“FIRST AID TO TROUBLED WRITERS,” the Boston Globe announced in September 1928—“GRINDS OUT PLOTS WITHOUT ANY FALSE START.”

Calling all writers who are obsessed with plot and obsessives who can write a mean story. We want you!

THE RULES:

Every Wednesday we will post a prompt from William Wallace Cook’s classic how to manual Plotto: The Mater Book of All Plots. Simply use the prompt below to write your own original 500 word story.

In the book, {A}= a male protagonist. {B}= a female protagonist but for our purposes, feel free to write from the point of view of any gender.

Mini-Plottos, 500 words or fewer must be submitted by the following Monday at noon PST. Send to: openbar@tinhouse.com with PLOTTO CONTEST as the subject line. Please include a brief bio.

The Week’s Prompt:

{A}, a pugilist, believes that a friend whom he killed by a chance blow in a practice bout, is present in the ring every time he has battle.

THE RICHES:

Winners will be announced each Wednesday and will receive a hardcover copy of Plotto, online publication on the Tin House Blog and be entered in the Final Master Plot Challenge.

Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots

A classic how-to manual, William Wallace Cook’s Plotto is one writer’s personal method, painstakingly diagrammed for the benefit of others. The theory itself may be simple—“Purpose, opposed by Obstacle, yields Conflict”—but Cook takes his “Plottoist” through hundreds of situations and scenarios, guiding the reader’s hand through a dizzying array of “purposes” and “obstacles.”

Read a posthumous conversation with “the man who deforested Canada” William Wallace Cook here.

A martial arts instructor. A parachuting pornographer. A cowboy Minotaur. Turns out there are plenty of professions out there that can be a hindrance to a healthy (and safe!) relationship.

Congratulations goes out to Yasuko Thanh, this week’s contest winner, whose cautionary tale about dating a Matador reminded us of something you might encounter during the midnight screening of a foreign film festival.

Be sure to check back later today for this week’s prompt.

Last week’s prompt: {A’s} profession is a hazardous one—aviator, automobile racing driver, steeple jack, “human fly”—and {B} considers this fact an obstacle to their marriage.

The Matador Mystery

At dinner, Sandwina gave her husband, The Matador Mystery, an ultimatum. He would retire after the Chicago show or she would leave him. It must be understood that, for Sandwina, Matador’s performances were simply excuses to show girls the intricate beadwork on his costume, and then invite them to his caravan for a display of more.

He had a hale chest and eyes the colour of water stains on a wooden table. He swallowed rubies and shot them out of his mouth into a spittoon placed across the room. He would swallow three fishbowls of water and eject a fountain that would hit the ceiling before flowing into a small waiting basin. In his best act, he set a metal castle on fire with kerosene he had swallowed and then put it out with water he had consumed first.

Matador got drunk and stayed awake all night.

When they heard cursing behind his wagon—the giant, the crone, the fat lady, the midget, the three-legged boy, the armless wonder and the thin man—all anticipated a good show because Hector, if nothing else, was always a charismatic performer. Even if it was unheard of for him to practice his act before breakfast.

Everyone knew that after Matador set up his metal castle in the field, he would swallow the kerosene, put on his protective lenses, take off his sombrero with the flammable fringe, and light the little candle inside the bell tower.

The men cheered Matador on, mistaking his exuberant swallowing for enthusiasm, his clumsiness with the bottle of kerosene for excitement after a night of gin, and no one noticed his tears. The children couldn’t make up their minds whether to watch his wide mouth overflow with kerosene, or to watch the tattoo of a phoenix on the back of Matador’s hand that moved its wings when Matador moved his fingers. Sandwina suddenly tapped him on the back.

Wearing a peignoir, she was as rested in appearance as Matador was dishevelled. Sandwina had come out holding a cup of chicory coffee in her right hand. Her head cocked to one side, her shoulder shrugged, she said, “Matador. Go to bed.”

A breeze caused her peignoir to open before she’d had a chance to button it. Matador lit the candle.

“Say something kind,” the Fat Lady said, touching Sandwina’s shoulder.

But Sandwina succeeded only in creating waves of tension with her admonitions, where before there had merely been some cheering men, whispering women, and children watching the phoenix on the back of Hector’s hand.

The crowd gasped as the Matador vomited kerosene onto the candle, lost his balance and fell into the explosion he’d created. Frantic, he beat at the flames that were consuming him. People came shouting and running from the caravans with buckets of water. But before they could arrive, Matador looked wildly into Sandwina’s eyes, and vomited again. Flames engulfed him.

Yasuko Thanh lives in Victoria, BC, Canada, with her husband and two daughters. Her first book of short stories, Floating Like the Dead, comes out this April with McClelland & Stewart. She also sings and plays guitar in an all-girl rockabilly band.

“It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip–and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It’s more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will no give or take anything, wear any masks, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naivete. Sentiment equals naivete on this continent (at least since the Reconfiguration). One of the things sophisticated viewers have always liked about J.O. Incandenza’s The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is its unsubtle thesis that naivete is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America. And since sin is the sort of thing that can be talked about only figuratively, it’s natural that Himself’s dark little cartridge was mostly about a myth, viz. that queerly persistent U.S. myth that cynicism and naivete are mutually exclusive. Hal, who’s empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naive and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he’s really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.” — David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

In the interim, Courtney Maum provides the necessary guide to help you identify all the strange creatures that will be flocking to Chicago next week.

Writers are an entertaining and an educational species to observe. In North America, there is no better location to watch writers “socializing” than at the AWP conference, where once a year in February, writers of all ages and backgrounds migrate to a city with an intemperate climate to banter, dance and mate with one another—a rare phenomenon!

One need not be a professional naturalist to identify writers. Our Field Guide to AWP will provide you with an overview of the more prominent species and phenomena associated with their annual migration. Happy hunting!

Memoirists: With very few exceptions, memoirists are women. They favor fleece outerwear and they often carry snacks. Memoirists usually travel in odd-numbered groups of other memoirists. They are very friendly when approached, but prove difficult to get rid of in social situations. It is recommended to observe them from afar.

Essayists: The essayist signals his difference from the memoirist by the appropriation of a blazer. This blazer can be seen on essayists of both sexes. Essayists are self-deprecating but thrive on preparation—if you need a ride somewhere, you should ask them. They probably have a car.

The Vicariouso: These writers can be identified by the presence of a wedding ring and the absence of their spouse. They have come to AWP to remember what it is like to be single so that they can write short stories and novels credibly from a single person’s point of view.

Fiction writers: With their paradoxical characteristics and extreme volatility, fiction writers make for fascinating viewing. Be warned—fiction writers tend to require a great deal of attention and necessitate almost as much alcohol as poets. They are very sensitive about the size and heft of pillows. Quirky fiction writers!

Fiction writers are not classified by their garments, but rather by their expressions. (See “Morbidus,” below.) Because of their perfectionism and demonstrative wit, many people choose to marry and/or employ fiction writers. Both of these endeavors come with significant risk to the non-writing party, as fiction writers carry a time-sensitive desire to “leave it all behind” which, if acted upon, could result in absenteeism, divorce, or the sudden relocation to an area the fiction writer read about in a short story that one time.

Morbidus: The gloomy look that comes over fiction writers when they are engaged in a conversation that does not concern their work.

Poets: Consider yourself very lucky if you come upon a poet—they are an endangered species! Poets can be divided into two types: those over fifty years of age, and those under thirty-two. There are no poets in between thirty-two and fifty because they have gone out and gotten jobs.

Poet or Memoirist?

Poets of the first type tend to be disheveled—they might be wearing one or more articles of clothing inside out. They will probably be carrying a satchel and drinking green tea from a thermos. Do not try to wash the thermos for them. The smell provides great comfort.

Poets of the second type are almost exclusively male. Because of their fondness for flannel outerwear, they are often mistaken for lumberjacks. Poets are not lumberjacks! Poets signal a willingness to mate by donning spectator shoes on their feet—this is true for both male and female poets. If they do not want to mate, or have already mated, they will be wearing hiking shoes. Poets require a significant amount of alcohol and/or beer at all times.

Poets can be great fun but they must be handled with caution. Do not get into a motor vehicle operated by a poet; they are very bad at driving.

Abstentia Temporaris: This is a condition in which a writer is suddenly unable to form coherent sentences. It is commonly instigated by the question, “What’s your book about?”

Screenwriters: Screenwriters do not leave the state of California. If you believe you have seen, or interacted with a screenwriter at AWP, notify the help desk. In reality, you have just come into contact with a stand up comedian.

Abaddon: Abaddon is the physical gathering of writers who previously only knew each other virtually through their interactions in online writing workshops. You can identify Abaddon meet-ups by the swarm of locusts hovering above their table. Do not accept an invitation to join them—you will be forced to drink a beverage with blue curaçao inside.

Self-published authors: Self-published authors fall into two categories, the Initio and the Extremum. The Initio are a group of tech-savvy individuals who still possess optimism. They are sexually active and well-versed in pop culture. Their chapbooks cost eight dollars. The Extremum carry autobiographical press packets instead of business cards. Their book is available on a USB flash drive for seventeen dollars, if you’ll just come to Staples and wait while they print it out.

The "Gravitas" Writer

Joviatas:The exhilaration provoked by sudden exposure to so many other writers.

Gravitas: The desperation provoked by prolonged exposure to so. Many. Other. Writers.

Remember, all writers are fragile creatures. It is our responsibility to ensure that they do not face extinction by purchasing the books and literary magazines for which they toil. As with any wild creature, writers should be observed from a suitable distance and should not be given any sugary beverages or snacks. Enjoy your time at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference! (That’s what it stands for, by the way.)

Courtney Maum is a fiction writer based in between the Berkshires of Massachusetts and New York City. A humor columnist for Electric Literature, her work has appeared in Slice Magazine, The Rumpus, Vol.1 “Sunday Stories”, Anderbo and others. She is a frequent reader at NY-based series and a Literary Death Match champion. Courtney is currently working on a collection of comic fiction entitled “Funny You Should Say That.” Find her on Twitter at @cmaum

Some of the plots are just plain wacky. In plot 227, “B is unable to marry A because her father, F-B, in using B for his subject in a scientific experiment, has instilled a poison into her blood.”

But, says Collins, as off-the-wall as Plotto can be, it was actually quite influential in its day — and not just to aspiring novelists. A young Alfred Hitchcock, just getting started as a silent film director in Britain, sent away for a copy.

“It’s had a particularly strong afterlife, I think, among screenwriters,” Collins says. “A lot of this whole idea of formulaic plotting, especially in its early versions, like Plotto, actually was associated with movies, as much as with novels.”

Collins says that while pulp novels like the ones Cook wrote may be mostly gone, Cook’s carefully cross-referenced plots can actually teach aspiring writers a great deal about which plot elements go together best.

“You really do get a strong sense of how plot works,” he says. “Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the Perry Mason books, said that he basically learned about plotting from Plotto.”

My life intersected with J. P. Jacobsen’s in a McDonald’s parking lot.  I hate many things about Ronald McDonald but his famous potatoes have had me in their MSG-soaked thrall since childhood.  Which is why I found myself off to the side of the drive-through, waiting on an order of large fries one late July.  Naturally, I pulled out a book and flipped it open.

Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet is not what I’m writing about here.  But it was what I was consuming outside McDonald’s.  In it, Rilke doles out advice like this: “Of all my books just a few are indispensable to me, and two even are always among my things, wherever I am: the Bible, and the books of the great Danish writer, Jens Peter Jacobsen.”  I read on, intensely curious (the Bible and —who?).  Read Jacobsen, continues Rilke, and “a world will come over you, the happiness, the abundance, the incomprehensible immensity of a world.” One letter later, I was sold, ready to track down the books of this Jacobsen—specifically a collection called Mogens and Other Stories.  And just as I committed myself to finding it there came a knock at my window.  A man with a white paper bag stood outside.  “Sorry ’bout the wait, sir.”  I blinked as he handed over my precious fries.

Two weeks later, it was Mogens I was devouring.

I must have made an odd sight to that McDonald’s attendant, hunched over the steering wheel as I was, furiously underlining. Quivering, maybe.  Perhaps I even resembled a Jacobsen character: “Quite obviously he had just been reading a book,” writes the author in Mogens, “one could tell that from the expression in his eyes, from his hair, from the abstracted way in which he managed his hands.” Jacobsen, a man familiar with a diverse array of books and knowledge sets himself, would know:  he was a scientist first (biology, botany) and a fiction writer only later in his short life.  Born in Jutland in 1847 and educated in the 1860s at the University of Copenhagen, Jacobsen took top honors for his dissertation on seaweeds.  A few years later, he’d translated Darwin into Danish.  In 1872 he got tuberculosis and, bedridden, started writing for a living.  His strikingly small oeuvre—he published one novel and just seven stories—influenced, among others, Rilke, Lawrence, Freud, Hesse, Ibsen, and Schoenberg.  Working my way through Mogens, it wasn’t hard to see why.

The novella-length title story opens quietly as a door with well-oiled hinges: “Summer it was; in the middle of the day; in a corner of the enclosure.  Immediately in front of it stood an old oaktree.”  From here Jacobsen leads us into the lives of the dreamy-minded Mogens and his love, carefree Camilla, whom he meets in a rainstorm.  All seems well.  Then, just after they marry, Camilla perishes in a fire. Mogens, trapped nearby beneath a fallen beam, watches her banish into flames before being rescued himself.  The sight leaves him hysterical.  He slides into depression, renounces all love in an effort to stave off the pain of loss, and falls into a nomadic, vice-filled life. After abruptly dumping his latest fling one morning, Mogens says coldly:  “It means that I am tired of your beauty, that I know your voice and your gestures by heart, and that neither your whims nor your stupidity nor your craftiness can any longer entertain me.  Can you tell me then why I should stay?”

Mogens eventually falls for another, Thora, who draws out his better self.  He hears her voice first from afar, singing a refrain that could be his:  “In longing, in longing, I live.”  It’s this wanting, Jacobsen seems to believe, that drives a human mad—no matter how pure desire’s fluttering at first seems.  Even as Mogens and Thora wed, Jacobsen writes, “Passion spoiled everything, and it was very ugly and unhuman…He had been subjugated, weighed down, tormented, by this ugly and powerful force; it had lain in his eyes and ears, it had poisoned all his thoughts.”  Throughout the collection, Jacobsen drives to the heart of passion’s blinding sway over reason and, ultimately, its costs.  For the author, it’s this fever—fueled by distances and desires—that repels and melds us to one another again and again.

And Jacobsen probes passion outside the context of romantic love too.  In his allegorical, pre-Camus “The Plague at Bergamo,” the author conjures a death-infested landscape of fear and desperation.  The dying Bergamians vent a crazy-eyed lust for salvation; they want “to be His, not in gentle piety, not in the inactivity of silent prayer, but madly.”  Jacobsen’s riskiest venture—the skeletal plot and hyberbolic characters make the piece feel less like a short story and more like a dramatic skit—follows, called “There Should Have Been Roses,” an ethereal conversation between two swooning pages.  The collection finishes with what’s arguably the easiest, most formally conservative piece, “Mrs. Fonss,” in which a widow’s newfound passion for a long-lost lover forces a wedge between her and her children.  She dies leaving her estranged children a final letter:  “I knew very well that it was your great love, that caused your great anger; had you loved me less, you would have let me go more easily.”

Like Mrs. Fonss, Jacobsen had the temerity to perish early: he died of tuberculosis at thirty-seven.  And as with Keats or Basquiat, one wonders what still greater works would have come had be been around longer.  But the zestful, keenly observed vision, the vision that drew in Rilke, thrives still.  Rilke too wrote about passion and how it plays us.  So when the poet suggests Jacobsen to his letter-writing admirer, he’s saying what Chuck Palahniuk says of Amy Hempel’s short stories:  “If you don’t love this, we have nothing in common.”  Adds Rilke, somewhat more gently, of Mogens:  “Live a while” in these stories, “learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them.”

Jesse Nathan‘s poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays have appeared in Adbusters, Geez, the Believer, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere.

My manager is waist-deep in God, which is where I want to be. She barely blinks, smiles as if drugged or half-asleep—who wouldn’t want such lassitude, especially among these aisles of plastic “goods” made in China for our little girls. The store is the kind of shrill over-lit ugly that makes you depressed if you do not believe in God or if you don’t know if you believe in God. To employ me to stock shelves and run a cash register took a leap of faith on Sandra’s part, as my mouth falls most naturally into the unwelcoming neutral position. No matter how hard I try to curve them, my lips end up sinking, as if weighted. In this economy, it would be presumptive to say that I am overqualified for selling hair decorations in various shades of pink, lavender, and whatever is the new black. Many of the girls who come here with allowances used to sit at desks facing me and my trying-to smile. “Mrs. Hertz,” they say, not just surprised but impressed with my new position, surrounded as I am by ribbons and sparkle. Their moms know better, try to look away. When jobs get scarce, eye contact suffers. Merciful Sandra intervenes, tells me to take lunch by asking me if I want to take it. A pair of hot dogs is enough to satisfy my slim hunger, and I come back early because the best thing in my life right now is watching Sandra be loved by God. “How did you two first meet,” I ask her, as I re-pin my chest with my name, my first name only, store policy. She shows me lizard eyes that cry only for good reasons. “I was walking across Broad Street and I just felt him by my side,” she says. That night, after selling my last barrette, I go down to Broad, look both ways. I’m wary, but the goal is to buck my own trends, to pool the resources I lack, to find a really good reason to carry on. I will cross this street all night if I have to.

Frances Lefkowitz is the author of To Have Not, as well as hundreds of articles, essays and stories in national literary and consumer magazines, from GlimmerTrain, Fiction, Blip,  and The Sun, to Good Housekeeping, Whole Living, and National Geographic’s Green Guide. Her essays have received special mention twice for the Pushcart Prize and once for Best American Essays.

I never understood the popularity of the chains. Sure, a building full of books is a building full of books–its contents naturally confer sublimeness. But the chains were all the same: they had the same neutral flooring, the same polished woodgrain, the same computer-generated signage with the same bland fonts. And then there was the national chain bookstore smell: like a hotel lobby during continental breakfast service.

The bookstores I frequented on Capital Hill, in the University District, Ballard, and downtown, were grungy, just like the popular music of the era. They usually had a cart of cheap used books out front, a store cat or six, and shelf labels made of masking tape.

My favorite, just a block from my high school, was Red & Black Books, an old-school anarchist collective where I bought my “Keep Your Laws Off My Body” button and “Act Up” stickers, and picked up copies of the free weeklies and The Rocket. It closed in 1999, just months before the WTO protests that shut down the city and briefly radicalized Seattle’s otherwise blithely progressive population.

When I travel, the itinerary usually contains a stop at the local grocery co-op, a thrift shop, and at least one bookstore. It’s so easy to fall in love with a city by way of its indie bookshops. Sometimes it’s an unassuming shop in a tiny strip mall, like Eugene’s Black Sun Books, or a hidden affair up a side staircase, over the worker’s collective cafe, like Montpelier’s Black Sheep Books. Other times, it’s a classy corner in an upscale shopping district, like Richmond’s Black Swan Books, or the two-story nook of book stacks that is Bellingham’s Eclipse Books.

Most recently, I fell for Olympia’s (WA) Last Word Books , a store that so resembled the bookstores of my youth that I knew I would have to make regular stops en route between Portland and Seattle.

Last Word’s selection covers all genres and subjects. I headed straight for Literature, of course, where contemporary popular titles are side by side with small press offerings and paperback classics. (Recent finds: 1950’s Vintage paperbacks of Howards End, and Stories by Elizabeth Bowen, with classy Alfred Zalon covers; and Sweet Days of Discipline, by Fleur Jaeggy, with the Joseph Brodsky endorsement, “Reading time is approximately four hours.”).

Art adorns the walls above the 10-foot bookshelves, and there are creaky ladders on rolling tracks here and there. Science Fiction and Fantasy have their own cases, next to drama and poetry. An eclectic–if disheveled–children’s section contains collectibles (for me) and cheap reading copies (for my nose-picking three-year-old). The collection of pulp paperbacks in the second room (which houses the press and zine library), is easy to miss, but worth seeking out for finds like an original copy of Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt , which was too dear for me at $25, but still tempting.

As for the atmosphere, there’s the jangle of the street outside and the long, shady aisles to browse. The place is not without a musty corner or two; one is outfitted with a not-quite-life-sized cut-out of John Wayne. The staff are as friendly as I can stand–helpful if asked, but otherwise perfectly disinterested in me–and frequently voluble with each other and their regulars on matters social and political. I’ve never met a more aloof store cat anywhere. The small black feline sauntered right past my out-stretched hand without a sniff or a rub. Twice. I was duly charmed.  Much as I was by the advertisement for Drunken Poetry: a monthly event in which a “designated drunk” reads poetry submissions from the audience.

As a writer and former bookseller, I don’t care so much where you buy your books so long as you replenish that stack on your bedside table every now and then (so long as you have a stack on your beside, I should say). If a Barnes & Noble is your option, have at it. The survival of books and bookstores is coming to depend more on people reading for reading’s sake and shopping in person for the sake of local economies.

For myself, I will never shop the chains; I prefer a less sanitary experience. I would rather leave a bookstore with a light film on my fingers from handling the merchandise. Like the sand and salt on the skin after a day at the beach, the essence of the bookshop should linger on the body (and in the spirit) for hours, or even days, afterwards.

Alexis M. Smith grew up in Soldotna, Alaska, and Seattle, Washington. She received an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. She has written for Tarpaulin Sky and powells.com. Her first novel, Glaciers, a Tin House Books New Voice, was published in January. She has a son and two cats, and they all live together in a little apartment in Portland, Oregon.

I love them because they do something I couldn’t imagine doing. They’re beautiful. They not only endure but also say something in the act of their run, something about the possibilities of the human body.

And it’s this sense of possibility, of an ecstatic vision, that draws me to long poems. And by long poems I mean over twenty pages and up to a whole book. In these United States we have some incredible (and famous) examples. Thomas McGrath’s Letter To an Imaginary Friend and Frank Stanford’s The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You are two Jazz Odyssey Up-All-Night illustrations. Though it’s much, much, shorter than those two tombs (coming in at just under sixty-three pages), the emotional weight and heartbreaking beauty of Alex Phillips’s Crash Dome (Factory Hollow Press, 2010) can certainly mingle at the same poetry party:

“The machines, the get warmer,

you start glowing, they keep humming,

just humming, whatever happens

to your soul up there happens,

the soul, the little adventurer in us,

our contents, expiration date,

no robotic arms or levers,

they hum and warm you into existence,

out of existence, like a remarkable caffeine

buzz, like the sound of lawnmowers,

but they don’t drive you crazy,

they make you happy.”

And so the strange, expanding other-universe of Crash Dome begins. There are no stanza breaks in this stunning work. That is to say there is no rest for the soul of the reader, that little adventurer, nor will you want one. Crash Dome is a weird exciting scary world because in so many ways it is also our world.

Alex Phillips’s book length poem is a gorgeous long distance runner. Everyone should pick up a copy of this book, have over a group of friends, open a bottle of wine, and go on a journey. I promise, you will not be the same when you come home.

“FIRST AID TO TROUBLED WRITERS,” the Boston Globe announced in September 1928—“GRINDS OUT PLOTS WITHOUT ANY FALSE START.”

Calling all writers who are obsessed with plot and obsessives who can write a mean story. We want you!

THE RULES:

Every Wednesday we will post a prompt from William Wallace Cook’s classic how to manual Plotto: The Mater Book of All Plots. Simply use the prompt below to write your own original 500 word (or less) story.

In the book, {A}= a male protagonist. {B}= a female protagonist but for our purposes, feel free to write from the point of view of any gender.

Mini-Plottos, 500 words or fewer, must be submitted by the following Monday at 5:00 PST. Send to: theopenbar@tinhouse.com with PLOTTO CONTEST as the subject line.

The Week’s Prompt:

{A’s} profession is a hazardous one—aviator, automobile racing driver, steeple jack, “human fly”—and {B} considers this fact an obstacle to their marriage.

THE RICHES:

Winners will be announced each Wednesday and will receive a hardcover copy of Plotto, online publication on the Tin House Blog and be entered in the Final Master Plot Challenge.

Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots

A classic how-to manual, William Wallace Cook’s Plotto is one writer’s personal method, painstakingly diagrammed for the benefit of others. The theory itself may be simple—“Purpose, opposed by Obstacle, yields Conflict”—but Cook takes his “Plottoist” through hundreds of situations and scenarios, guiding the reader’s hand through a dizzying array of “purposes” and “obstacles.”

Read a posthumous conversation with “the man who deforested Canada” William Wallace Cook here.