Plotto!

Ever wondered how those old pulp writers cranked out so many different stories? No? Well, me neither. I just assumed they had a small handful of well-worn tropes and with a little plaster and a couple coats of paint they could be recycled endlessly. A Western plot could be used in a co-ed romance story if you changed the cattle to fraternity pledges, and a space opera could be easily reworked as a detective novel or a Fu Manchu serial with some spray paint and a kicky new set of drawer pulls.

For those of you who failed woodshop here's your chance to do it up old school with William Wallace Cook's classic Plotto.

Not Plop or blotto, Plotto, the Master Book of All Plots. With a little figuring and cyphering you could generate thousands of complex plots or situations from what looks like mathematical gibberish. There are character combinations, master plots, lead-ups, conflicts, purposes and obstacles and god knows what else, all ready for you to shoehorn your own overwrought and hamfisted prose into.

Open Library has a scanned copy from 1928 in several different ebook formats though the paperback reissue from the 1940s would be easier to flip back and forth through than on an e-reader. In order for the damned thing to make any sense you'll also need the Plotto Instruction Book, something else that's been reissued.

Excuse me while I go and ruin some decent porno by shoving a bunch of useless plot into it.