Rating: 
Summary: Disappointingly retro.
Review: "Plots Limited" would be a more apt title. There is not that great a variety, unless you want to limit yourself to the cliched, the hackneyed, the predictable, or the downright silly.I've been through this book several times and have yet to find it useful. What I find instead is that I can actually name the TV movies, miniseries, and bad TV shows where these plots have already appeared. (And time has not made them any more palatable.) This makes it more of a trivia game than a writer's reference. However, if you're looking for a nostalgic journey through The Worst of 1970s and '80s Television, this book is for you.
Rating:
Summary: A Useless Tool for Novel Writing
Review: I met the author of this book/software at a writer's conference in 1999. He gave it a lot of hype, saying that this can cure writer's block. So, I bought both and took them home. I installed the program, tried out the tutorial, and tried to use it to cure my own writer's block. I was sorely disappointed by the lack of variety and an 80's feel of the plot situations. I wound up returning the software because 1) It wasn't user friendly, 2) It didn't meet my needs, and 3) It was overpriced for what it had to offer.The book is basically lists all the plot options available in the software. Don't get me wrong, the concept of the book/software is great. Sawyer just needs to develop it more and modernize his plot segments. This book, I feel, is good for subplots or short stories. All you have to do is take the basic premise of each segment and tweak it until it suits your needs.
Rating:
Summary: It's got ideas.. but...
Review: Okay. So the book is chuck full of ideas, but you need a masters degree in reading technical manuals in order to implement them. As soon as I began to read the "instructions", my muse packed her bags and headed to parts unknown. Save your money, and buy other, more straight-forward plot point books.
Rating:
Summary: It's got ideas.. but...
Review: Okay. So the book is chuck full of ideas, but you need a masters degree in reading technical manuals in order to implement them. As soon as I began to read the "instructions", my muse packed her bags and headed to parts unknown. Save your money, and buy other, more straight-forward plot point books.
Rating: 
Summary: more "beats" than plots
Review: Once you understand how to use the book "Plots Unlimited" you will never be short of a basic plot line or subplot again. After reading through it, I sat down in front of the television, watched several modern shows and found the plot line for every one of them in the book. I flipped over to HBO and again found the storylines for each of the current movies in the book. This is not to say that the book will help you write a story, it helps only with the very basic plot line. A lot of would be writers lacking imagination will have a hard time with this book because it does not write the story for you. Several years ago I was deeply involved in the study of magic tricks. At the time I had an old-timer tell me that there were no new tricks, only new ways of presenting the same old tricks. I did not believe that at all because of the wonderful new tricks that David Copperfield and others performed. As I learned the secrets I found that he was indeed right. New methods were extremely rare, almost every "new" trick was actually a masterful change of the surroundings, distractions, story line, etc. This book is the same sort of thing. It will provide you with the various changes and movements through a good story line, but it is up to you to provide the background and breathe life into the plot so that it becomes spellbinding. In the hands of a skilled writer or anyone with a strong imagination this book can provide thousands of combinations of plots and subplots from which to springboard into a wonderful piece of fiction. A recommended book for any serious writer with a decent imagination.
Rating:
Summary: What's all the Hype about?
Review: Plots Unlimited owes nothing to the TV movies of the 70's and 80's. Its real inspiration was "a new method of plot suggestion" first published in 1928! It was titled "Plotto". The author, William Wallace Cook, was a prolific author of pulp science fiction - he cranked out an amazing 66,000 words per week - and I suspect he began writing "Plotto" for his own use. All that Sawyer and Weingarten did was modernize some of the language; the Masterplots, Conflict Situations, even the cross references: they copied it all from Cook.
Rating: 
Summary: Ideas for your imagination
Review: This book gives great, flexible plot ideas that can be used by a variety of writers. This book will be very useful for me when I am in a rut, or don't know where to go with my characters. It doesn't create a story, but gives ideas of the where you can lead your story. I was skeptical after reading other reviews, but if you have any talent, or imagination, this book will only enrich your writing goals. Definently a book to have on your shelf!
Rating:
Summary: Classic Reference Tool for Writers
Review: This book is an extraorinary compendium of story ideas that will undoubtedly spark your imagination. But don't get me wrong, Plots Unlimited does not write your story for you. (If this is what you want, you probably shouldn't be writing.) The trick is to use the story suggestions in Plots Unlimited as a starting point for your own imagination. For me, the book works best when I use my imagination to alter the litteral situations in the book (e.g., a 'car' can become a spaceship, a married couple can be teenagers 'going steady', etc.) The story suggestions can be used for writing in any genre, because they each deal with basic human relationships. If you are a writer, Plots Unlimited is definately a good book to have on the shelf...
Rating:
Summary: Great for writer's block, and moments where you need a nudge
Review: This is a good book for writers who are stuck on a dead-end plot point and need a nudge in the right direction. A previous reviewer complained about the book's ineffective qualities with science fiction, but it's the writer's job to manipulate the basic conflict situations provided in the book. This book will not give you EXACT PLOTS for your story. But it WILL offer suggestions on directions you could take with your story. On Page 126, the second part of "Conflict Situation - #953" reads, "Jack, wanting peace and quiet, assumes a false identity and finds a distant retreat." The retreat could be a dilapidated apartment in Queens, a rural farm in Montana, or a distant planet in the Andromeda Galaxy. Those creative souls who look at the contents of this book in LITERAL terms will find nothing useful because it's only intended to spark the writer's imagination, NOT provide easy plots for lazy writers. I think this is a wonderful resource, and I recommend it to any aspiring, or professional writer out there who needs a little nudge to get their story moving.
Rating:
Summary: A science text book might have been more helpful
Review: This isn't the most user-friendly book I've ever read, and the plots are straight out of a bad 80's soap-opera. It might help get your brain going when experiencing writers block, but I doubt you'd get your money's worth out of it.
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