Kickstarter

Here's a little lagniappe for all of you while we wait for our Story Forge decks to arrive! A while back I mentioned that I'd learned of a deck of cards for writers called "Deal-A-Plot," published way back in 1936. Naturally, I immediately started searching for a deck to call my own, and recently landed one through the magic of eBay.

It's a fascinating deck. It's intent is nearly identical with Story Forge, though it goes about it entirely differently. There's 36 cards, all numbered 1 through 6, and the fronts are packed with lists of character types, settings, plot complications and other story ingredients. You are supposed to shuffle the cards, then split the deck like you are opening a book. You read the number on the back of the card, and use that to determine which item in the lists on the front you should apply to your story.

Deal-A-Plot was made by the publishers of a magazine for writers called "The Author and Journalist" and originally sold for $1.00. Since it's long out of print and now fairly rare, I feel sure that no one would mind if I worked a little digital magic on it and released it into the wild -- purely for educational purposes, of course.

So now you can download Deal-A-Plot as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file and see what it was all about. Those of you with a little paper-craft skills can print the cards on index card stock and make your own deck!

http://www.storyforgecards.com/DealAPlot.pdf  (36.4 Megs)

Enjoy a look back at the oldest deck of cards specifically for writers that I've ever found!

Beej