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Overview
Troy is back and this time we are talking about Plottr. If you don’t know Plottr, its author software to help plan out and plot your story before you start writing. We discuss the benefits of using it and why the company has created the functions they have. He also tells a bit about what to expect.
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Plottr – Plan Your Books Like a Pro
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Transcript
Stephen: All right, so let’s move on for some author focused stuff. And we’re gonna talk about plotter, the software tool and what you do there and all that.
But before we do that for the authors listening, what tool, what have you learned, and you hinted at this a little bit last term, but what have you learned writing these books for the last 15 ish years? And what do you do different now than you did?
Troy: Oh my goodness. So when I first started out there, there’s a couple things that I did when I first started out that I have completely and totally flipped.
And the first one was that I just used word because when I first started writing, when I was a teenager I used a typewriter and even when I was younger, so I learned to type when I was like eight, my grandpa gave me an old royal, and then I used an IBM Electric for my first novels in college.
Ok, nice. So some of you are gonna have to go look that up. That’s okay. It was before Google. Even though Google knows about it. But anyway, so when I first started out, I was just using, in fact, I was using Word perfect when I first used that. Wow. You could use tags in there. You could use tags in there.
Oh my goodness. And some of my novels that I first wrote in college, the last time I saw them, they were on three and a half inch floppy disc in Word Perfect Five. Now, as far as I know, you can never convert that. And that’s where I want those books to remain. I’m eternally grateful that no one ever picked those up.
They were horrible. But that’s part of the writing process. You write horrible books first and then you write good ones. But anyway, so when I, but when I first started doing it full-time, I was writing in Word a lot. And part of the reason was that I, in my day job, I did a lot of technical writing and I wrote in Word as well.
And so it was a very familiar program. It was very easy for me to transition to. But that did cause me issues because my brain would be confused when I opened a word about what I was doing. Are we working or are we writing fiction ? And so it would take my brain a while to figure that out. So shortly after I started to write full-time, I got Scribner.
I switched to Scribner for writing. And the reason that was a game changer for me were a couple different reasons. First of all, there were some powerful tools in Scribner that I could use to stay focused, to keep myself better focused. And on top of that, it was something different than Word.
So I would open Scribner. My brain would like, oh, we’re writing fiction. Okay. And it would, it caused a shift, right? So that was, that’s one of the things that I changed when I first started writing too. I was very much a discovery writer. I would just have an idea and I would sit down and write it.
And that didn’t always go super well. And sometimes the second draft was a grueling. Process. Just a terrible process to be honest with you. And it was because you, if when you started with just an idea, you’d let yourself go wherever. Sometimes that’s really cool, but sometimes you end up in a place where you’re like, how in the world did I get here?
And this is no longer a story, so you have to back up and figure things out and move forward. So I was writing I the second book in my first trilogy that was actually commercially successful. And I I was like, you know what? If I knew the ending, I was about two-thirds of the way through. And I’m like, if I knew the ending of this book, it’d be much easier and faster to finish writing it.
Huh, okay. So I actually outlined the last third of the book, and this is like I was an English guy and a story structure guy, so it’s not like I didn’t know how to outline. I just didn’t but I, so I outlined the last part of it and sure enough, man, that process was easier and it was faster, and I thought, Man, maybe there’s something to this.
So my next book, of course, I started with an idea and only about a third of the way through it, I was like, you know what if I knew the end of this familiar story, right? . So then I planned out the rest of it. And so my next book I tried, I’m like, okay, I’m just gonna plan the book. Let’s see what happens.
And man, my writing process was much faster. My first draft was better, my revisions went faster, everything about it went faster. And I was like, huh, okay, maybe there’s something to this planning thing. And so I started to find different ways to plan things and I started with like whiteboards and court boards and all that kinda stuff.
And eventually, which is a long way around to say, eventually I found plotter and was like, okay, this is a game changer for me because now I can clean my office, make my wife happy. And but also this is just a much more powerful way to do the things I was trying to do in other ways. It just gave me the right tool to do that right.
And make it happen easier.
Stephen: And we’ve had similar journeys in that regard. I think everybody just starts off with, oh, I have a blank page. Let me start writing. And I still talk to a lot of authors that use Word, but you, very quickly, when I started using Word, I was like, oh, you know what?
This makes more sense later. It’s how do I move that? Oh, copy it and paste. And it became a nightmare now where it was that. And so I looked around, discovered Scribner, like you and the corkboard and moving things around and just all, it made a lot more sense to me. And I’ve tried to talk to other writers that have you really given it a chance?
Cuz they’re like, oh, it has too much. I don’t know what to do. I’m like, don’t worry about it. Just start writing. Word has a million things that nobody ever uses, but nobody seemed concerned about that. So I it’s a me it’s a mindset. Yep. And like you. Then after I’d written some stuff and I started getting feedback from editor and readers and that I started growing and realizing, yeah, I missed this plot point, or oh man, my book two of what I’m working on right now, I had this major thing where they went to this town and they were looking for this house, and oh, they found it, they got point to it, and I read it.
I rewrote it. I, and had others read it. It wasn’t until this recent drafting rewrite that I’m redoing most of it, that I said, wait a second, this is the son of the guy. He would know where the house is. Nobody picked up on that. So I’ve learned a little bit of outlining goes a long way, and that’s where plotter comes in.
I remember Jay, one of his conferences or something that I went to is the first time I heard about plotter and correct me and say whatever to defend or whatever. I think I wouldn’t have appreciated plotter without already have written some things and tried to outline and understood what good an outline would do.
Because the first time I looked at plotter, I was still really new. And I’m like I have no idea. And I put it aside, even though I had a license for a couple years before I, I used it, now I use it and I’m like, okay, this makes sense. Story beats and the structure and I can choose different structures to put the book in what fits and all that.
So for the newbies, tell us a little bit about what plotter is, what it does, and what it can do for them.
Troy: So I’ll start with the simple act of plotting because there are some people that still wanna be that discovery writer, right? Yes. They wanna, okay, that’s fine. Because what you’re writing, when you write what you’re calling your first draft is not a first draft.
It is a zero draft, it is an outline draft. And you usually, if you’re a, if you’re. Aspiring to make your writing better. You plot later, you look at the draft that you’ve written and you go, okay, now what do I have? And then you can tear that apart and look at it if you analyze it correctly and go, okay, where are my story beats?
Where are all those things? And you do that before you write the next draft. That’s the most important thing, right? Is because that speeds up your draft, your second drafting process and makes it easier cuz you’ve told yourself the story, but you’ve written a 60,000 word outline, essentially. Okay. And that’s okay.
It’s actually okay. It’s all right to be a discovery writer. People are like, you’re such a plotter. And I’m like, yeah. But I also acknowledge that there are other paths that you can follow. Ok.
Stephen: Dif people’s brains work differently. Yeah. Things really do click
Troy: differently. Yeah. People, and here’s the other thing.
Okay. New writers, just, let’s just get this outta the way. You’re gonna write horrible first drafts forever. I just wrote a first draft in November. I did nano with a whole bunch of people for, it was a lot of fun. And what did I get out that November exercise? A horrible first draft that I now need to revise.
Just finished book number 31 weeks ago. What I have, what am I working, what was working on just I on this podcast, revising that because it was a horrible first draft. You’re gonna write horrible first drafts. Be okay with it. Doesn’t matter. Everybody’s the same. Doesn’t matter how many books you’ve written you, you’re gonna write a horrible first draft end of story over with.
Okay? But the process of outlining itself doesn’t have to be this huge structured thing. So when you’re first starting out, I tell people, start with know five things about your book. Start by knowing five things. Now if you’re writing mysteries, you wanna know who did it, how they did it, how they get caught, and who catches them.
Okay? Pretty simple, right? The reason you wanna know those things is so you can drop some clues along the way. Yes. Right. Lead your reader towards that conclusion. Not clues that make it obvious, but that lead your reader towards that conclusion. But for different genres, there are other things that you should know.
Romance, who’s the love interest? Who is the secondary love interest? Because in a romance, actually the lead romance person is the hero. The secondary love interest is the antagonist. And that’s where the conflict comes from. Okay. Different structure, different genre, different story, idea study, story structure.
When you’re new, this does not mean go to college. In fact nevermind. We won’t talk about that. That’s a whole other
Stephen: conversation.
Troy: Yeah, that’s a whole other podcast. We can come back and do that later. We won’t do it right now. Except to say that there are tons of ways to study story structure. And what I mean by study it is to look at different types of story structures, see which one resonates with you, whether that save the cat story, grid story circles like Jay Thorne that uses the different things like that.
Look at things and look which one resonates with you. Then take your favorite story that you really love and tear it apart and put it on some kind of a plot line, or somehow analyze it and see why it works. Now what that translates to is then you write first drafts that have better structure because you have an innate understanding of story structure.
So even as a brand new writer, what you’ll find is the longer you write, the more you understand story structure. The more, more you become a spoiler at the movie and you need to keep your mouth shut if you wanna stay married. . Yes. And that’s just cause you know what’s gonna happen. Now that doesn’t, for me, that doesn’t take the enjoyment outta the entertainment.
I still wanna see where it’s going and how they’re gonna get there. But I glass onion, man, I had it pegged. I was like, she’s gonna die. Did I say that out loud? No, because my wife was four feet away and she has heavy objects nearby that she could chuck at my head. . So no. But so understand story structure.
Okay, but, and then for Potter, what plotter is it’s a visual tool similar to like note cards on a on a court board. That, but more powerful electronic with tags, ways you can tag them, ways you can filter them, ways you can add more content to them. But don’t start with all of those things. Just start by writing some summaries of what you think you’re gonna write in those steam cards.
And just put all of your ideas in whatever order down on a plot line. Now you’ll see in plotter there are different plot lines down the left-hand side and across the top are chat. You can set it up as being chapters or beats or whatever structure you happen to write in. There are times when I will start something and I will start, like I’m starting a series.
I’ll start with what I call an idea book. And the idea book is just me dumping all of those ideas onto a plotter type plot line, right? And it doesn’t matter what order they’re in. Doesn’t matter if they’re even good ideas or bad ideas. Cause I can sort them later. I just write all of them. And then I can sort through those ideas and determine, is this a problem, that there’s a solution for you?
Is it a conflict? Is this something that needs to happen in the story? Is this one of my ideas that maybe it was late in the afternoon and I’d hit the bottle a little too hard before I was doing this, and it’s just terrible and I need to get rid of it, right? But you just write all those ideas down. So when you’re first starting out, just be free with your ideas.
Allow your creativity to roam. When you get into plotter, there are things you can do. There’s the timeline section where you can do those little note cards, right? There’s an outline
Stephen: section, which I love and that’s super important for me.
Troy: Super important, and especially when you start adding story structure, okay?
But before you even get to story structure ideas, just get your ideas or take the draft that you’ve written as a new writer. You wrote this first draft. You have no idea what it is, and pull it apart scene by scene, and put it on those plot lines and see what it looks like. Because what you’re gonna do with story structure is you’re going to check your work.
So being a full-time writer is like giving yourself English homework every day for the rest of your life, okay? And much like your English homework, you’re going to go back and check your work at some point. And so that’s one of the things that Potter enables you to do, is go back and check with a story structure and see, how did I do?
Does this line up? Do I have an inciting incident? Is there a midpoint to this book? What is it? Does the midpoint come at 75% of the way through the book? Probably a problem is my inciting incident happened way too late. If you’re a new writer, probably you can probably take the first two chapters that you wrote and delete them, and that’ll be a great place to start in editing your draft.
But, and not always. So don’t do that. Just willing. Don’t nobody just right now, go to Word or wherever you’re using and just delete your, no, don’t do that, but . But anyway the point is that what you’re doing is you’re getting yourself distance from your work and looking at it objectively. What do I have?
And then checking my work.
Stephen: And that can be really difficult in and of itself. It’s especially a challenge.
Troy: And so part of this is if you summarize it like you do those summaries, like I’m talking about, you allow yourself distance. You’re not reading the story, you’re reading a summary of what you wrote that day and be honest about what you actually wrote that day.
Be honest with yourself. Don’t try to impress anybody with those scene cards cause we’re never gonna see ’em and we don’t care . So just be honest with yourself about those scene cards and what you’ve actually written and it can enable you to really take a look at your work in a different way. But the other aspect of plotter that’s really important is the notes, characters and settings sections, because the notes section is awesome for research.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a nerd and I do lots of research for my. Sometimes a little too much that I know way too much about how Strict Nine Works or how to actually successfully slit someone’s throat without making a whole lot of noise. Because it’s a very noisy way to kill. Anyway all of that set aside.
Okay, so I put a lot of my research in the notes section so I can refer to it easily, but the characters and settings section not only allows you to capture the information about your characters from this book, but to capture them from an entire series. So you wrote that book back in book One back three years ago, and now you’re in book three and you realize that Susie, who was in Book one should now make a reappear, but you can’t remember what Suzy looks like.
So you go back and you read Book one and then you lament that you ever published it because your writing has approved so much in five years that you are horrified and. But you start to go down this rabbit hole of reading that book and you come out of it and you still don’t know what color Suzy’s eyes were, but you’re in a really bad mood.
So instead, if you have those facts in a series Bible and Potter is one of, I would just say one of the mo, the easiest and best tools to contain that information in, because it’s all in one place. It’s very succinct and you can change it from book to book. There’s all kinds of tips and tricks that you can do with that series Bible.
But having a series Bible is invaluable. I know writers that have written a whole series, then they have some fan that’s a super fan that goes back and actually creates a series Bible for them of the entire series because they can’t write the next book until they reconcile all those different facts and settings and people.
And so if you can keep track of that along the way. It’s going to save you a lot of trouble, time, and trouble. It’s going to save you research, and it’s also just gonna help you to be a better, more organized writer. So what potter’s really about when you boil it down is efficiency. This is the most efficient way to plan your books and to keep track of your characters over a series and to do those things.
It’s about efficiency and effectiveness, really what it’s about.
Stephen: And going along with what you said the plotter, Scribner, any of these tools, I would say to get the most out of it and understand it, you would have to have some writing under your belt. I think a mistake a lot of writers make is they’ll go to conferences, listen to podcasts, and yo know, I’m a beginning writer and I wanna know it all.
And they listen to every podcast, read every magazine in book. I’m like many. I have way too many writing books that I’ve not even read more than a quarter of the way in But to really grasp what it can do for you, you gotta have that experience under your belt already writing some short stories.
In a book or two, even if you just put ’em aside, will help you understand these tools to make your writing even more effective and better. I found that with Plotter, personally using it, the first couple times I used it, I’m like, I don’t know what I’m putting where. And it’s eh, whatever.
Troy: Yeah. And it does help to have some of the experience, and this is also what I call tool procrastination. There are different things that writers do to actually avoid the act of actual writing. Like I’m a writer. What have you written lately? Not much, but I’ve been doing a lot of research on tools and how to write, and I’ve read a lot of books in my genre.
None of those are bad. But you need to be writing like the whole idea is to be writing at a regular time. You need to develop writing habits. Super important. If books and tools start to invade on that time, you need to stop the madness, right? And just don’t do it. So tools, what I say is, first of all, keep things simple.
Kinda like word and script, like you were talking about there, there are tons and tons of features, right? Just because an advanced feature is there, doesn’t mean you have to use it. Doesn’t even mean I have to know how to use it, right? I don’t use the tools in Scribner nearly as much as I used to.
Since I have plotter, I use Scribner in a completely different way than I used to, right? And I don’t use hardly any of those advanced tools, and it didn’t cause me to delete Scribner from my computer, not buy the new version. What it did instead. It enabled me to go, okay, I know that this is here and if I need it, it’s, but most of the time I’m just going to stay in this area right here.
Same thing with plotter. First of all, keep it simple. There’s all kinds of tutorials out there, but one of the first things you can do is just get into it watch the basics tutorial. We have a weekly training and we walk through how the program works, right? Show up at that weekly training.
Learn how the program works at the very basic level, and then go from there. Start simple, keep it easy, and be writing. Don’t be using your tools and your craft books and your studying of story structure to keep you from actually doing the active writing.
Stephen: L learn as you go seems to be a very good method for just about everybody.
Not I know someone will say that didn’t work for me. But it, it’s definitely worked for me and most of the people I talked to use the tool and use what you know about it. If you don’t use everything, don’t stress out and don’t take your time to, oh, I gotta go figure this out and learn this.
If you don’t need it and it’s not helping you right, then you’ll learn it later. You’ll pick it up. Just keep using what you know and works for you at the moment that, oh yeah, that’s worked for me amazingly well.
Troy: Yeah, we have tags in plotter, which, and I’ve seen people, like I saw this gal and she literally had probably 20 categories of tags and you just kept scrolling through all the different tags she has in plotter.
Generally speaking of most of my books, I use six tags. And that’s just because that’s the way I work with the software and the way it works for my mentality and my books. Can you use lots more? Yeah. Can you not use them at all? Yep. You can do that too. Whatever way that you, what that works for you.
And sometimes that massive amount of freedom, and I have all this choice can become overwhelming. So I tell people what you can do is you look at someone whose process you’d right? Friend of yours, whatever. Follow that process. And then you’re going to have a moment that I call the and then moment and people will be like, can I copy your writing process thing?
I’ll tell ’em about my process. They go, can I copy that? I’m like, sure. Because I also know you’re not going to copy that. It’s not going to work for you long term. You’re gonna copy it short term. You’re gonna have your and then moment, and you’re going to adapt my writing process to your writing process by adding the things that work for.
So don’t worry about what someone else is doing, all the different features that you see in there. Just find your process and what writes for you. And again, this is a part of your writing process. This is a writing tool. It’s designed to get you writing and get you finishing that first draft. It’s not about creating the perfect outline in the perfect plot.
It’s about writing that book and getting it out into the world. Yes,
Stephen: and that’s what we gotta remember. The end result is the book. And the book needs to be entertainment. Enjoy. For fiction, entertainment, enjoyable, written well. And it doesn’t matter if you’re using Word or Scribner or you’re writing it long hand.
People, like you said, used to type out a typewriter and have to change whole pages. You need to be able to use the tools effectively to come up with a good story, not depending on the tools to create that good story. You can do it in any way. The tools are. For you to use to make things easier for the writing.
And people shouldn’t be able to tell, oh, they used the Save the cat plot line in plotter when they did this. . They shouldn’t be able to tell that.
Troy: Yeah, no. If they can, you made a mistake. Yes. Because the story now, and this is accepting with the exception of other writers who study story structure and may come to your story and just automatically realize what’s going on.
Oh, that’s a midpoint. No, but most people are not gonna do that. What readers will tell you when you do something wrong in your story is, there’s something wrong here. This does not work. They will not be able to tell you most of the time why it does not work. And this is the purpose of developmental editors and other people that look at your work before it goes out into the world, is they can tell you why.
The reader can’t tell you why. The reader just goes, I’d like that book until chapter four, and then something went wrong. That’s so it, it is important to understand that like those story structures are there as a guideline. People will go, oh, my inciting instance is supposed to happen at 12.5%.
I have 72,000 words in my book, and they start doing math. No, stop the madness. If you’re close, you are good, right? If you’re somewhere, you have a 70,000 word book and you’re somewhere between eight and 12,000 words, when you’re inciting, instant happens, good to go relax. This is a story. Let it happen. So don’t get caught up on the story structure to such a point that it takes the creativity and the joy out of your story and turns it into a formula.
Yes. That’s why we don’t use X Excel. We aren’t dealing with formulas. We’re dealing. You say
Stephen: that, but I knew somebody in a business situation that used Excel to write their correspondence notes to people. They’d write in one cell, print it out, and it would print 63 pages of blank pages, and they’d take the one that got printed on to send it and put the rest back in the thing.
So yes,
Troy: Uhhuh , I’ve seen people do that. I’ve seen people plan books in, in Excel too. And so now this is, if you use that, don’t worry. Like I’m not dissing on you or anything because there are methods at work in Excel, right? What I mean is by that, more than that is you’re not doing math, you’re not doing formulas like that.
If you are a general word count in the range, you’re good. It’s let’s think about the story and what’s happening there as well. Because the reason we love stories as people is because they’re different, because they’re entertaining, because they take us to a different place. Because you do things differently in your unique voice.
So don’t get hung up. Don’t just relax. Relax. Yep. This is fun. Primarily. This is
Stephen: fun. Don’t let the tools control you. Yeah. Which is another reason to use ’em when you have a little bit of experience writing so you feel more comfortable. Troy, coming up what are some things that are, that you can share with us that are coming up with plotter that may be of interest to people?
So
Troy: there’s actually some really cool features coming up. So we just released cha characters by book, which is a really cool feature that allows you to modify your characters as they move through a series. But we do have some more advanced world building is one of the things I’m really excited about in that we have notes, characters, and settings, but we’re gonna add more to that where you can add, if you’re writing a fantasy, you can add objects and you can, because it enables you to develop the software, enables you to develop those relationships between those and a character and that type of thing.
Or if you have a magic system, there’ll be more, an easier way for you to encompass that as part of your plotter notes that you can refer to on a regular basis. One of the other ones that’s really cool is we have a chronological timeline thing coming that’s so for historical writers, you can have one timeline that’s this is the order that things actually happened in history.
And then here is your story so that you can refer to those two things. It’s been something that’s been on our radar for a while. Historical writers and even even for me, some of my books, like there’s a definite timeline. Like it’s not historical, but there’s a definite timeline that I can see the value of creating a chronological timeline of what actually happens in real time.
And then if you’re having flashbacks and stuff, what actually happens in your story? And tying those two things together and making sure that they match up. So that’s one of the things I’m most excited about. There’s other little fixes coming up. We have actually have an act structure that allows you, instead of just having the chapters across the top, you can have acts and scenes within the chapters and things like that.
And that’s another thing, like I’ve seen the beta of that. It’s coming out of beta very soon, and it’s super cool and it’s gonna be super useful.
Stephen: Wow. Cool. I love the chronological timeline thing cause I had this idea for a story that, to, that when you’re reading the story it didn’t happen chronologically.
It was like snippets of time. But the main character. It what showed his progression to the dark side, essentially anger and all that. But they didn’t happen in chronologic order. So I was trying to wrap my head around how to accomplish that and not miss things and make it oh, look at the, all the plot holes,
Yeah. And I think it was way beyond my skill, but I loved the concept of doing that well.
Troy: Yeah. And it you know what, it’s interesting you said that like it was way beyond your skill, but perhaps with the proper tools and as you’ve developed your skill further, that story can become a reality. Like teaching moments is a story I had an idea for really a long time ago, but I really didn’t have the ability to write a dual plot story and have it work super well until.
I had the right tools and the right experience to do that. And so the, you make an absolutely great point there in accidentally in talking about the chronological timeline, about the right tools and the right skill level to pull something off. And sometimes having that tool is that’s all the extra spark that you need.
You’ve already got the ability well enough by now, but you go, man if I had that, it would make it that much easier. And sometimes that little thing is all that you need.
Stephen: I like that. And I do that you use the tools you’re talking about. And I think most of the. Author tool services out there, they do use it.
That’s not true everywhere about everything. I’ve been in the computer and tech world a long time and talked to people that it’s you developed this and you’re trying to sell it, but it’s not running on your computer right there, . It’s yeah. So I love that.
Most
Troy: of our developers are writers. Most of our customer service people are also writers our support people. So like most of the people in the company are either writers or aspiring writers. And and the first one to create the product was Cameron Sutter, who created it for his own writing.
That was the purpose of the software. And then as he showed it to people, and I was one of those people that, one of the first people to see it, like out in the. And went, whoa. Hey, wait a minute. That is a game changer. And it, of course it has developed a ton since that initial time. The first time I downloaded it in 2017 and nobody knew what plotter was.
To now is a huge difference in the different features that we have, but most of those features came about from writers who went to our website and said, Hey, you know what would be great if this was in plotter and it did this? And we went, huh, you know what? You’re right. And so we we added that to our roadmap and stuff like that.
Nice. So you can go suggest features, vote on things in the roadmap and that you think would be a great thing to have in plotter. But the primary point is this is a software created by writers for writers. We know what you’re going through, we know what you want. And sometimes I can see an idea and I go I might never use that feature, but I can see the value that would have for other writers.
And that’s what that’s. One of the ways that we’re able to do things that other software doesn’t always do because we really are listening to our users and what they
Stephen: need. Great. I like that too. I know I’ve been in communication with Dave Chessen about Publisher Rocket at times and gotten direct feedback from him on some suggestions and problems and things.
So I love that you guys are like that. I think there are a few companies out there that aren’t like that and those are okay. Good software. But it’s nice to have companies that understand and are down in the trenches, so to say.
Troy: Exactly. Dave Justin’s a great example.
Atticus is a great example. Like that software is being shaped by writers and editors who are using it and saying, Hey Dave, hey team, these are some things that would be great if you could incorporate this into your software. And their team is going, you know what? You’re right. This is something we could definitely do.
Stephen: And that’s another software that has had a lot of changes since it came out too. Yeah. Troy, I told you, oh, it’d be about 15 to 20 minutes each half, and here we are, an hour and 10 minutes into it, . So we’ve got a great conversation. It’s been really fun talking to you.
Hopefully I’ll run India at a conference somewhere and we could share that beer and enjoy some stories. You
Troy: betcha. Sounds fantastic,
Stephen: man. Before I let you go could you give some advice to the new writers out there besides all the great advice we’ve already discussed, do you have any like last minute advice you could give them?
Troy: My primary advice to you is just find your own path. Be who you are. There are people that will be hobbyist writers forever, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And there are people that will be publishing giants eventually, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s nothing wrong with having the aspiration for each.
Find your own path and your own. There’s so many ways you can go with writing today but just stay true to yourself. Writing for a living is one of the most amazing and most awful jobs you will ever have, and both are true at the exact same time. And so I just wanna tell you have fun. That’s what this whole thing is about, is have fun and find your own way.
And if you become that publishing mogul, or even if you just write a first draft, come and see me at a conference or something like that, I’d love to talk to you about it.
Stephen: So speaking of I said I’d let you go, but hold on. Are there any conferences or conventions or anywhere that you or some other plotter team will be that people could come up and meet you and learn more and check things out?
Troy: So I’ll be at, actually be at l t e in Utah next week. But, and I go to that conference almost every year, but next year I may not. I’ve been invited to a conference in New Orleans at exactly the same time, which is really interesting. But we’re at a lot of different conferences. We’re a lot of online conferences, a lot of other conferences.
We’ll be, definitely be at 20 books every year. We’re at 20 books to 5K in Vegas. One of my favorite conferences of all time Go every single year. You’ll see somebody from Plotter, maybe me at n if you’re part of that organization. And we’re at all kinds of different conferences and we’re planning to be at more as much as we possibly.
Stephen: Okay, great. We’ll look for you. I’ll see about what’s coming up and put a few links in the show notes for people if they wanna check it out and link to the website so they can check out plotter. Definitely get that. Yep. Plotter
Troy: plotter.com. Plotter without an E and that’ll get to there.
Or Google us, you’ll find our YouTube channel. Our, we have a Facebook group that’s super active and we can answer all kinds of your questions. You can find us in all kinds of places we’re not hiding at all. Great. All right, Troy. I appreciate you taking so much time and chatting with me today.
Stephen: You have a great rest of your day.
Troy: You betcha. Thank you. Have a wonderful day.