Book description
Narrative innovation is typically seen as the domain of the avant-garde. However, techniques such as nonlinear timelines, multiple points of view, and unreliable narration have long been part of American popular culture. How did forms and styles once regarded as "difficult" become familiar to audiences?
In Perplexing Plots, David Bordwell…
Why read it?
1 author picked Perplexing Plots as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I love mystery novels and crime films and Perplexing Plots explores the tricks and techniques that writers use to conjure up fantastic plot twists.
The author is an academic but I found this book easy to read as well as informative, entertaining, and astonishingly insightful. I’ve read a lot of books and articles about the crime genre, but I enjoyed this more than any other. Best of all, it left me with a great list of future reading.
If you love Perplexing Plots...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Want books like Perplexing Plots?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Perplexing Plots.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,278
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like Perplexing Plots, you might also like...
The Bridge
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
And Then They Were Gone
Of the 918 Americans who died in the shocking murder-suicides of November 18, 1978, in the tiny South American country of Guyana, a third were under eighteen. More than half were in their twenties or younger.
The authors taught in a small high school in San Francisco where Reverend Jim…
