The Master Book of Plots, Plotto, was written in 1928 by your favorite author and mine, William Wallace Cook, and Tin House has released it anew for your reading or writing pleasure. With well over a thousand plots, Plotto can spoil more stories than you can swap by the fireplace in a year of weekends. Of course, the joy is in the telling, which is why I’m working on revisions of The Tale of Two Cities and Macbeth. I may even combine the two–not sure.
Along these lines, Greg Bergstrom explains how the cliches line up in various TV mysteries and detective stories. “There are also 2.74 metric tons of clichés,” he says, “like the typical stubbly detective who breaks the rules, struggles with the bottle and tends to tune up suspected killers with a copy of the Manhattan Yellow Pages.”
I was watching “CSI-NY” on Friday evening, and had a sudden, overwhelming realization of how extremely hackneyed the whole story was. I’m not sure I can watch that show again. Soon I may be unable to watch TV at all. Then what will I do? Write?
I have often thought that the book of Esther would make a terrific novel, and/or an opera. It practically stages itself!
Is it a plot cliche when Dangerous Davies loses every time he wins in the British TV show “The Last Detective” and the novels by Leslie Thomas. The stories are written so that the perpetrator is presented as morally justified, but legally liable. Or, in solving a case, an innocent bystander’s life is ruined. So Davies is always in trouble for actually solving the crime. The characters are real characters and the intrigue intriguing, but the endings always leave me dissatisfied when Dangerous Davies wins, but loses by solving a crime that is presented as better left unsolved.
I caught “The Last Detective” on Netflix. Enjoyed it quite a lot. Perhaps I’m heartless.