18th Century Plot Generator
Generate 18th century plots built from the period's own machinery: bills of exchange, press gangs, lotteries, pamphlets and slow ships. Then use the samples and tips to set your story somewhere besides the guillotine.
- Sample
Exchange Alley
London, 1720. Hester Pell keeps the accounts at her uncle's coffeehouse in Exchange Alley, where South Sea stock changes hands over the tables. She wants out of the marriage arranged for her with a widowed director of the company, and she plans to buy her freedom with shares. The stock soars. Then she notices which directors are quietly selling, and her intended is one of them.
- Sample
What the Fire Left
Lisbon, 1 November 1755. Inês, a bookseller's apprentice, survives the earthquake, the waves and the fires that follow. She wants to reopen her dead master's shop, and in the rubble of a nobleman's library she finds forbidden books worth a fortune abroad. Preachers are calling the disaster punishment for sin, and the Inquisition is listening. The buyer who can get her out of Portugal is the man who denounced her master.
- Sample
Linguist
Canton, 1784. Ah Fook interprets for foreign traders confined to their waterfront factories, and he wants the post that will let him marry into a Hong merchant's family. When a ship's salute kills a Chinese boatman, the authorities demand the gunner, the ship's officers refuse, and trade is frozen. Ah Fook is the only man both sides trust to carry their words, and he has already softened one message too many.
- Sample
The Masquerade of Destiny
In the height of the French Revolution, a disillusioned aristocrat poses as a commoner to escape the guillotine, inadvertently leading a revolutionary group, deceived by his identity.
- Sample
Patriot's Deceit
Amidst the American Revolutionary War, an English spy, in love with a patriotic American, struggles to balance duty, loyalty, and love, testing his ultimate allegiance.
- Sample
The Enchanted Servitude
An indentured servant in 18th century colonial America discovers her magical prowess and uses it to combat the oppression and superstition of the era.
- Sample
The Venetian Symphony
A young Mozart, stranded in mysterious Venice, gets involved in a dangerous game of power and influence, leading to the creation of some of his most spectacular compositions.
- Sample
Cartographer of Liberty
In 1798, a runaway African slave with an extraordinary gift for map-making embarks on a perilous journey across the Atlantic, aiming to incite a revolt and lead his people to freedom.
18th Century: what makes the plot work
18th Century fiction often focuses on Enlightenment ideas, early democratic movements, and the precursors to modern society.
Make a period institution the engine
Coffeehouses, debtors' prisons, lotteries, the press gang and the bill of exchange were the plumbing of 18th century life, and each can drive a plot. Golden Hill opens in 1746 with a stranger arriving in New York and presenting a bill for a thousand pounds that no one can verify. Everything after flows from that piece of paper.
Make ideas cost somebody
This is the age of reason, but reason in a novel needs a body. Pure sends a young engineer to clear the overflowing cemetery of Les Innocents in 1780s Paris, and his clean, rational plan runs into neighbors, bones and grief. Put your Enlightenment argument in the hands of someone who stands to lose by it.
Use the slow speed of news
A letter from London took weeks to reach Boston and months to reach Bengal, and the reply took as long again. Orders arrive after the facts have changed, heirs are declared dead who aren't, and a war can end before one side hears. Build those lags into your plot as deliberately as you would a clue.
Let letters and print tell it
The 18th century loved the novel in letters, and Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) is a plot made entirely of correspondence, with every letter a move in a game. Pamphlets, newspapers, broadsides and intercepted mail can carry your plot the same way, and they suit an age that ran on rumor.
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RegencyGenerate Regency plots with a real obstacle between the couple, whether an entail, a debt of honor or a brother at Waterloo, and a whole Season of watchful…
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Names, a first scene and a title
Questions about 18th Century plots
How do I make 18th century speech readable?
Use the period's formality and forms of address, but keep modern sentence length and clarity. A handful of well-placed details (a dish of tea, a sedan chair, a hackney coach) does more than archaic spelling. Read letters and diaries from your decade and borrow their rhythm.
How is 18th century fiction different from Regency?
The Regency strictly covers 1811 to 1820, when the future George IV ruled as Prince Regent, and Regency romance has its own conventions of ballrooms, the London Season and marriage plots. The 18th century before it is rougher and broader: Jacobite risings, the gin craze, the slave trade, the Seven Years' War and two revolutions. Readers of one don't automatically read the other.
Which 18th century events give the most plot?
The Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, the South Sea Bubble of 1720, the Lisbon earthquake of 1 November 1755, the Seven Years' War (1756 to 1763) and the American and French Revolutions all put ordinary people under sudden pressure. Each comes with a clear before and after, which is what a plot needs. The smaller scandals and disasters in between are often fresher ground.
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