Miles Jupp and the Plot Device
Seriously...5 Tammi 2016

Miles Jupp and the Plot Device

How many stories are there in the world? According to William Wallace Cook, dime novelist and prolific producer of American pulp, there were precisely 1,462 and in Plotto, his "Master Book of All Plots", he anatomised them all in the service of struggling writers everywhere. Plotto, published in 1928, was nothing less than a manual of fictional devices, intended to sit on a writer's shelf between the dictionary and the thesaurus. Any writer stuck for inspiration could leaf through Plotto to discover plots like "a ventriloquist, captured by savages and threatened with death, makes an animal talk-and is given his freedom" or "a reporter, writing up an imaginary interview as fact, quotes a man as being in town on a certain day. The man, subsequently accused of a crime, establishes an alibi through an interview innocently faked by the reporter." Cook hailed his own book as "an invention which reduces literature to an exact science." But it was weird science. Nevertheless it worked for Cook, who churned out up to 50 novels a year. It also worked for Perry Mason creator Earl Stanley Gardner who borrowed liberally from Plotto. Even the young Alfred Hitchcock had a copy. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Cook must have been delighted by the appearance of "The Plot Robot," whose name promised much but which, rather disappointingly was a cardboard circle with a pointer attached to it. Miles Jupp investigates the Plot Device that promises to make writing easy, with the help of crime writers Val McDermid and John Harvey.

Jaksot(484)

On a Knife Edge

On a Knife Edge

This hospital based youth violence work is taking place in the four London major trauma centres and Producer Sue Mitchell was given exclusive access to follow what happens. The charity, Redthread, now...

20 Tammi 201731min

Exonerated

Exonerated

John Toal meets former death-row inmates Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle at the retreat they have set up in rural Ireland to offer restorative treatment to other victims of wrongful conviction in order...

13 Tammi 201730min

Hiraeth

Hiraeth

Poet Mab Jones explores the concept of 'Hiraeth' in the poetry of Wales and further afieldHiraeth, a central theme of Welsh language poetry and song, is a feeling of something lost, a long time ago, w...

9 Joulu 201631min

The Green Book

The Green Book

In the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, travelling in the United States was fraught with difficulties if you were black. At best it was inconvenient, as white-owned businesses refused to serve Afri...

6 Joulu 201638min

Bursting the Social Network Bubble

Bursting the Social Network Bubble

Bobby Friction has started to realise that his day-to-day online activities are not only being monitored but in some senses manipulated. How often he interacts with specific friends, pages or sites sc...

2 Joulu 201630min

GCHQ: Minority Report

GCHQ: Minority Report

The domestic challenge facing Britain's biggest secret intelligence service. What's stopping members of the ethnic minorities from playing a key part in Britain's spy network: discrimination, loyalty ...

29 Marras 201640min

Being Bored: The Importance of Doing Nothing

Being Bored: The Importance of Doing Nothing

Is boredom under threat? There are more TV channels than we can count, Smartphones keep us engaged around the clock, and the constant white noise of social media coerces us to always 'interact'. In fa...

22 Marras 201658min

Searching for Tobias

Searching for Tobias

In 2008 Chloe Hadjimatheou was covering Barack Obama's first election campaign when she came across a 15 year old black boy in a Mississippi trailer park. Back then the young Tobias was full of potent...

4 Marras 201630min

Suosittua kategoriassa Yhteiskunta

olipa-kerran-otsikko
i-dont-like-mondays
sita
siita-on-vaikea-puhua
kaksi-aitia
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
uutiscast
poks
antin-palautepalvelu
kolme-kaannekohtaa
joku-tietaa-jotain-2
mamma-mia
aikalisa
yopuolen-tarinoita-2
rss-murhan-anatomia
rss-palmujen-varjoissa
rss-nikotellen
meidan-pitais-puhua
rss-haudattu
loukussa