Fiction Unboxed The Complete Transcripts All transcripts below were provided by Caption Access. Enjoy! Day Zero JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Hey, everybody. This is the Day Zero for Fiction Unboxed. Hopefully we’re just managing to hit Fiction Unboxed. Sean and I were just talking about how uncertain all of this is. Not just the project itself. SEAN PLATT: Oh, my god, I feel so… (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: The entire thing… So like the forums. I created four separate forum accounts today to log into each one and check the permissions and forums and the whole thing. It’s been an adventure, guys. SEAN PLATT: Yeah, Johnny and I are such planners. We really do try to have, not formulas because the world formula is somehow wrong, but systems. We try to have systems for what we do so we can refine those. And that’s partly what Fiction Unboxed is all about, right? It’s not just the storytelling, which is really important. But it’s the system we use to tell stories with our rhythm, which is faster than most. And we try to improve that with every go-around. SEAN PLATT: But this is just like balls to the wall, everything’s a little different. We don’t really know what to expect. And Johnny, who… I like systems, but Johnny likes them even more. (Laughs) And he’s been like, “What’s the schedule going to be like? What are we doing the next four days?” And he hasn’t asked me thing once. He’s asked like 53 times. And every time I’m like, “I don’t know!” (Laughs) SEAN PLATT: Because we kind of have to get through the next few days to figure out. And it’s not just Johnny, too. Lots of you guys have sent me emails. “What’s the schedule going to be like?” And I don’t know. I think in the next few days we have to figure out what kind of story we’re going to tell, and we’re going to start telling it. And I think once we get passed these first few meetings, we’ll have a much clearer idea of what we’re doing, what kind of routine we’ll have, and all that stuff. Having said that, we have come up with a few concrete things that will help us to go forward. Do you want to take it from there? JOHNNY B. TRUANT: I’m just so flustered and nervous. SEAN PLATT: (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: And hopefully the nervousness and excitement, the hybrid, the fact that we’re both ‘nervousited’ is leaning more on the side of excitement for you guys. And enthusiasm. We are very enthusiastic. We’re very eager to get this going because it’s been a lot of buildup. Oh, you know another thing we need to ask about tomorrow. I need to make a note about this. Remember how we said that participants would be able to vote on how ourselves we are, and how whether we swear or not. SEAN PLATT: Oh… You know what? We should actually do that now? JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Now? SEAN PLATT: That’s today. Yes, I think that is the first thing participants will vote on. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: So we’ll keep it clean today. But I just want everybody to know, depending on what the participants say, these may be the videos you want to listen to with headphones on, if they vote that we should be authentic, which is sometimes a little salty, with our language. SEAN PLATT: I’m actually really glad that you brought that up, because I feel a little loose. (Laughs) I wouldn’t have been monitoring my language, and I think that’s a big point. I don’t really want to monitor my language. I want to feel loose, I want to feel natural, because I think my ideas will be better. I think my rhythm will be better. SEAN PLATT: Having said that, I really respect you. And you’re here because you backed this project. And we couldn’t do this without you guys. This is really, really special. There are so many things about Fiction Unboxed that are just—it’s never been done, and it’s bold and it’s brash, and it’s exciting. For sure, don’t confuse our nerves with our lack of excitement. We’ve been dying for this for a couple of months now. It’s just a little uncertain. So we’re stepping forward carefully. But I don’t mind stepping forward carefully, as far as procedure. I don’t want to step forward carefully in language. That doesn’t mean we’re going to turn this into Better Off Undead and be talking about— JOHNNY B. TRUANT: No. (Desperation in his voice) SEAN PLATT: --wholly inappropriate things. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Yeah, okay. SEAN PLATT: But I think… (Laughs) Right. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: I thought you were going to list some of those things, and I was going to warn you away from it. SEAN PLATT: No, no, no, I won’t. (Laughs) I will not do that. But I do think it’s a good idea to have you know what to expect, and I just don’t want anyone to get offended. And we got a lot of questions during the campaign. I know one person for sure didn’t back because I couldn’t promise… Because she wanted to write something with her child, and make her child a part of it. And I said, “I’m going to share this with my children, one day, but not now.” (Laughs) Not now at all. 2 SEAN PLATT: And so, yes, I guess that’s the first thing to vote on. Do you guys want us to curb our language, or do you want us to be somewhat unfiltered. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: No that question… Go ahead. SEAN PLATT: Unfiltered does not mean that we will have no respect for common decency. (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Yeah, here’s the thing. And this is a thread that is going to run throughout. I feel like I’m too close to my camera here. This is a thread that is going to run throughout Fiction Unboxed, and we’re going to keep mentioning this, is: We want to give you… The whole idea behind Fiction Unboxed is we’re going to show you what it looks like when we write a book. And, to me, that means, in your shoes, I would want as authentic of a representation of what it looks like when we write a book as possible. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: So we’ll get to this in a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to do anybody any good to see what it looks like watching us write a book in 30 days… SEAN PLATT: Neutered. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Neutered, and being very aware of editorial suggestions. You know what I mean? Like… SEAN PLATT: Well, it’s already weird that we’re doing this. It’s already weird that we have eyes on us. And to have that with more scrutiny, I think it will somehow dim the experience. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: I would dim the experience. Where I was going to go with that, and that is—I’ll mention this later—I’m not going to participate at all in forum discussions having to do with discussion of the ongoing plot. Because that’s not what you guys signed up for. You didn’t sign up to watch us bounce back and forth and try and responded to suggestions. You wanted to watch us write a book. SEAN PLATT: Yeah, I actually thing that would be damaging. I would damage our… JOHNNY B. TRUANT: I would be a huge detriment. I’d start paying attention to everything I write. But to bring us full circle, the whole point is: I would suggest… Like if you want my opinion on the way that we speak. It just means we’re going to swear occasionally if you vote for that. And I would think that is part of our authentic discussion. It’s not necessarily going to make its way into the narrative of the final book, depending on what you guys vote for. But it is an authentic part of our process. And so that would be my suggestion. It would be to have it be authentic. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: But the procedure for voting, because we need to discuss this, too. For participant level backers and above. So if you’re attending the world-building summit or the storyworld summit, you’re participation because you’re above the participation level. Everybody at the participation level and above, there’s a forum in Fiction Unboxed Forums, which you’ll find by going to the menu and there’s a forum’s link. There’s a participants-only forum. There’s also an all access forum, but only participant level backers will be able to get into the participant-level forum. 3 JOHNNY B. TRUANT: So the first person’s going to need to start a thread, if we don’t get there first, is you beat us to it. And just vote on whether we should swear or not. Make a new post and say, “Yes, that’s cool,” or, “No, please don’t.” And the majority will win. And everybody will see the vote, right there, publically. SEAN PLATT: And, again, I don’t think we’re going to be total potty mouths. We do have the ability to be professional. (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: But I think you want us authentic. I don’t think you want us too (in artsy-fartsy voice) professional. SEAN PLATT: Filtered, is the thing. And you brought up another good point, too. Which is the book itself… These are two different issues. The language in the book and the language while we’re making the book are two different things. Participants absolutely will get to vote on the language we use in the book, whether we’re going to have swearing or not, but I think that’s a later discussion. I don’t think we can decide that before we know what genre we’re in. Because if we decide to write a children’s book, that’s very different from writing a horror story. And I think we need to listen to the genre. SEAN PLATT: Uh, one more thing, before we get into other stuff: Dave’s not here, on this meeting, simply because it’s too early in the morning. That’s it. He’ll be here tomorrow for our worldbuilding discussion, but this is kind of stuff to expect while we’re actually breaking down the story and all that. And during the writing process, Dave won’t be a part of that, so you guys can expect him tomorrow but that’s why he’s not here today. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Right. Dave will probably not be on most of these. This is primarily a Sean and Johnny project, in terms of the actual writing. It’s all our book. SEAN PLATT: It’ll be a Realm and Sands book. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: It’s a Realm and Sands book. And it’s a Self Publishing Podcast or Sterling and Stone project as a whole, Fiction Unboxed is, but the actual writing project is us, is ma and Sean. SEAN PLATT: Dave’s also going to spend more time in the forums than we will. And this is a very important expectation to set, is the amount of time we’re going to be in the forums. It’s just not going to be that much. Just in the last couple of days since we got the forums up and sent the logins out, it’s easy to lose a lot of time. SEAN PLATT: Everyone’s in the forums so far, up until about two hours ago, until the recording of this, I’ve read 100% of the forums. But that’s a lot of reading. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: I keep meaning to, but I’ve read zero percent. I do mean to. SEAN PLATT: (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: I just haven’t gotten to it, yet. That’s how our week has been. 4 SEAN PLATT: Yeah, and I’m glad that I read everything up until this point, but I can’t sustain that. My primary job for the next thirty days is Blunderbuss, or whatever it’s called. The Fiction Unboxed project. SEAN PLATT: Right behind that is, I’ll just brush on this, but we’re building something really, really, really, really cool right now. And you guys may have found it. It’s on the community page. There’s a little link all the way at the bottom to the Sterling and Stone site, and for the very first time, Johnny and me and Dave, we’re going to have everything under one umbrella and be able to talk about all the things we are doing. SEAN PLATT: And one thing that is really, really special that has come from this project that I wasn’t looking for and I just feel so happy that it kind of surfaced, is the number of true fans that we can really count on. And I think a true fan, defined at this point, is somebody who listens to one or more of our podcasts, reads at least a little of our fiction, and is here right now, with us. And that person, that’s you, I just love you. (Laughs) Thank you. You’re making all of this possible. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: We need a forum thread on listing who those people are that fit that criteria. (Laughs) SEAN PLATT: I’m just so grateful, because those are the group of people who are going to make this a richer experience. They made it possible. And they’re the people that we’re building the site for. And I really want to give as much attention to that as I can in the next month, also, because I want it to be ready for you. SEAN PLATT: So there’s, Fiction Unboxed and that immediately behind that, and there’s just not a lot of time. Because keep in mind: Even though we can write a book in thirty days, and we’re going to do that right now, we’ve never done it before. This is an elongated process. This would normally take us 90 days to do the same amount of work. So by compressing that, we just have to be really, really smart about how we spend our time. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: There are two primary lessons to pull out of that, and that was sort of on my list to talk about, as well, is that we want to give you guys the best experience what it looks like to watch us write a book. And so that means that our primary job needs to be writing that book. And it means that the more scattered we are… Yes it would be nice if we were more active in the forums, but there’s only so many hours in the day and we’re detracting from the primary reason you guys are here. And we owe you the best voyeuristic authors writing a book experience as possible, and that means taking away from that little aspect of it. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: In other words, we’ll pop in. But please don’t expect a lot of interaction in the forums. The more we can purely focus on this and not handling like a ton of email and a ton of forums, we’ll be less responsive, basically. If you have something that really needs addressing, then contact us. Don’t hesitate. But the more we can purely focus this, the better. 5 JOHNNY B. TRUANT: The second thing is: The forums, and I’ve been a part of a few forums, and I think there are two ways that people can see forums, and one is a way to interact with the person who is in charge or the forums, and the other is the way to have a community around a project. This is a latter. SEAN PLATT: That’s the purpose. Yeah, the purpose of these forums is because you guys asked for them. And we absolutely wanted to give as much of what you asked for as we possibly could. And in this context, that mean building these forums. And we tried to keep it as simple as possible, by having just the two, All access and the participation, and then making as few threads there as possible. Already, that’s starting to expand, which is fine. If that’s what the community wants and the community is taking care of it… And again, Dave will be taking a larger part of that, so if there’s something that really needs out attention, he’ll be able to alert us to it. SEAN PLATT: But, yeah, this really is for you guys. And, oh my god, I love what I’ve seen so far. The amount of community and the amount of friendliness and the amount of genuine enthusiasm and wanting to exchange—I just love it. I love, love, love seeing that. And it feels really gratifying, but I just know that if I become a part of it, I’m going to drown. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: You know what this is, guy? The Self Publishing Podcast community has continued to impress and blow us away over and over again. And you guys are smart. You know? Like we can trust you. And what I love about it is, before we had Fiction Unboxed forums, Patrick Stemp created a Google Plus community, which has gone on fine without us. Like that’s great. And we know that you guys can self-govern. We know that you guys aren’t going to… There’s not going to be any problems in the forum. We know that you guys are okay without us to discuss things that are going on without requiring us to check in, and that’s great. You’re mature. SEAN PLATT: That’s better. You guys will do better because of that. You want to be your own community. You want leaders to naturally surface within the community. That’s all great, great stuff. And actually, Johnny, you reminded me of something, which is a good point, which is these videos. We are trusting you. We do think you’re smart, you know? These videos… actually, you can probably explain this better than me. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: The best way for us to do these videos is, we’re doing this as a private Google Hangout On Air. So this is exactly the way that we broadcast our podcasts, but the difference is that we’ve made them private from the beginning. So this isn’t appearing, if you have the link to this… JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Okay, so, I don’t want to get too in the weeds. But there are a few ways that Youtube videos can appear. One is truly private, which means nobody can see it unless the people that are specifically invited, one is public, which is what most of them are, and then the third is called “unlisted.” Which means if you have the link, then you can see the video on Youtube, or in this case, it will be embedded. You’re watching it embedded on the site, probably. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: And nobody else can. And that’s the only practical way for us to do this, because we’re robbing time from the experience if we have to manually create videos and upload them to a secure place and lock them down, and basically treat you guys as if you’re criminals. Which is stupid. 6 SEAN PLATT: (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Like, “Oh, our members are going to steal our content. They’re going to share our content.” We’re choosing to, we know most of you guys, and we know you’re not going to rip us off and share the links. You know, please don’t share it. Please don’t try to embed anywhere else. SEAN PLATT: And a pox on your family if you do! (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Right, and I’m saying that not in the spirit of “you better not.” It’s more like, “You might not know.” You might be like, “Well, I’m watching it on Youtube, so it’s public, and I can then tweet it and share it. Please don’t. You’re watching because you had a direct link. SEAN PLATT: Yeah, Youtube is just an easy place for us to host the video. Really, that’s what it amounts to. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: They’re not available in search. They don’t show up in our stream. People aren’t notified. It’s not like a normal Youtube video, so please don’t share it in any way. SEAN PLATT: Yeah. Exactly. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Expectations for participants. Do you want to explain sort of the flow that’s going to happen for participant-level people when there is a vote? How often there’s going to be a vote? That sort of thing. SEAN PLATT: Yeah, that’s great. So, this is a thirty-day project. Although I kind of think that, by the end, it won’t be thirty days. It’ll be thirty-six days or whatever. I think we’ll probably have a little bit of check- in. Because there’s going to be some post stuff. Whatever, who knows? (Laughs) This is all frontier. SEAN PLATT: But, we’re going to have a video every day. We’re going to have a lot of video up front because we got to figure stuff out. We just got to figure out what we’re doing before we can make any kind of schedule or routine. But Johnny and I don’t have meeting every day. We have our scheduled meetings and we’re going to have to put like a month’s worth of meetings in the next few days. Because we got to figure our world and genre and characters and all of that. And that’s the next few days. SEAN PLATT: But once we start going, there’s no need to have the meetings. What we will have is a daily update, and those will all be on the actual site. And so the way we’re thinking of doing this is, when Johnny finishes his work for the day, he’s just going to upload it. But it’s going to stay in draft. And then when I’m done with my work, I’m going to add to what he did and then publish that. As soon as the post is published… JOHNNY B. TRUANT: By ‘add to what I did,’ you’re referring to your first round of edits, correct? So people will understand. SEAN PLATT: Yeah, correct. Or whatever it is that day. But yes. Then I’ll go into Aweber and I’ll send an email to everybody who is a member of fiction unboxed. So all the all-access backers and the participants will get a link to that page. At the very top of that is going to be a participant-only thing, and 7 that’s for you guys to know what it is you’re voting on that day, if there’s something to vote on. I think early on, there’s going to be a lot of stuff to vote on. Later on, not so much. But that doesn’t even matter. The voting is kind of a by the way thing. Participants have a lot of other stuff that is what the participant level is about. SEAN PLATT: And there will be some participant-only videos, and that’s like Q&A’s and stuff. But again, that’s later. That’s once we actually know what we’re doing. And you guys have questions to ask. Because right now, I think most of the questions you guys want to ask is stuff we don’t know yet. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: I think everybody sees the Q&A’s. Isn’t that what we said? But the participants are the ones who participate. SEAN PLATT: Yes. But I think those will be live for participants, but embedded for non-participants. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Okay, a really good point there that Sean just made, is: A lot of people like to watch us live. And that’s cool. We never ever expected that. Honestly, it’s kind of a handicap, because we’ll be like, with our podcast, we’ll be like… SEAN PLATT: We’re not as pliable. Yeah. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: People as like, “Wait a minute! It was supposed to be at 2 o’clock eastern.” SEAN PLATT: We hate disappointing people. And when we have to move those videos, it’s the worst. That’s the only reason we’re as consistent with our time as we are, because there’s a live audience. But otherwise, we’d probably move the schedule around more than we do. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: We’d never pay attention to it. But people started watching us live and commenting live. And it’s great. I never thought I want to field live stuff. SEAN PLATT: I know. It’s exciting. Yeah. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: It’s fun. But, we’re not going to air our meetings live. There’s no reason. We need the flexibility. We need to be able to say, “Okay, hey Sean. I need to be able to do this a two instead of three because something happened.” Like that’s part of the thing. And so you guys aren’t going to miss anything. There’s no live participation during a meeting, anyway. There’s no reason for you be here live. And so what we’ll do is we’ll record them and then post them pretty much immediately. So it’s quasi- live. There’s no reason for them to be live. I don’t want you guys to like… You’re not missing anything is you don’t get notifications of when the next meeting will be. We’re going to have a rough idea of when we’ll publish them, but there’s nothing to be here for. And we promised that from the beginning, that you don’t have to be live for Fiction Unboxed. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Now, participants need to respond quasi-live. We’re going to give… What’s the procedure, Sean? Do you want to go through that? SEAN PLATT: Yeah, we tried really hard to keep things as simple as possible. And you’re going to see that consistently through the next month. Whenever we can subtract something, we do. Systems work best 8 when they have fewer parts. And we always try to keep our systems and our formulas and our equations lean. Fewer variables means the good stuff on the right side of the equal sign is better. SEAN PLATT: And part of that is we want to make sure that it’s easy for participants, and that they don’t feel overwhelmed. And I think, still to this day, there’s a lot of people who didn’t go to the participant level because they thought they had to be there live. And no matter how many times we explain that, I think there were people… Because we got that question to the very, very end. “But I can’t do it live.” You don’t have to do it live. SEAN PLATT: And even with the participants, as Johnny said, we need turnaround on those votes quickly because we can’t move forward until we have an answer. So it would be great to give everybody 48 hours to vote on anything because that seems cool. But if we did that for the first three votes, we would lose our first week. And we can’t afford that. So your voting time is going to be pretty shrunk. But, having said that, we’re going to make it easy. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: You don’t have to watch a whole, big, long video. SEAN PLATT: You don’t need to watch a whole big video. So let’s say we decide on our world and now we’re deciding on our genre, and I imagine that’s going to be a pretty long meeting. So maybe it’s a two hour video. And you want to watch the video, but you can’t let watching the video impede you from casting your vote. So right there at the top of the email, or in the blog post, too, you can see a summation of what we talked about. And then there’s your vote. We’re going to do western, horror, romance. I hope those aren’t the three categories. But whatever. (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: I thought that was one category. Western horror romance. SEAN PLATT: Oh, I kind of what to write a western horror romance now. So you’ll be able to vote, and then catch up on the video later, if you want. Because the voting turnaround will be quick. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: And I think we decided that a reasonable voting turnaround time for us is probably going to be 12-ish hours. But we aren’t just going to leave you foundering. So here’s the way it works. Number one, you’ll register your votes in the participation forum. We will either remember to create a thread saying “The Vote for Tuesday, Weigh in Here,” or the first of you, Mgon, who thinks of it can create a thread that says here’s the vote. And I kind of want to designate. It’s Mgon’s responsibility. No. Whoever get there first. And then you just say, “I want to do the Western.” “I want to do Horror.” “I want to do the Romance.” Or the western horror romance. Just keep it brief. You don’t need to write a… please don’t, actually, write a big, long thing when you’re voting. SEAN PLATT: (Laughs) JOHNNY B. TRUANT: In the participants’ forum. Not in the comments on the post. In the forum. And we’ll send you an email. You’ll get daily emails from us. And the emails will also include: “Hey participants.” A big, bold thing. “Participants, there’s a vote required.” So, if you’re reasonably aware of your email, then within a handful of hours, even if you’re sleeping, even if you just went to bed, you should be able to see it, go and briefly just check the vote, you don’t even need to watch the whole two- 9 hour video, jut here’s the vote, and register. And we hope that twelve hours will allow you enough time, while also giving us enough time on both ends to produce the new thing, have the next meeting. Because in the first few days, we need your vote answer before we can conduct the next meeting. SEAN PLATT: (Laughs) Right. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: So we’re going to try and keep it kind of compressed. Hopefully, that works for people. If it’s a huge problem and you’re like, “Hey I’m not getting to vote.” Again, voting isn’t the main thing for participation. So we hope that this isn’t a huge deal. But I think that will give you guys time. SEAN PLATT: Yeah, the voting is almost a by the way. There’s a lot of other really cool stuff for participants. The voting is what we need to get going. Do you want to talk about world at all? JOHNNY B. TRUANT: We can talk about world a little bit. I have a checklist here in my Asana program. I mentioned that you’ll get daily emails, right? We’ll send an email every day, at different times. SEAN PLATT: Yeah. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: And we’ll let you participants know right up at the top if there is a vote necessary. One thing that I wanted to mention… These are just housekeeping things. There’s a weird thing with the forums where if you’re not… I get a text from Sean today: “Hey, did you do anything to the forums, because they’re gone.” And what was funny—let me see if I can find it real quick, because it was the tone of the text was hilarious because it was not the tone of a panicked text… JOHNNY B. TRUANT: Oh, I can’t find it. It was just like: “Hey dude, by the way. The forums are gone.” And then he said: “I got an email from somebody that said the forums are gone and then they’re gone for me, too.” And I said no they’re right here. So the thing is if you’re not logged in, it doesn’t tell you you don’t have access to the forums. It tells you there are no forums. So you’ll go and click on the forums and it’ll just say “Sorry, no forums.” So just make sure you’re logged in. Like Sean was on another computer. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: So if you don’t see the forums, log in. I just wanted to make sure we took care of that. SEAN PLATT: (Laughs) That’s a very good point. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: That was probably a fun little thing for you. And then, yeah, if you want to talk about the world. We’re not going to talk world today, but we want to talk about… SEAN PLATT: Yeah, world is for tomorrow. JOHNNY B. TRUANT: By the way, before you go into the world, what do you think the first few days are? Do you want to set thoughts on that? SEAN PLATT: Yeah, I think tomorrow… Again, we don’t really know until we get to talking. But the way I’m seeing it in my head is tomorrow is just world talk. Because, okay, let me go back for a second. 10
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