructions, write your story. You might just find that a grand literary career is unfolding for you in a wondrous, magical way."
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Book preview
PLOTTO Genie - Wycliffe A. Hill
Plotto Genie
For Flash Fiction and Short Stories
A Genie
to Create Original Content Structure in Minutes for Short Stories
derived from works
by Wycliffe A. Hill
This work is based on Hill's original
Plot Genie Supplemental Formula No. 6
Short-Short Story and contains excerpts from
The Plot Of the Short Story" by Henry Albert Phillips
Hill's work was originally published in 1934 and is found in the public domain. Phillips' work was first published in 1912. Cover and added text are copyright © 2017 Midwest Journal Press. All Rights Reserved.
Table of Contents
PUBLISHER'S FORWARD
THE FORMULA
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS A FLASH FICTION
STORY?
TRICK
ENDINGS
PRANKS OF FATE
DIRECTIONS
GET YOUR NUMBERS FIRST
DEVELOPING THE PLOT
THE LISTS
CHARACTERS
LOCALE
MOTIVATION
THE OBSTACLE
METHOD OF ATTACK
PREDICAMENT OR CRISIS
THE CLIMAX
THE PLOT OF THE SHORT STORY
Misleading Forms of Narrative
The Modern Short Story
The Plot
Laws Governing the Plot
Inspiration
The Process of Plotting
The Progressive Stages in Plotting
BONUS
EDITOR NOTES:
References to the use of a Genie
are for a random number generator that produces a result between 1 and 180. Many online versions are available. A spreadsheet may also generate random numbers with a cell-formula [=(RAND()*179)+1].
Wycliffe's original device apparently had a single big wheel numbered from 0 to 180 and was spun three times to produce a random number.
PUBLISHER'S FORWARD
This book was found in research of plot generators and all things about how to write short stories.
Flash fiction has now replaced the Wycliff's original term short-short story
in our age.
But the essential points of this form are the same:
Brief - less than a thousand words, usually.
To the Point – the sheer lack of space means usually staring in the middle of the action.
Effective – a sparse word count means that every single word-choice counts to forward the plot, the character, or emotional response.
Other novels can ramble on for eighty-thousand words or more. But flash fiction has to leap full-armed from the brow of its creator, engaging and transforming.
In this book, we revive a quick method for inspiration, one which has consistently received rave reviews from its many fans, both in the 30's when first published and today.
Also included is a selection from Henry Albert Phillips', The Plot of the Short Story. Written two decades earlier than Hill's work, it covers the essential point of determining the germ
of a story and then fleshing it out. The Plotto Genie will only give you the skeleton – it is up to you to know your audience and reward them for reading.
You have about 3-4 pages to do it.
Have fun with this.
THE FORMULA
Use a Random Number Generator (Wizard
or Genie
)
Look up the Number Suggestions for:
Locale
Principal Character
Motivation
Obstacle
Method of Attack
Predicament or Crisis
The Climax
Write these out in full before you read the whole text.
Then let your inspiration take hold to tell you the whole story. (See full Instructions below.)
INTRODUCTION
The series of Plotto Genie Indices would not be complete without the addition of one which supplies the plot outline for the short-short (or flash fiction
) story—so popular has this type of fiction become in the past few years.
Not only is the flash fiction
story popular with the reading public but on account of the fact that a number of enterprising publishers have offered unusually large financial compensation for such stories, thousands of authors have come to look upon it as a handy pot boiler.
The Formula and Index differs from all of the others which accompany the Wizard. It may be said to be similar to all of them but unlike any. In reading and analyzing most of the flash fiction
s that have been published in Liberty and Collier‘s for a period of two years, I found that they embrace all the plot types, and because of this it was necessary to devise a special formula which would give the author all the leeway necessary in dialing out the kind of plots he wanted.
Romantic melodrama, plain action-adventure, detective-mystery, comedy, or romance and pathos—all of them are at your disposal with the use of the following formula for the flash fiction
Story. It all depends on whether you dial even or odd numbers—and in the treatment you give the resulting outline.
Wycliffe A. Hill
WHAT IS A FLASH FICTION
STORY?
Although many authors will not acknowledge it as a fact, and others recognize it subconsciously or intuitively, while some openly admit it to be the method employed by them, all fiction story plots are mechanically constructed, after a pattern or a formula, by a system of rules or according to a specific design. The perfect plot must be just as carefully engineered as are the plans and blueprints of any great structure.
Ingredients of which all story plots are made are characters, situations, backgrounds and action. Persons involved in situations result in action, while background lends color. Of course, like snowflakes which form themselves into many varied and beautiful designs by accident of pattern, human incidents or events frequently shape themselves into story material.
I said that there is a formula for every type of story. So there is for everything else in the Universe. In order to discover it one must first analyze a considerable quantity of the material at hand, separate it into its constituent parts, ascertain the proportions used, the process or order of introduction and guess at the catalytic element or chemical action- which followed.
When I was confronted with the task of discovering the stuff of which flash fiction
stories are made I naturally proceeded to do the thing first named in the previous paragraph. Fortunately I was able to obtain hack numbers of LIBERTY and COLLIER'S for about two years past.
Next, I read every flash fiction
story in these magazines and reduced each to a synopsis of from a dozen to fifty words. These were pasted on strips