Plottr podcast Transcript
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Don Bishop: This is the Grendhill Chronicles podcast, and I'm giving away free books. I'll tell you more in 30 seconds.

Welcome to Season 4, Episode 3 of the Grendhill Chronicles podcast. My name is Don Bishop, and I write as T. S. Pedramon. And I am doing a weekly book giveaway here on the podcast. And this is in cooperation with a few other authors as well. So basically, this is how it works. You can, first of all, you can see the books that I'm giving away.

At grenthill. media. com. And so to win, you go into my discord server, and you answer the question of the week, and you guess a number. The closest number to the closest guess to the number that I write down in my little book, wins the book for the week. And you get to choose which one that I send you.

And let me see my notes here. Also, to go, to try for the two book power up, you guess a letter of the alphabet. Guess a number, guess the letter of the alphabet, but remember to answer the question of the week. Now, as I record, currently, right now, this giveaway includes Nightshade Unicorn Books 1 and 2 which are next to me in this video that you can see, if you're watching on YouTube.

And, there are there's also Rise of the Atlanteans, book one, Hidden Destiny. And Sigma, book one, Thumos Rising. Sorry I didn't name the authors. So Rise of the Atlanteans is by T. A. Forlenza. And Thumos Rising, the Sigma series is by Demetrius Lopez. And Also, there's a few more, and I'm, I don't have copies of these here with me.

But there's The Chosen Discovered by Emeril Williams. That's from the Chosen of Bryndir trilogy. There's Love, Ships, and Sea Serpents by Elaine Canyon. And A Spirited Engagement by Belinda Kroll. And these are on the menu, currently. I'd like to thank those other authors for their cooperation.

In offering these books. Now, I'm, like, I'm buying books, by the way. For if you're an author and you write fiction and you'd like to have your book be part of this giveaway there's gonna be a link in the show notes or the video description. To my Google form and that way you can that's how you get me to look at your book and see if it is a good fit and then I'll throw it up there on the list and if somebody wins it, I'd thank you so much if you want to donate it, I'll, I'm willing to buy it too.

Let me remind myself, I'm looking at my notes again. Yep, covered that. Now, this week's winner is Oh, I didn't tell you there's a link to my Discord in the show notes so that you can go and answer the question of the week and try to win the book for next week.

This week's winner is I don't know yet, because it's not over. I am recording this on January 15th, and the podcast is going out January 16th. When the podcast goes out, that is when I close the contest each week. And, so this week's is not closed yet. I could see among the entrants so far, I could see who has won.

But, why? Somebody else could come and guess a closer number, so I'm not going to. By the way, I can tell you the number. Because you are in the future, and by the time you know this, I will also know who the winner is. And then next week I'll announce the following winner, et cetera, et cetera.

So the person who is winning today, I will name them next week, et cetera. And they'll already have their book in the mail, but here's the number that I wrote down last week. You can see the number that in the video you can see. The first week it was 680, the number I wrote down last week was 732, the letter of the alphabet was R, and, so that determines who won the drawing.

And next week's number and letter of the alphabet is Let me generate them right now. I, and I'm not I'm not trying to play this any way to anybody's advantage. I am using a random number generator. Where did that go? I had a tab open just for this purpose. Random number generator. Okay.

There it is. And let's press that generate button. And there is the number that you will find out next week.

And now for the letter of the alphabet. I'm using randomwordgenerator. com. I don't have any affiliation with them. It's just, here it is. And I'm generating one random letter. And that is the letter. Okay. Um, yeah, go and answer the question of the week. I will present this week's question of the week after the interview.

But Before we Go there. So today's interview is Cameron Sutter, not James Figueroa. Unfortunately, we had a a scheduling conflict last minute, so we weren't able to record. So we'll find that. We'll shift him to a later date when we can figure out the scheduling. But so today instead is an interview with Cameron Sutter, who is an author, but he's also the creator of the software called Plotter.

P L O T R. There's no E. Which is a writing tool. It's a tool to help organize and build out your thoughts as you write a book. You can, make character sheets and Anyway, we'll get there. Before the interview today's announcements. I have sent out my page overlays. And you have no idea what a relief this is to me.

I've sent out my page overlays to my Kickstarter backers who ordered them last year. Last January. And it, Yeah, it's such a, oh, weight off my chest. Now while I was making them, I went ahead and made a few extra sets. So I can show them to you right here. They are scenes from my book. So that the paper is see through it's vellum.

It's not paper like you would think. And you can insert that into the book where that scene occurs. So there's the first one. These, just like I said I would. In my Kickstarter campaign, I leaned on AI to create these. They're not fully AI generated, cause AI just doesn't do that. It doesn't give you exactly what you're looking for when you give it such a detailed requirement.

I took pieces that I was able to generate. And, worked them together using GIMP, which is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. And, yeah, just worked them together. And you see there's a little unicorn there. Anyway worked them together in the software. And, I think in the end, they look pretty nice.

And I am so glad To have that complete it took me some learning to do, to figure out how to produce these in a way that fit the, fit my imagination and fit the description in the book and and make them look right, I'm glad to have that done. And now with for my Kickstarter campaign.

The only thing that remains is a song that I promised. I've talked about it before, so I'll go ahead and move on. More announcements. MarsCon this weekend. As you're listening to this on Thursday, January 16th. Tomorrow, starting tomorrow, I will be at MarsCon in Virginia Beach. So come get some books.

You can buy some page overlays. Some you can get some 3D prints I have. I was gonna have them here with me. I have, unicorn related 3D prints. I have unicorn horns and little unicorn head on a stand related to my books. And I have bookmarks. And, or just, come chat and let's have a good time.

Again, that's starting tomorrow on January 17th. That's tomorrow as you first hear this. Further announcements, I am taking part in a promo via BookFunnel along with other authors who write clean fantasy. If you like Nightshade Unicorn or if you like other clean fantasy and you're looking for more, you can find free ebooks via this promo.

That also starts tomorrow, January 17th. Since it's not started already as I'm recording this and as I'm publishing this podcast episode, I'm not sharing the link in the show notes. I will next week, but if you want to jump on it now, then you can join my newsletter and I'm gonna share that link in my newsletter on Friday, the first day of the promo, the first day also of MarsCon.

Other upcoming cons So I'm announcing now, I will be at Fencon in Dallas, Valentine's Day weekend. Come see me then. My Dallas people. I grew up partly in Dallas. Moved there when I was 10 years old. And, so I hope I get to see some people I know from way back when while I'm in, in town.

If you can't come to Fencon, that's fine. I could, I can swing down To my hometown, Cedar Hill. But yeah. The following weekend, I will be at StoryCon in Salt Lake City, Utah. And the following weekend after that, I will be somewhere. I'm not telling you yet. If you really must know, like right now, you can either back my Kickstarter campaign last year, or since it's too late for that, then you can become a supporter on Ko fi to gain access to the hidden Discord channel.

Because I did already tell them, and it's already posted. Or, you can just wait two more weeks, and I'll go ahead and tell you where I'm gonna be that last weekend in February. I'll tell you four weeks ahead of it, so two weeks out from now. That's it for announcements. Please enjoy this interview with author and creator of Plotter, Cameron Sutter.

And then, stay on for after, after the interview, I'm gonna share this. New the new question of the week and enjoy the interview. All right. I am here with Cameron Sutter, creator of Plotter. Now Cameron, let's get to know you a little bit. What's what's your background? What's your, what's been your journey into writing or creating Plotter?

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. Man, I've been writing on and off my whole life. It's a. It is not a very straight journey, let's say I remember in first grade, I was writing a story about my brother getting aliens for his birthday. And I was in, yeah, I, of course, I don't know where that came from, but yeah, so I was in English class writing my story and a teacher comes over and like slack slaps my fingers with a ruler or something like that.

And pay attention, I always thought that was funny because in English class, here I am writing a story. You'd think they'd encourage, of course, you probably thought I was writing a note to the girl next door, next to the next decks or something like that. But here I am writing a story.

She's Hey, pay attention. I thought I was doing something valuable. Anyway, so it started really young, just writing stories. I wrote my first novel in seventh grade and I was the nerd in homeroom writing a novel instead of talking to people and having fun. Or doing my homework. But then I, after that novel, I tried another one, didn't finish it.

And I left writing for a while. And then fast forward, I got married. I was at a dead end job and I'm like, I need. Some other income, something creative to do to occupy my mind or some way to get out of this, and so I started writing again, that was 2010. So I published my first novel then and I self published it.

It was a look down on thing and a new thing for e books and but it was exciting that I could do it myself and get it published. I had been rejected a few times by publishers with that story. And so I was I was just like, you know what? This seems to be the way of the future. I'm just going to do it.

I'm just going to self publish. And it was cool. I did it. The first one, first book that I actually published and then I left writing again. And then fast forward a few years, I was in college last year of college, I took a course by Brandon Sanderson, his creative writing class at BYU.

And that maybe doesn't carry the weight that it used to even a few months ago, but it, it was really great class really got me excited about writing again. and gave me a lot of tools to be able to do it. And so then I published a few more books after that. It took me like a year each or something like that couple years.

And so I published a couple more books. And then while publishing those I was just really frustrated that I process cause I kept rewriting books as disorganized, had notes all over the place. And and I was at a so I was at my first job out of college and I was so software developer, but on lunch we would, I had this kind of writing group.

We would get together, talk about our stories, what we're writing, lament about how. We don't have a good process and their tools and things like that. And then from that was born this idea of plotter, a visual way to see your stories. And I just saw like the threads of my story weaving together, like there's multiple things going on at the same time, but there's no way to see all of them.

And for just weave together weave your whole story together. And so being a software engineer and being in a group where we're like, this is what we need. I just started building it. 

Don Bishop: And, 

Cameron Sutter: So for a few years I tried to juggle building that and writing in my spare time with multiple kids having more and more every couple of years.

And at some point I just stopped writing and started building more of this tool because I was getting feedback from people. They started using it and people were saying this was useful for their writing. And so I started doing more of that and I saw, Hey, this is going to be more valuable to the world than to me.

Then my writing and so I stopped writing for a while and I've been back to it. I'm dabbling, I've dabbled again over the years. So that was 10 years ago. And so I've dabbled over the years with writing again but I haven't published anything, but now I'm in the middle of writing a book that I'm going to publish.

It's, I'm on like chapter five or six or something like that. Finally, like actually writing again. I say finally actually writing again, but for this cycle, I guess for me, it just goes and comes and goes, but I'm writing again. I'm going to publish again. I'm feeling really good.

It was a long rambly journey, but that's how it's been. 

Don Bishop: Yeah. And sorry, one second, I'm going to take a note before I forget. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You mentioned the creative writing class with Brandon Sanderson. What year was that? 

Cameron Sutter: It must've been 2014 pretty sure. 

Don Bishop: Yeah. It was around that time that I first heard of him is when I had a long commute and so I got an audible subscription and started looking for long books, specifically long books.

Which 

Cameron Sutter: one, which series did you start with? 

Don Bishop: I don't remember my first of his was missed. I don't remember it was either Miss Bourne or it was Stormlight. 

Cameron Sutter: Okay. Yeah, I started with Miss Bourne and I think I started listening to it as well. Yeah, and I've, 

Don Bishop: I've seen some videos of him I guess giving that creative writing class and I remember one thing he talked about the the world building iceberg where, you know if you call, if you consider an iceberg where most of it is underwater and you only see the top of it and you compare world building to that, where only the.

The top above water is what actually gets displayed on the page in the book, but there needs to exist more like you need to have more world building that doesn't necessarily appear on the page so that you have the context from which to work. But then he said, you don't actually have to fill in the iceberg all the way through if you're standing on the edge of the iceberg, you look down into the water, you can see it disappearing, then you've created enough so that it looks like.

And that's good enough. Anyway I would say I think a lot of writers like creative writing and Because sometimes some and actually I have a question of the week in my in my discord server and the question that I posed last Thursday, it's live right now, but won't be live by the time this episode goes live because I pose a new question of the week is basically like, what's, if you wanted to write a book, what has held you back or what do you see holding other writers back?

And I've seen sometimes people worry whether they're good enough. And, uh, this is a very verbose way to interject into those people's minds and say, you don't have to be great with grammar or spelling in order to write an interesting story. You can, you create the story, you create the world, the characters make those good and editor exists.

You can get those. 

Cameron Sutter: I think my skill sets. I

don't think I'm good at that but yeah, you have editors to help you developmental and line editors that will help your grammar and all sorts of Software tools that will help your grammar and things like that. So yeah, you don't have to be an expert at these things. There are definitely people that will help you.

Sometimes you have to pay them, but at first you can find friends or. People that'll do it for you for free. 

Don Bishop: Now, Plotter. I actually I heard of Plotter in its early days, and I looked at it in its beta form, if I recall the timing of it, but my issue was that I hadn't In my author journey, I was very early and I hadn't figured out that I needed to, put in the proper work of creating these things.

I imagined that they'd just fall out onto the computer monitor and 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah, it's amazing because you think, I don't know, you just, you read a story and you feel like there's just, you'll know what's next, but there's just like a world of literally a world of possibilities and you have to come up with what comes next.

And that can be a little scary sometimes, but it's really cool because it's, you can do anything. 

Don Bishop: I remember when we talked at AuthorNation last November, we, I'm sorry, maybe I don't want to get ahead of you and what features, but I considered Plotter as maybe a way to organize what I'd already written in order to to help produce what they call a world Bible to keep myself organized and consistent.

As I press forward, but I guess at this point, we can turn the time over to you. If you want to show us around and show us what plotter does. And for non writers who are watching or listening, this is this could be just curious and interesting and for writers. This could be Cameron's infomercial, but.

It looks like a good tool. 

Cameron Sutter: It could be world changing, life changing for you. A lot of people have told us that this has changed their writing career. Yeah, it might not. Yeah, I'll show you around plotter. A couple of things that, uh, I'm sharing my screen, 

Don Bishop: That 

Cameron Sutter: I remember from Brandon Sanderson's class was that or going along with what he said about the world building.

I think people get in the trap of trying to world build too deeply. And so it could be valuable to. Only world build just enough to what you said, just to see that iceberg. So that's one thing. And then that way you get to the actual writing part. And then the other thing Brandon Sanderson said to me that stuck out or not to me directly, but to the class was that your first five books are going to suck.

And you just got to keep, you just got to write them. And then after that they'll start getting better. and that comes from his personal experience. His first five didn't get published and then his sixth one did get published, but it didn't get published until he had written his 11th book. And so it just it's not something you're born with necessarily.

It's just mastering the piano. It just practice. 

Don Bishop: Yeah. And I think everybody's approach is different since I since my first book I published. I hope it's good. I get good feedback from it. But I had a lot of book miscarriages where I would have ideas and I would think about it.

I like that phrase. I guess my first several books never took shape at all, whereas he just has that writing bug and he produced manuscripts. That wasn't me until I had explored storytelling and it was several years after I had that long commute where I had an audible subscription.

And when I was, when I had that long commute, I started thinking about. Storytelling as a craft and why does this work? Why is that compelling? So that when I came around and produce my first full manuscript, I had discovered these things already, at least in my mind. And, people out there in, in the world can go and tell me if I succeeded.

Cameron Sutter: And everybody has a different way of coming at it too. There's a hundred counterpoints, maybe thousands of counterpoints to what he said. Harry Potter is a really big one. Our first story became a huge success. So 

Don Bishop: yeah, 

Cameron Sutter: everybody's going to do it differently. So yeah, let me show you through or show you about Plotter.

So this is the main screen of Plotter. We call it the timeline. And this is where you visually arrange your story and see the threads of it weave together. So all these, 

Don Bishop: all these little boxes are scenes. No, I see. So up at the top, it says scene one, scene two, scene three, and below that each box is an event or a plot 

Cameron Sutter: point.

It's not, Plotter isn't prescriptive, meaning it doesn't really tell you what this should be. And so everybody uses it slightly differently and I've seen really incredible ways that I never would have thought of to use these, but, um, the main idea is you've got your scene or chapters across the top and then different plot lines or character arcs down the side.

And again, you can use them for however you want. You can customize the colors. We'll add another one here and a color, lots of different colors you can choose from. So you can customize it to to add as many of those lines as you want. So this is the story of the three little pigs. And so we've got the main plot, which is what actually shows up in the story.

Three little pigs leave home for the big world. And then we've got a line for each one of the main characters. So we've got the wolf here. We've got pig one, two, and three. Each one has their own line. And then at each one of these intersections, it's just we call them scene cards, but it's it can either be the scene or just.

Details that you want at that moment of the story. So for example, pig one, two, and three, their first thing is they leave home. It's all the same, but then their story starts diverging after that. So pig one makes a straw house. Pig two makes a stick house and pig three makes a brick house. And then the wolf shows up, smells some pigs nearby, right?

And he starts blowing down houses. And we know the story there. He blows away house one. I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down. And then blows away house two, but he can't blow away house three. And so each one of these is just a, it could be that character or why that moment of the kick in the story is important for that character.

Or it could be what actually shows up on the page and each one of these is drag and drop so you can just move everything around. So when characters do things unexpected, which never happens, right? You can just easily move things around. 

Don Bishop: Can you can you interpolate? Can you decide that scene three, actually there's something that needs to happen before scene three.

And so like you push everything to the right. Oh, yep. There it is right there. Stick 

Cameron Sutter: one in between and you've got a. Okay. And so then one of the cool things that Plotter does for you is it helps you to see where there's holes in your story and just get a sense visually very quickly of your story. The only other.

Way to do this right now without something like this is to just read through your outline. You could read through your manuscript and that's 50, 100, 000 words. If you have an outline, most people don't really have a good or detailed outline, but you could do that and maybe piece together what's happening for each character.

But seeing it visually like this, you can see how the character changes and see the holes. We've got a big hole here. For the wolf, he doesn't show up till a little bit later in the story and what is his motivation? We don't know anything about him. Why is he here? Why is he smelling pigs? What is the deal?

Is this a 

Don Bishop: drunken? 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. Yeah. Is this a drunken bet by his buddies or is this he's trying to feed his family? We don't know. And that matters. That matters for the end of his story. The why of his story to make it useful and same thing for the brothers right here. While their brother's house is getting burned down or blown down.

What are they doing? Are they laughing at him? Are they saying come on you idiot? I told you not to build a straw house. Come over here. You know what that really Matters for their character arc and matters for their end. And then over here there's a, just like a whole lot of things that we haven't, a lot of why's that we haven't explored.

And so it helps you to see that. And doesn't force you to do the work at that point. 

Don Bishop: . But 

Cameron Sutter: you can see that. And then hopefully you'll have a light bulb moment and oh I see a big hole here. What is this person's motivation? Why are they in this scene? That kind of, okay.

So that's the story aspect of plotter. There's also a story bible. Or a series Bible aspect to plotter. And so it's it serves two functions. So do you have any questions on the timeline first before I move on to the series Bible aspect of it? 

Don Bishop: Not right now go ahead. 

Cameron Sutter: Okay, so then the other part of plotter this notes characters and places.

where you can build your world. So do the world building and your series Bible. And if you haven't heard that term series, but not you specifically, but anybody that's listening, if you haven't heard that term, it's just an organized place to keep all the details of the whole series in one place. And if you think I don't need that.

I can keep it all in my head. I'm good. I know the world really well. Like I live and breathe and dream this, that is true. But once you get into it, 3, 7, 10 of your series man, I guarantee you, you're going to forget that one side character's eye color or something. 

Don Bishop: My I guess my memory isn't that great.

I have noticed that I have a worse memory for things that I had to create if something could be this way or that were, or that way. And then I have to choose which way it is. I forget which one I chose. So when I come back and I maybe don't remember what I decided beforehand, I come up with a new reason or explanation.

And later on, I have two conflicting explanations for something and they can't both exist. Yeah, it's good to, to write it down somewhere. 

Cameron Sutter: Yep, and we get so many authors tell us that their readers email them and say, why did you change the eye color of so and that was, I love that his eyes were green.

Now they're blue. What, why'd you change them? It'll happen. Your readers will email you and complain if you miss details like that. So having a serious Bible is going to be super valuable for you and being able to write down the details of your world so that the magic systems or the explanations for why things exist.

Yeah. So this notes area. 

Don Bishop: This is another off topic. So I recently produced page overlays for Kickstarter backers and. So I had to illustrate these scenes from my book and I leaned on AI, like I said, I would in the campaign. But I had to reference my book to, to see what I had said about this character, like hair color or and any details about the clothing.

Yeah. So did you have to go through and 

Cameron Sutter: read like tons of the book before you could find those details? 

Don Bishop: No, I'm pretty good at hitting control F to find the digital. Yeah. And 

Cameron Sutter: pulling 

Don Bishop: up the scene that, that I need to illustrate. But yeah, it was definite work going back and forth. Okay. I have this image, but no, that detail is wrong.

I have got to change that. Okay. 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. So this notes area is great for world building, backstory, brainstorming. It'll help you keep all those notes in there. 

Don Bishop: Now, is this. Is this notes just underneath the entire project or is it notes on a scene or a character? 

Cameron Sutter: So this is just notes for the whole project.

There's also this character sheet or this character tablet has character sheets. And so this is things about each individual character. And then you also have one for places, which is locations in your story or anything like that. So this notes area is specific or it's not necessarily specific, but you don't have to include stuff about characters or places, but if you have organizations in your world or groups or cultures or religions, or thinking like military group or something like that, your squad, then this is a great place for that backstory.

Maybe even project notes or to do is for how to get it published or things like that. But let's say you want to have your magic system. Maybe there's multiple magic systems in your book or something. You can have a category for each magic system. So these are, you can easily categorize these to whatever you want.

And so you keep all that in the notes and the characters. You can add images for them. We even have built in templates, which let you just built in attributes that you can fill in. So if you're new to it, and you don't know what to write about a character, these templates will really help you.

But if you have a specific system, there's probably a template that will work for you, or you can create your own. So you can do custom templates in here. So we've got for example, this character bio one just got a bunch of biographical information tons in there. Then we've got this, we've got this fun one online dating profile.

I like to show people so far romance for whatever, or, or maybe not even in a romance, but maybe they meet online or something like that. But then we've got a ton of templates and you're like fun ones, like dungeons and dragons, character sheet. There's a lot of personality tests like Enneagram and disc and what's the Myers Briggs.

And then there's other more writing specific ones like goal motivation conflict. That's a big one. There's one for magic. If they have a magic system, if that character has something about magic one's from a book called story genius, which I really love and recommend. So you can add as many templates as you want to a character and then just fill them in.

And this is where I caution people, you could spend probably months filling in all these things for a character and for all the characters, but that isn't going to make your story better. So you have to learn to balance knowing how much you need to know about a character upfront and the other side of that balance is just writing the story because those things will come as you write.

Let's see. Another important thing here in Plotter, so there's, so those templates are individual per character. And so if I go to a different character, there's different templates on there. I'll show this one. So you can have as many templates as you want on a character, but they are specific to that character.

Whereas attributes are global to all characters. So these are custom things you can add here. And for this story, we put in we thought the role that the character plays would be important and what type of house they build and a couple of things. And so if I go from one character to the other, so here's pig one, all those same things show up for this character.

For some, it's not going to make sense, like what type of house the wolf didn't build a house, right? But it still shows up there and you can fill it in. So we've got custom attributes, which are global to all characters. And then templates, which are specific to each character, and you can have as many as you want there.

So it gives you a bunch of flexible ways to add as much detail as you want about the characters. And then the places is very similar. You can have images, there's custom attributes, you can categorize them, things like that. We felt like a house symbolizes whether or not it blows away. Those would be important things to track about this story.

So each one of the houses has that, so whether or not it blows away, one of, this one symbolizes laziness, the other one symbolizes hard work whereas the mother's house doesn't, it's just blank for blows away, but it symbolizes safety and so forth. So just whatever makes sense for you. 

Don Bishop: Okay. Yeah. 

Cameron Sutter: And so that's the series aspect, series Bible aspect plotter, all your notes in one place.

So that you don't have notes on a napkin here and a different app here on a piece of paper here. And the part that was really frustrating for me was different as I would be brainstorming. Like you where you said you'd have a decision to make and you choose one and then you'd forget. I would have like different versions of notes because maybe I'd be working on a story over a couple of years and one year I'd decide on this and then a year later I'd be like, Oh, I need this.

The same thing, but I made a different decision. Somewhere else on a different note because I couldn't find my original notes. And so I'd had different versions of what I had written down and that just messed me. So now everything's in one place. 

Don Bishop: Yeah, so I could see this being useful. So I have been I think I, I brainstormed better on paper.

And like I can, there's just more infinite variation. If I want to make a note here, I can scribble, I can write it really small, I can big and bold. And technology hasn't given me the the ability to do that very well quickly on a screen yet. But I can see this tool still being very useful, even if I'm doing the brainstorming on paper, because I need to transfer those notes somewhere so I don't lose them.

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. I hear you a lot of times I need to write to get it out of my head. I can't type to get out of my head. I got to write. And so when I'm making a decision or trying to figure out how scenes fit together, I'll grab my notebook and just start writing. So I'm similar to you. Actually, let me show you some

for that very reason. We built this this notebook version of plotter on paper. It's just so it's a notebook. Similar to plotter where you have area for your scenes, your characters, your places, things like that. So it's trying to capture the essence of plotter paper for that very reason. 

Don Bishop: Yeah. So these in the notes, can you show us what it looks like when you create a new note?

And cause I want to, I see like you have different kinds of notes on the left. So I want to see how that's generated. 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. Yeah. So you can give it a name, title. So this could be a backstory, and then you can categorize it, then the story, and then it automatically jumps up to here, the story category.

Don Bishop: Okay. Can I see those categories again? 

Cameron Sutter: The list of them? Sorry. 

Don Bishop: Yeah. Okay. And 

Cameron Sutter: these are customizable. This is just the one we've done for this book, but here's where you can customize that. You can drag and drop to any spot you want. So when I do that and see that this. 

Don Bishop: So if you need to have a category to organize your notes on how.

I don't know your notes about Voldemort's Horcruxes. You could create that category and you could organize all your notes about Horcruxes right there. Okay. 

Cameron Sutter: Just, here's Voldemort's Horcruxes. 

Don Bishop: There's an entirely new Three Little Three Little Pigs story. 

Cameron Sutter: The Three Little Pigs are actually trying to destroy his horror crushes.

Don Bishop: Harry Potter and the Three Little Pigs. 

Cameron Sutter: I 

Don Bishop: love that. 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah, so then it's just, you just have as much room to type as you want. You could also add an image, maybe I don't know, a map or and that's another thing for the places, you could have world maps here. Another cool thing that you can do with any of these areas is you can add a link here.

So maybe you're researching from Wikipedia or somewhere online and you want to, instead of bookmarking it somewhere in your browser and losing it, you can just copy that link here into your notes. So it's in context of your story when you'll need it. Oh, here's that link to that one thing. And you can just click on it from here and it'll open a browser and you can see it.

Another cool thing to do with that is a Google maps. So you can, if. If it's in this world and maybe it's like for me, downtown Oklahoma city or no one, a good example is I have a story, I was writing a story where it a scene took place in Buckingham palace and I had never been there. And so I wanted to see what it looked like.

And so I did street view of Google maps and looked around and I just copied the link and put it in my notes so that whenever I wanted to, I could just easily go back to review that again and see what Buckingham palace looks like from the outside. It's really useful to do those kinds of things. That way there's less chances that you have to Google something or go to your browser, open your Facebook by accident Oh, I just got a, I saw that one notification.

I'm just going to look, less chances of you clicking off and getting distracted when everything is in one place as well. It's another benefit. 

Don Bishop: Okay. Yeah. 

Cameron Sutter: I don't know if that ever happens. You probably doesn't happen to you. 

Don Bishop: I never get distracted. 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. I don't either. I wouldn't say that I do. I don't think I do.

I'm not. It happens. 

Don Bishop: You have to be on task in the first place in order to get distracted.

Cameron Sutter: I like your thinking. 

Don Bishop: Whoa. Okay. And what about, can you show me the places tab? 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. 

Don Bishop: Okay. Yeah. That's right. We already saw the houses. And then what's the tags tab? 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. So tags you'll see some of them right here and you can tag just about anything in your project. With whatever you want. So they're just meant for organization and to easily find things for you.

So I, the ones that I use the most probably are like thematic ones and I've color coded them. You don't have to, but so the theme ones and then I'll tag things throughout the story. Like this scene really talks about hard work versus laziness. So I'll tag that or maybe this one is in progress or I'm editing it still, or I need to edit it.

And so I want to remind myself. So for example, if you go back to the timeline here, 

Don Bishop: so if you're Robert Jordan, writing the wheel of time, you might have a tag for the Ruby Hilted Dagger. 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. Yeah. So then I can just see the ones let's say that are in progress. So I want to see two, didn't I have one for to revise?

I'm not seeing it, maybe not,

but yeah, so I can just filter to see just the ones I want to see. I don't have these set up right in this project, but I can see if I want to just see the ones that I still have to write, I'm able to filter that way. And so that can be like your to do list okay, these are the next scenes to write.

Or if you want to see, for example, the ones about your themes, so hard work, if I want to see the ones that touch on hard work, then I can see that. And you know what? It doesn't show up that much in the story. So either. It's not really a theme like I thought it was, or I need to weave it in the story a little bit more and figure out where it makes sense to add it.

So it helps you to, it really pops out and helps you to see those kinds of things. Or screen time. Maybe there's a character you want to see how much the character shows up so you can tag each one of these scenes, the characters, and then you can filter by that character and you can see who's getting the most screen time or page time.

Have you had, 

Don Bishop: have you had users show you what they've done in Plotter? 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. On our YouTube channel, we've gone into deep dives with people where it's we spend an hour with them. Okay. Show us how you use Plotter and everybody does it different. It's incredible. 

Don Bishop: How tall has that stack of colorful lines gotten?

Cameron Sutter: Think the most I've ever seen is 40, but I could be remembering that wrong. 

Don Bishop: Okay. That's a lot.

And there's I'm thinking so I see down to the bottom, you have subplot written there and I'm thinking it can be useful to, to make sure you don't drop the ball on something. If you have Moderately major character like not terribly central and then they have they start seeing somebody so there's a new romance subplot and You maybe this is like some side character and put it in the Harry Potter books you'd want to Probably see that couple together two books later, maybe and so this could help to not drop that.

And so you can scroll and see okay, did I follow up on this line? Oh no, I didn't. Okay. I need to. So I've got 

Cameron Sutter: dug a little deeper into this three little pig story and made a what I call the alternate version of it. And I've given more backstory to these characters and more of a character arc to a lot of them.

And so just as an example, like pig three. We see his courage and confidence change throughout the story and I, there's different ways you could do this. So I, for one example, I did numbers where his courage goes up when he leaves home and then it goes down when he sees the wolf and so forth. And confidence and courage are changing separately.

But then also there's like this relationship between the brothers and it's falling apart when they start and that's why they left home. And then at the end they're best friends or at least good friends. And then they have this running joke that their mom always used to tell them that getting boiled is the worst way to go.

And at the end it comes full circle and that's why they boil the wool. And then pig one makes a joke about being boiled. So it's like the setups and payoffs. And just what you were saying with either relationships or those kind of, those little moments or those running jokes that you want to make sure don't get lost.

You can make sure they have a good setup and a good payoff. 

Don Bishop: And what view is this? It's not the main timeline, right? 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. So this is a separate books. So each project and plotter is good for a whole series. So it helps you to plan out the whole series. And so all your characters for the whole series, all your notes for the whole series, or one place instead of separate projects for each book.

And so I've got book one, three little pigs, book two of the wolf strikes back. Book three, the return of mother pig. And then I did this alternate version of the three little pigs. So each one that you click into, and then you can just switch them here. Each one has a separate timeline. 

Don Bishop: So I would have one project for a nightshade unicorn and then it would divide up among the books for all the books, guardian, et cetera.

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. And so then you've also got a series view. Which I think just is super cool. It's meant to be like a bird's eye view of the series as a whole, as if each book for one chapter in a bigger story. And so we've got book one here, book two and three, but then in between book one and two, there's things that happen that are important.

So the wolf hatches a plan, let's say, and pig three starts hunting wolves and comes a little prideful. And so then in book two, that's the idea of it. He's now a wolf hunter. Just something weird I came up with but it's important because you can see the character arc throughout the whole series and you can see what happens in the book, but also what happens not in the book.

And if you have a subplot or a sub series within this world or something, you can plan those out here too. And so the series view is really helpful for those kinds of things. 

Don Bishop: Okay. What are your pardon the, pardon my language what are your integrations or upcoming planned integrations with AI?

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. So AI is a big topic. 

Don Bishop: I'm curious. It's not a leading question, but 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah, no, no problem. I'm happy to talk about AI. It's some authors hate it and some are gung ho about it and it's going to change the world and they never have to write a word anymore because AI is going to do everything for them.

And and there's a lot of heat between the two sides sometimes. 

Don Bishop: Yeah. No, we're not trying to, we are trying to be the creative minds here. We ourselves, but AI can be useful. 

Cameron Sutter: And so I. Yeah, I guess to say my side of that I'm not on either side. I feel like there is definitely some valuable uses for it.

But there are some valid concerns about it. And but I feel like a lot of authors these days are coming to terms with it and also coming in terms of the fact that they want to write. And even if AI does exist and can write a good book, that's not the part they want to do. So that, that, the part they want to do is what they're not going to let AI do for them.

Don Bishop: I had this idea, And yeah this is where I would see a potential application for an AI integration for plotter. And I don't know, again, I don't know what you're planning, but what if I were to go in and, going back to the beta that I tested several years back for me, and again, I hadn't learned how to work at my writing yet.

I was a little put off by having to, And to do data entry of character attributes and with AI, I could see where I already wrote a paragraph of what this character is like. Now, if I could just copy and paste that paragraph in and then the computer says, Oh, I color hair color and listed out generates a generates the listed attributes off of the paragraph that I already typed, I did the creative work.

And the AI did the data entry, 

Cameron Sutter: yeah, I love that. I've thought about it in slightly different ways and I'll tell you about what we're building, but I love what you just said. So let me write that down. Take even just bits that you've already written, even if it's not a finished manuscript, you're just saying I already wrote a description here, just paste it in and it fill out the pieces for me, right?

Don Bishop: And actually I have done that. So with the page overlays that I needed to do, I needed to come up with some kind of prompt to get started. Of course, now the Page overlays have AI generated stuff in them, but they are heavily modified with GIMP. Anyway what was I going to say? I forgot.

Oh, so I, a lot of the time I took a paragraph that I wrote and I threw that at chat GPT and I said, Hey, give me an image prompt. this. Now it didn't do it very well. I still had to do a lot of massaging the prompt itself in order to get the base for the image I wanted to generate. And then I had to go and modify the image.

It was a lot of work. But but yeah I did a little bit of taking something I wrote and said, Hey, chat GPT put this in a different format.

Cameron Sutter: Yeah, that's cool. So here's our plans for AI. Actually, last year, we almost released some AI features, but they just They weren't good enough and they're too much of a toy, not enough of a tool. So we just scrapped them and we're reworking it. We have an idea. And so there's a couple different ways we're going.

One is brainstorming. So it can help you brainstorm, come up with ideas. Me in context of your series already. So it'll know everything about your series that you put into plotter. And you'll say, give me a character idea. That like a side character, whatever you want to ask it and it will give you ideas that would fit in your story because it knows the context of your story or give me scene ideas or things like that.

So brainstorming another Avenue would be analysis of what you've already done or Hey, what should this? I've got the beginning of the end to help me fill out the middle, that kind of a thing. So those are two different ways. And then one that we're coming out with very shortly, we've already announced it and some people are already using it, but it is, we're calling it a story snap and it takes your finished manuscript and runs it through an AI and gives you spits out a plot or file with all of this filled out already for your main characters.

So it'll. It'll say what they, it'll give you an outline for the book and then it'll say, okay, the wolf here, he shows up in each of these chapters and what happens to him, pig one boom. And so for each of your main characters, it'll fill out the plot or timeline. It'll fill out all your character information, physical descriptions, emotional descriptions about the character or how they change throughout the book.

Places in the story and it goes into way more detail than I expected about the emotional significance of a place and what happens in that place is really impressed. 

Don Bishop: I'd be I'd be interested in about, I would be interested in talking about, uh, the technical the algorithmic how to approach that problem.

But I'll save that for. Another time, not on the recording 

Cameron Sutter: probably 

Don Bishop: glaze over people's eyes, 

Cameron Sutter: right? And then it, there's magic systems or organizations in the world or religions or cultures, things like that. It'll pull those out and put them in your notes and say everything it knows from the book about those things.

And it goes into. A surprising amount of detail, but we have to, in order to do that, we're asking it hundreds of questions per book. And we're going through millions of tokens and just like trying to get every detail out of it. And so we're calling that story snap. It's separate from plotter and you just pay per use.

So if you just have one book, you only pay for that one book and that's it. And it will spit you out either a word document or a plotter file. And then you just open it in plotter and boom, there you go. Or if you just want it for a reference for your world Bible your book Bible, then you'd have a word document and you can just control F and you, you don't even have to use plotter at that point.

So yeah, that, that's the first, our first foray into AI that we're actually releasing and using. And for some people, it's going to be super powerful, like some people that have a large backload, a backlog of books that are just like, I've got 40 books written and I don't remember most of these characters and I want to write more, but it's hard.

I don't want to read 40 books to be able to write more, those kinds of things. They're able to get a series Bible built really quickly for 

Don Bishop: them. Okay. We've probably talked long enough. But thanks for showing me around Plotter. It has useful applications that I didn't anticipate.

I like the ways in which it can be helpful. Yeah. I'm glad to hear 

Cameron Sutter: that. That's awesome. 

Don Bishop: Now as I mentioned before we hit record, I'd like to invite you to create a character for me, for for my Nightshade Unicorn series. I reserve the right to modify it. So it fits the aesthetic of the world that I'm writing in.

And I'll guarantee this character appears at least once. Maybe just in passing and we might not so yeah, you can come up with a name or you can describe what the character is like Yeah, let's hear what you got. 

Cameron Sutter: Okay

Yeah, so this is Just off the top of my head, I didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about this. But the guy's name is Samuel Zorfert

and I don't know, the first thing that kind of popped in my head he's a crazy inventor guy. Always dirty, maybe wearing always wearing an apron, like a leather apron or something. That's always, I don't know, again, if this fits in your story and you said you're going to adapt it, so feel free to adapt it, but he's always greasy and dirty and.

Maybe he has goggles on his forehead or something, and he's always got some invention he's tinkering with, or something that some brilliant new idea that doesn't pan out. Sounded like a good idea at first, but it actually wasn't. 

Don Bishop: Sounds, sounds cool. And I don't have an inventor yet anywhere. Yeah he'll at least appear once.

And again, I don't know if I'll use Samuel. I might modify it, Samu, or, I don't know. 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah. 

Don Bishop: All right. It is your world. Thank you. And where can people find you? You said you published a couple of books. Where can people find those? 

Cameron Sutter: Yeah all my writing is on Amazon. One of my books is under my name, Cameron Sutter, and then my other two books are under C.

Lewis S. Okay. And Lewis is L O U I S. Okay. Not not C. S. Lewis. Huh. I realized that my name, when I was like 30, I realized my name is close to C. S. Lewis and took me that long. But I was like, oh man, I was destined to write. And hopefully people will get me confused with C. S. Lewis one day and oh wow, a new C.

S. Lewis. No, wait, that's C. S. Lewis, I'll try it out. 

Don Bishop: And where, so if there are writers listening, where can they find plotter? 

Cameron Sutter: So it's plotter. com and plotter doesn't have an E at the end. So it's P L O T R. com. All right. And there's a free trial. You can try it out, see if it works for you and it's going to help you write.

And I hope it does. I made it for myself for my own writing and it's just. 

Don Bishop: Awesome. Thank you, Cameron. And stay on. I'm going to stop the recording and go from there. 

Cameron Sutter: Okay. Sounds good. Thanks for having me. 

Don Bishop: All right. I'm so glad Cameron came on and did that interview. It was great. And I learned a lot of the capabilities of the software.

I actually tried the the free, what's it called? The word for trial. I tried the free trial previously. But I. I didn't dig into it, and that's on me, so I had no idea that it could do all of these things. Because I didn't give it the fair shot that I should have. But the demo was really good, and it was good to be able to ask those questions.

Now, I was thinking that he created Plotter because he saw a need that he could fill with software in order to help himself write his books. And tech is just Really helpful, isn't it? I'm glad for technology. This podcast and my Discord server helped me to be able to connect with readers.

And, I find some fulfillment just putting this out there and making it available for people. And I hope you find the connection you're looking for also. But I was thinking As far as my Discord server goes, I think that's our question of the week. Drumroll, brrrr, I don't know I'm, I have a practice pad somewhere.

I could record my own drumroll. But not well, because I'm not actually a percussionist. Anyway so the question of the week is, in a nutshell, What would you like to see more of, or at all? In a Discord server, or in my Discord server. Maybe you'd like to see like the opportunity to share ideas that could wind up in my books.

And that's, that's there. That's already there. If, and I'm not saying come and tell me what I need to write, cause I already have an idea. I already have a plan. If you have good ideas and you want to say, make suggestions, you can. It could wind up in there. Maybe you want to find short stories that you can't find on Amazon or on other retailers.

That is there. I already have short stories in there. And after I write my song and record that, I'm gonna be attempting to write a short story every week concurrently while I write my novels. And I'll share those in my Discord server. Maybe you just want to find like minded, bookish people to talk to.

And you can find that there in the server. Maybe you want to share some of your own stories, or just have a weekly, maybe, I don't know. Let me know what you're looking for. What do you like to see? What do you like to see more of in an online community like a Discord server?

And while you're at it, don't forget to guess a number between one and a thousand. And guess the letter of the alphabet, A through Z, so that you can win a book. And that wraps up the podcast for this week, and I'll see you next time on

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