DEEP CUTS Episode 7: Collaboration & Writing Retreat
DEEP CUTS Episode 7: Collaboration & Writing RetreatUpdate: 2024-07-16
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SLAY co-creator Rob Otto joins Scott for a chat about their annual writing retreat and their collaboration process.
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Deep Cuts is:
- Created by Scott Sigler and A B Kovacs.
- Production Assistance by Allie Press
- Copyright 2024 by Empty Set Entertainment
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Transcript
00:00:00
A bloodbath tonight in the rural town of Shinok.
00:00:03
Everyone here is hiding a secret.
00:00:05
Four more victims are out of some worse than others.
00:00:08
I came as fast as I could.
00:00:09
I'm deputy Ruth Boulmore.
00:00:10
And soon, my quiet life will never be the same.
00:00:13
Realm presents a 30-ninja's production, Shinok, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Leifin.
00:00:23
Listen to Shinok wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00:25
Hey, there y'all.
00:00:29
What's going on?
00:00:30
Welcome to Deep Cuts, the bonus episode of the Scott Siggler Slices Fiction Podcast.
00:00:34
This week, a sci-fi author and his screenplay and graphic novel, CoWriter, chat at you for a bit.
00:00:40
I am Scott Siggler, a New York Times bestselling author known far and wide as the future dark overlord.
00:00:44
And I am Rob Otto, a sports blog writer, magazine writer, children's Christmas book writer, the puppy in the red checkered coat, meet Santa, still available on Amazon and BarnesandNobal.com,
00:00:56
would like to say.
00:00:57
And of course, the co-author of Slay Book Two and on this Deep Cuts, we're talking about co-writing and our current collaboration.
00:01:07
A reminder that these are bonus episodes, not part of the current story that is running the Scott Siggler Slices feed.
00:01:13
Listen if you like, but there's nothing in here that you need to keep track of.
00:01:17
All right, let's get into it.
00:01:19
We are actually on writing your treat and shaboygan, Northern Michigan, where we both grew up.
00:01:24
You're taking the co-host seat tonight, Rob.
00:01:26
I dig these writing retreats.
00:01:27
I love working with you.
00:01:29
But since this is our first time together with all the junkies, and we have Slay Book One that has been available.
00:01:39
Scott, you wanna tell them where?
00:01:40
ScottSiggler.com/Lay.
00:01:43
Links to Audible and Amazon.
00:01:45
If you haven't bought it and Audible yet, what's wrong with you?
00:01:48
Buy it and Audible, listen to it, review it, rate it, and when you review it, use text, rate it and everything.
00:01:55
Woo, woo, how about that?
00:01:57
Two-time Slay Alters, woo, woo.
00:02:02
That came out pretty strong.
00:02:03
All right, Robby, let's get to some questions, everybody.
00:02:06
Tonight, we're talking about our collaboration.
00:02:08
How we work together, how do we get to the comma going?
00:02:12
You know, mix it all up.
00:02:13
You got the first question there, Rob?
00:02:15
So let's start with the one that everyone really wants to know.
00:02:18
Okay, from Jason C.
00:02:21
What are we working on this week?
00:02:23
Who chooses the topic?
00:02:24
Do you have to agree?
00:02:26
And can you tell us anything about this week's work yet?
00:02:30
I can tell you one thing about this week's work.
00:02:33
Only one.
00:02:34
We can't tell you the title 'cause it's just awesome.
00:02:35
So all the titles, the title's pretty damn awesome.
00:02:38
So we can't tell you what we're working on.
00:02:41
We can't tell you what is a graphic novel.
00:02:42
That is correct.
00:02:43
That'll be a new thing for us.
00:02:44
We're trying, we're just gonna try every different type of potential script that we can write.
00:02:50
Yeah, and as soon as one of them gets sold and sells a billion copies, then all the other stuff we've written will work.
00:02:55
That's kind of our plan, that's our entire business plan.
00:02:58
That's how the FDO takes over the world.
00:02:59
Write another thing, does it sell?
00:03:02
No, write another thing, does it sell?
00:03:03
Yes, write more things like that right there.
00:03:06
Now, how do we choose which one we're working on?
00:03:09
So the first year came Sandy go, what did we work on?
00:03:11
Was that the mall picks?
00:03:13
We wrote the movie script to mall picks.
00:03:16
The movie script, which we're still shopping around.
00:03:18
And that is a single location shoot.
00:03:20
So basically warehouse that has an office, we can shoot the whole thing there, it's a low button, mall picks in the mall, my bad.
00:03:25
Mall picks is any old mall, we could shoot it there, it's still in a mall, in a mall, in a mall.
00:03:30
The next year we worked on Slay, is that right?
00:03:33
That is correct.
00:03:34
We worked on Slay, and that was Slay.
00:03:37
No, sorry, it was Warpath.
00:03:39
Warpath, we worked on Warpath, we can't tell you what, what we did on Warpath at this point, but somebody down the road.
00:03:44
So we did, and that was the first one here in this cabin.
00:03:47
This very cabin mallet like in Shavoy and Michigan.
00:03:49
The year after that, we were in the same cabin, and I had already brought Rob in because I thought I could write Slay as, I'm just gonna write every week and see where this stuff goes.
00:04:00
He couldn't.
00:04:01
No.
00:04:02
No.
00:04:03
By episode 10 or 11, there were so many plot threads and I had lost track of everything.
00:04:08
So I called in a hitter.
00:04:09
I got him, I'm say, listen, I got a problem.
00:04:11
I need you to take care of this problem for me.
00:04:13
Bring in the ready.
00:04:14
I don't want to hear from this guy anymore.
00:04:15
You understand?
00:04:16
Put a rock in his pocket, I don't hear from him anymore.
00:04:18
So Rob started to work with me.
00:04:19
We mapped out all of season one and got that, worked that out together.
00:04:24
And then last year, and then we decided it was worth, oh yeah, mapping out season two and season three and season four and season five,
00:04:36
five time season mappers.
00:04:38
Woo, that was a pretty productive week.
00:04:43
It was very productive week.
00:04:46
We got through everything you're hearing now with some coloring outside the lines based on how things develop.
00:04:52
But we outlined that way to keep it loose and easy like I was in high school.
00:04:58
And then we got through-- No.
00:05:02
Any of those things.
00:05:03
No.
00:05:03
We got through three.
00:05:05
And then this week, the first two days this week, we focused on the episode you just heard, the next episode.
00:05:13
And then we've kind of fleshed out season fours outline.
00:05:17
And we've got what we call buckets.
00:05:18
So season five is a bunch of things we know that need to happen.
00:05:22
We just don't know where they go exactly yet.
00:05:25
Because we didn't want to waste time, totally pathing out season five.
00:05:29
Because what we found is some things pop up and change as we're writing a season.
00:05:34
And we didn't want to completely map it out thinking, well, that's going to change by the time we get to five.
00:05:39
And we've wasted all that time.
00:05:40
So no things are going to happen.
00:05:41
But we're leaving it open so that things can change before we get there.
00:05:45
So for example, tonight's episode of Slay episode 68.
00:05:49
There's a character named Billy.
00:05:51
And Billy gets a suit of armor or gets some protection for himself in this episode.
00:05:56
None of that was planned.
00:05:58
We just-- that's the thing that even the way of the whole season plan.
00:06:01
We know the finale.
00:06:02
We know all the arcs, how they interact.
00:06:04
Certain little brushstrokes pop up as we go.
00:06:06
I'm like, well, that would be cool.
00:06:07
Does that fit everything?
00:06:08
Yes, that fits everything.
00:06:09
Does that break anything?
00:06:10
Doesn't break anything?
00:06:11
It's in the story.
00:06:12
And there's some things that we realize are like, oh, yeah.
00:06:14
We can't send Billy in there wearing a hoodie.
00:06:16
Yeah, right.
00:06:17
So-- Not going to work.
00:06:18
Yeah.
00:06:18
Not going to work.
00:06:19
What's the next question, bud?
00:06:20
Yeah.
00:06:20
All right.
00:06:20
So next question, champagne.
00:06:22
Since we mentioned mall pigs, the next question is from our good friend, David Lamb, who asked, has there been any work going on the mall pigs script?
00:06:32
So what we've done with mall pigs, it is up on a website, called Slated, that gets people together to make independent films, and it tries to make connections.
00:06:43
So it is there.
00:06:44
Anyone can see an open project called mall pigs and can inquire to us about it.
00:06:50
What we have found is that it's-- what we really need is a producer who knows what they're doing, who can get the ball rolling.
00:06:56
We've had directors reach out to us.
00:06:58
We've had costume people reach out to us.
00:07:00
We have someone who want to do the score.
00:07:02
I'm like, that's great.
00:07:04
But we need a producer who then gets us money and gets us the director, and then those other decisions will be made with that brain trust working with us.
00:07:13
We cannot do it by ourselves, because we don't know crap about it.
00:07:17
We do not know how to produce a movie.
00:07:19
All this beauty you see on the screen right here, we know many, many things.
00:07:24
We know many, many things.
00:07:25
One of the things we don't know, is how to produce a movie.
00:07:27
We're the pretty ones, not the smart ones.
00:07:29
No, we're not the smart ones.
00:07:30
I mean, we're not the pretty ones.
00:07:33
We're the pretty ones, who sometimes are smart, but not when it comes to producing a movie.
00:07:39
We're stuck in the water.
00:07:40
That's what I just called slated.com.
00:07:42
I don't know if it's-- you can just log on if you have to sign up or pay or whatever.
00:07:45
But that's where it is.
00:07:47
So that's where people from all over Hollywood can come and look at a thing.
00:07:50
See if they want to be involved in thing.
00:07:51
Reach out and get us something to think.
00:07:52
Yeah.
00:07:53
So we go, we'll see.
00:07:54
I mean, every once in a while, we just get a random email from somebody that found us via Slated and said, hey, I'd be interested in reading the script and that kind of stuff.
00:08:02
We sent it to him, and you never know.
00:08:03
Some day, some producers are going to fall in love with it and say, wow, this is an absolute money maker.
00:08:09
And then the ball will get rolling.
00:08:11
But we're just not sure when that happens.
00:08:12
And this is also to sum it up.
00:08:13
This is one of those things where, if we write this graphic novel, and it does very well, and that gets adapted in any way, or one of my books blows up, it draws attention to either my brand or our co-brand,
00:08:25
and then people start looking for projects.
00:08:27
And that also could bring people to mall picks.
00:08:29
Nice.
00:08:30
All right, we still have about seven minutes left before the break.
00:08:33
Scott.
00:08:34
Good question.
00:08:34
Another question from Dorothy D.
00:08:37
And I think we should keep this just to the slice.
00:08:39
And so that's what we're in the middle of writing right now.
00:08:41
But do each of you have favorite storylines or characters?
00:08:45
And are they different?
00:08:48
Well, I've got to say, my favorite storyline in Slay is Dragon as a dog person who's had dogs in my whole life.
00:08:57
That particular little-- and it's somewhat of a subplot right now.
00:09:01
It has larger ramifications later on in the series.
00:09:05
But the Dragon subplot is sort of just a source of joy.
00:09:10
The human characters, main characters all have a lot of difficulties they are trying to work through.
00:09:16
And sometimes writing through the main characters who will have all of these internal battles and are fighting their inner demons, it can get a little bit depressing.
00:09:25
It's not always fun and funny.
00:09:27
But just like having a dog at home, when you can bring Dragon into the story, it's super fun and delightful, and that's mine.
00:09:33
What about yours?
00:09:34
I love it, because it's really funny.
00:09:35
I think you and I, people have-- your father says this all the time, he and I share a brain.
00:09:41
That's pretty much what most people say.
00:09:43
We have the same birthday.
00:09:44
We were born on the same day and apparently share a brain, right?
00:09:47
So mine is shippard, because he is just always comic relief.
00:09:51
You know, it's all about the damn food and the crackers and the garbage.
00:09:55
And he's just like, yeah, I'll do whatever you want, long as you feed me, right?
00:09:58
And that's a very personal thing.
00:10:00
Which is not different from us, right?
00:10:01
It's not all that different from us.
00:10:03
And yeah, the story lines, I appreciate the most.
00:10:06
Magnus PTSD won't let her, you know, make sure a Gore phobic won't leave the house and links alcoholism, which you know, it just keeps coming to a head.
00:10:16
And that's something that's going to-- both of those things are some things that have to be dealt with at some point.
00:10:21
That's where I think the real drama is coming from here.
00:10:24
So it's going to be interesting to see.
00:10:26
I will say that similar, but that's obviously different.
00:10:29
So the lighthearted angles are favorites.
00:10:31
But you guys may think this is weird.
00:10:34
Having, if you've read my Infected Trilogy or the Generations Trilogy, Earth Core, Ancestor, Mount Fitzroy, all of those things.
00:10:42
In a lot of ways, Lincoln and Magda are the most mature, deep characters that I have ever written.
00:10:51
There's a lot going on there that all of my other characters had their own inner turmoil and their own demons.
00:10:57
But Lincoln and Magda just-- it feels the most natural.
00:11:01
And my heart breaks for Magda every time I write this stuff.
00:11:04
And my heart breaks for Lincoln because you just can't get out of his own way.
00:11:07
Lincoln is just a bull in a china shop.
00:11:10
So this is really a super fun project.
00:11:12
You know what I also love about Magda and Lincoln?
00:11:14
What they are?
00:11:15
Male and female partners who worked together.
00:11:19
And yet, there is no romance, sexual tension.
00:11:22
Nope, nothing.
00:11:23
They are equals.
00:11:24
They know it.
00:11:25
And that's just a line that neither one of them is interested in crossing.
00:11:29
That's pretty cool.
00:11:29
Because they're bugs.
00:11:31
And initially, halfway through season one, maybe through course where everybody's like, when are Lincoln and Magda going to get together?
00:11:38
I'm like, this is not that kind of story.
00:11:41
Lincoln's going to have his love interests.
00:11:44
Magda may or may not have hers.
00:11:46
But just because one's got male junk and the other's got female junk does not mean they're going to wind up together.
00:11:52
We guarantee you, they will not.
00:11:54
We'll tell you ahead of time.
00:11:55
So if you're standing for Lincoln and Magda together, keep on standing, it's not going to happen.
00:11:59
Now, in terms of other characters, I've been trying to kill Billy since the second episode that he was here.
00:12:05
Scott won't let me.
00:12:06
Maybe next episode will be the one.
00:12:08
That armor, that armor might not work.
00:12:09
I'm just saying.
00:12:10
It's dodgy.
00:12:10
You got it from a pawn shop.
00:12:12
Exactly right, pawn shop armor.
00:12:14
And he might not be able to use his fire because of the buzz.
00:12:17
I'm just saying.
00:12:17
Maybe this is finally the time to kill Billy.
00:12:19
I once bought a base from pawn shop.
00:12:21
And I still have a scar on my arm where a spark shot all the way up the base string and literally scored me like I'm branded like cattle.
00:12:30
All right, next question.
00:12:31
Let's see, this will be the last part.
00:12:32
I think probably less than three minutes before the break.
00:12:34
OK, let's go.
00:12:36
Paula J asks, and in this is for Rob Otto.
00:12:42
She's asked, good question.
00:12:44
Who owns the intellectual property?
00:12:46
Rob, wouldn't you tell?
00:12:47
Not me.
00:12:48
He slaves about to throw something at me.
00:12:55
On slay, we own the intellectual property.
00:12:59
We own the intellectual property.
00:13:00
If anything ever happens with slay on a bigger stage, throw up an eye on the small picture, any of the other stuff that we did, yeah.
00:13:06
Yeah, I'm not really good at business or money or counting, no, or math.
00:13:14
No.
00:13:16
I will say, I was going to put it in a much more area-dite method, which is not-- I'm not really good at the Machiavellian manipulations, one needs to control other people.
00:13:24
So buying large is just like fucking.
00:13:27
Yeah, he should be a writer.
00:13:28
Well, dude, it was like 13 or 12 years ago that I worked with a real girl herself.
00:13:36
And I was like, this is-- This is about 10 years.
00:13:40
We're getting married.
00:13:41
No.
00:13:42
OK, just check it.
00:13:43
Hopefully not.
00:13:43
He's like bringing it up.
00:13:44
Hopefully not.
00:13:47
I'm waiting for the fantasy island reboot for that one.
00:13:49
But with a real girl herself, she was an incredibly valuable person to the company.
00:13:58
And I literally knew I could not take the company where I wanted it to go without her.
00:14:02
So I just call her up and said, I stop bitching about the workload, take half the company.
00:14:06
So why would you-- just just do it.
00:14:08
Take half the company so we can just get this goddamn thing done.
00:14:11
And that turned out to be a very valuable gift.
00:14:14
So maybe in eight years, we could date.
00:14:15
I don't know.
00:14:16
We'll see where it goes.
00:14:17
All right, we'll see where it goes.
00:14:18
Now, how we do on time?
00:14:18
All right, we've got one minute.
00:14:20
So allow me to ask you a question.
00:14:22
Sheet.
00:14:24
When you were-- because you tried something different, writing "Slay Week by Week," chapter by chapter.
00:14:31
What prompted you to want to try something like that?
00:14:35
Well, that's against your natural nature of outlining everything, every fricking step of life.
00:14:40
This was-- there's two things involved.
00:14:44
Number one is we started in with ACX, which is AudibleXchangeACX.com, which is how the first-- when Audible made it, opened it up to the world, like we have this great platform for people of audio books.
00:14:56
You, Indie, author, can put up your own audio book.
00:15:00
And a real girl, I knew we needed to get into that.
00:15:02
So we did a bunch of books on ACX.
00:15:04
We're still putting out books on ACX.
00:15:06
But when it started, it had a different contract than it has now.
00:15:10
And we had contracts for Crypt Book 1 and Book 2.
00:15:14
And eventually, we sold the whole Crypt Series to Athon.
00:15:18
So we had these two old contracts sitting around that are really favorable to the author.
00:15:25
So we've been working on bringing something out with those two contracts for like 13 years.
00:15:32
When once we sold Crypt, Crypt was going to be those contracts.
00:15:35
We sold Crypt, very happy with Athon.
00:15:38
Things are going good.
00:15:39
We're like, we still have these contracts.
00:15:41
What do we do with them?
00:15:42
At the same time, we were starting to podcast with a new partner called Realm.
00:15:48
And Realm, we were making advertising money with Realm.
00:15:51
But we're out of stuff to podcast.
00:15:53
Some of the things that we podcast, the rookie three completely different times in multiple formats.
00:15:58
So we were sort of in reruns.
00:16:00
And we weren't allowed to podcast the Crypt.
00:16:02
So we said, we got to come up with something new.
00:16:05
And I had, A and I went through a whole shopping list of ideas, like 40 different ideas.
00:16:10
We finally settled on Slay.
00:16:11
We're like, this is cool because it doesn't require granular scientific research.
00:16:16
It's got magic.
00:16:17
We have much more freedom to tell the story.
00:16:19
It's not as constrained.
00:16:20
We'll see if we can write this week by week.
00:16:21
That's how we got into it.
00:16:22
And then we brought you in.
00:16:25
And the rest is history.
00:16:26
Ladies and gentlemen, in the listening audience, we are going to take a short advertising break.
00:16:30
We'll be right back after this.
00:16:33
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:16:43
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:16:46
My family have worked the land for generations.
00:16:51
My grandson says the island does not belong to us, but we belong to the island.
00:16:55
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:16:57
And we must be ready for a great evil is coming.
00:17:01
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:17:03
And death follows with it.
00:17:07
Listen and subscribe to the latest season of "Undertoe," the harrowing, a storyglass production presented by Realm, available wherever you get your podcasts.
00:17:16
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:17:20
And we are back.
00:17:24
If you have any ideas for something you'd like to hear covered on deep cuts, email us info@emptyset.com or you can put it in the chat room right now.
00:17:33
And if you're hearing this in the podcast feed, we do this live every Wednesday night, 6 p.m.
00:17:38
Pacific, 9 p.m.
00:17:39
Eastern.
00:17:39
You could be part of the magic that's happening right now.
00:17:42
It's full of sparkles and unicorns.
00:17:44
You could be here enjoying all of this live, asking all the questions, and being blessed by the great God that is General Sigourissimo himself.
00:17:53
You can watch us live at youtube.com/scotsiggler, twitch.tv/scotsiggler, or youtube.com/scotsiggler.
00:18:02
And now we are back.
00:18:02
Rob, how you doing?
00:18:03
I'm doing fantastic.
00:18:04
And tonight, Scott and I are talking about our collaboration.
00:18:09
We are collaborators.
00:18:10
We will swing from the gallows for collaboration.
00:18:14
What's our next question, Robby?
00:18:14
Grace, he'll ask us, what is your co-writing process like?
00:18:20
What happens on your retreat?
00:18:23
Well, there's things that happen on the retreat.
00:18:24
We're not legally allowed to talk about, because there might be children in the farm animals.
00:18:28
Do we have rights?
00:18:29
So, by and large, the way it works is, let's talk about how it's worked with this graphic novel.
00:18:35
So, earlier someone asked, how do we choose who we're working on?
00:18:39
I didn't finish that story.
00:18:40
This year, because we've worked on projects, I have had planned up until now.
00:18:45
This year, it was pitch-drawn.
00:18:47
All right, dude, you get to pick the project.
00:18:50
What do we do?
00:18:50
And then we went through a brainstorming session with like 30 different ideas.
00:18:54
Ideas that we've been putting together for the last five years.
00:18:57
Some of we've been kicking around since high school.
00:18:59
That's the high school together.
00:19:01
And then the one we picked had nothing to do with English in high school.
00:19:04
It literally came, because Rob's like, well, here's a cool title.
00:19:06
Here's this.
00:19:07
Whole thing came from the title.
00:19:08
And I heard the title, and I shit my pants.
00:19:11
And I'm like, dude, that's great.
00:19:13
Can we find something to fit this title?
00:19:15
You said, bro, that's great.
00:19:16
Yeah, I did.
00:19:17
I said, bro, so we figured it out from there.
00:19:20
So this time, in summary, it was Rob's turn.
00:19:24
We're going to work on one of Rob's projects.
00:19:26
We got a bunch of ideas.
00:19:27
We've got to finish first this time.
00:19:29
Yeah, yeah.
00:19:30
Got to finish first.
00:19:31
We got through a bunch of ideas, picked one, and we started right now.
00:19:34
How we write that is, this time, it's a graphic novel.
00:19:40
So this is a different format that I'm not-- Neither one of us have ever written.
00:19:43
Never written one before.
00:19:44
So frankly, we went and found a graphic novel template on Google Docs, which kind of walks through.
00:19:51
We tend to use a product called Save the Cat, or a book called Save the Cat.
00:19:55
It's got a wonderfully structured format for how to write a screenplay with certain things are supposed to happen at certain times.
00:20:02
It's a great launching pad.
00:20:03
It helps frame everything.
00:20:05
It stops me from being two verbose.
00:20:08
Like, I can't talk for 20 seconds.
00:20:09
Two girthy.
00:20:10
Two girthy.
00:20:11
It keeps me from being girthy.
00:20:12
It gives us a formula where to put stuff.
00:20:15
And then once we get that down, then we tear it up, break everything around from there.
00:20:18
Yeah, yeah, then we ruin the whole thing, and ruin all things is exactly what happens.
00:20:22
You also reached out to your friend and fell off their Jonathan Mayberry.
00:20:25
Jonathan Mayberry and Jennifer Brody, both of who have written several graphic novels, like send us some scripts, and they both did.
00:20:32
They're wonderful, wonderful people.
00:20:33
So we could compare the scripts to the finished product of different graphic novels and comic books, and boy, what's that helpful?
00:20:40
Extremely helpful.
00:20:41
So we got cheat sheets, basically, that cheat sheets.
00:20:43
And the way you learn in this business is to model somebody else who's been successful in the business, figure out how they did what they did, learn the process, then change it from there.
00:20:54
So we're still in the learning it for ourselves point.
00:20:55
So this whole week has been going over the plot, and then starting to break the plot down with various buckets that are in Save the Cat.
00:21:04
And we are three episodes through a six episode arc of this graphic novel, Just in Case.
00:21:10
A comic com is like, we love this, we're gonna put this out as individual episodes.
00:21:12
Right, it's issues.
00:21:14
Issue many series instead of just a graphic novel.
00:21:17
So we're kind of writing it that it'll work.
00:21:19
No matter who wants to give us the money, it'll work with what they want.
00:21:22
- We like the money.
00:21:23
- You know what we like, we like the money.
00:21:25
- In terms of what happens on the retreat.
00:21:27
So when we, we're pretty much right.
00:21:29
First thing in the morning, a lot of times we'll, you know, scramble grab a cup of coffee, I'll grab one of my diet mountain dues.
00:21:34
We will sit out at the lake.
00:21:36
There's this great dock and these chairs and the suns coming up, and it's just great.
00:21:40
And we will talk about what today is going to be, and then we'll come in and write.
00:21:45
So we start first thing in the morning.
00:21:46
We go until, you know, sometimes well after dinner, and just keep writing.
00:21:51
But we are also back in our hometown.
00:21:54
- That's right.
00:21:54
- This week and there are people we want to see.
00:21:56
♪ In my hometown ♪ - Yeah, that's not an actual song by anyone at any time, ever.
00:22:04
No, that doesn't, if Bruce Bruce is going to reach through this computer, smack you upside to head.
00:22:10
So we also have people we want to see things we want to do, places we want to stop and that kind of stuff.
00:22:16
And in addition, the last couple of years, Scott's lovely parents.
00:22:20
- Coach and Carol have joined us in Shaboy.
00:22:22
They know we're going to be here.
00:22:24
And so, oh, and our good friend Sandy, who still lives up here.
00:22:28
So we get to see them and spend some time with that.
00:22:31
- And so, this year, the Baker Pearls PhDs, their incredible brilliant daughter was here.
00:22:38
So we got to say hi to mother, daughter, sister.
00:22:40
- Dr.
00:22:40
Danny Baker PhDs mom.
00:22:42
We got to say hi to him and sister.
00:22:44
But it's, you guys, it's so adorable.
00:22:46
My parents are such homers.
00:22:48
They love me, they love Rob.
00:22:51
We have seen them five or six times on this trip.
00:22:53
They keep coming up every time, every time they show up in Kraken's gear.
00:22:57
- Every day.
00:22:58
- Every different Kraken's gear.
00:22:59
Every time mom makes sure all the Kraken's gear is so fresh and so fly.
00:23:03
And they show up in Kraken's gear.
00:23:04
We want to break this with them this morning.
00:23:06
Friggin magic, man.
00:23:07
Absolute magic was great.
00:23:09
- Yep, all right, next question.
00:23:10
- Next question.
00:23:11
This is from John H.
00:23:12
How does your co-writing benefit from your friendship and vice versa?
00:23:17
First of all, the friendship can't benefit any more period.
00:23:21
I'm sorry, we've already maxed out that video game dog.
00:23:24
There are no further levels.
00:23:25
Our speed play run is legend, it'll never be top.
00:23:28
How does it benefit the writing?
00:23:31
We get this, I'm gonna summarize this from a real girl who's not on a mic right now.
00:23:36
I have a very active mind that tends to not obey what I want it to do.
00:23:43
My mind goes all over the place.
00:23:45
I also doesn't obey what I want his mind to do, by the way.
00:23:48
- My mind is like some kind of fractal thing.
00:23:51
Those little images where the flower keeps doing branches and branches and branches.
00:23:54
It's hard for me to keep focused on one thing for a very long amount of time.
00:23:59
Also, to Rob helps with that in this way.
00:24:03
I've done collaborative efforts with other people before.
00:24:06
They have been wonderful collaborators, very strong writers, lovely people, brilliant ideas.
00:24:12
But so far, I tend to grab a hold of the idea and sort of run with it and not like a bull in a china shop and not being a dick, but I'm like, okay, I see where this is going.
00:24:24
I'm just gonna, okay, but you feel like you have to fight for it.
00:24:26
Like you have to prove you're right more right than the other person.
00:24:30
- Yeah, I'm trying to get people who are creative to go down once I see like this is where we gotta go, we gotta go there.
00:24:36
And I'm not trying to be an asshole, but sometimes when we come across it, I just get married to an idea and stick with it.
00:24:42
Rob's the only person so far and that there's one other person I'm working with too, who's very similar to Rob in a lot of ways.
00:24:50
But when I sit in brainstorm with Rob, mostly hype.
00:24:53
When I sit in brainstorm with Rob, we throw ideas out all over the time.
00:24:57
And if you didn't know us, you'd be like, you guys shit on each other's ideas all the time.
00:25:03
But it doesn't feel like that for us.
00:25:05
I'm like, I like this is a good idea.
00:25:06
Rob's like, yeah, but what about this?
00:25:07
I'm like, God damn it, that idea won't work.
00:25:10
And there's no fighting, there's very little fighting, sometimes we'll both bring an idea back.
00:25:15
Well, what about this?
00:25:15
We canceled this and it's just a lot of, it's a lot, I don't know if give and take is the right word.
00:25:20
It's a lot of, here's an idea.
00:25:22
Here's why it won't work, here's why it will work.
00:25:24
And none of it is antagonistic at all.
00:25:26
What is your thought?
00:25:27
I think a lot of it is the lack of ego, right?
00:25:30
We don't have to, we look back at some of the stuff we've written over the years.
00:25:35
We can't remember if it was Scott's idea or if it was my idea, right?
00:25:39
And that's what we're talking about.
00:25:41
It's that the process, it's the processes idea.
00:25:45
And both of us worked to get to that idea.
00:25:48
And that's what we are willing to just, you know, it's not fighting, it's not knock-down dragouts.
00:25:53
It's, okay, let's walk through that logically and see where that leads us.
00:25:57
And if that's not where we want to go, then we got to find another one.
00:26:00
And we'll both be like, okay, yeah, that made sense.
00:26:02
We're willing to let our opinion go if the other one talks it through and makes such a good case that it makes sense.
00:26:11
The bottom line of the collaboration is, I don't even think the opinion is there at all.
00:26:14
There's just there's two sets of ideas going off.
00:26:17
And both of us are evaluating the idea through our own, our own prism, the other person's prism and the prism of you guys, the reader.
00:26:25
And that's really what it's all about.
00:26:26
The biggest question we asked during these writing retreats is about how's the reader going to take that?
00:26:32
How's the reader going to see this when they can't see what we see?
00:26:36
So we are entertainers.
00:26:38
We are in this to entertain the reader, entertain the viewer at all times.
00:26:41
That is our benchmark for what works.
00:26:43
Also, and especially when we wrote mall pigs and once it gets produced, you're gonna notice this.
00:26:48
We wanted to write a script and every time we talk about it, that couldn't be ripped apart, right?
00:26:53
We wanted to write a script that people would say 'cause we're the kind of people that go to a movie or watch a TV show and just that like, that person would never do that thing because they've told us that's what this type of person is and now they're doing something completely out of character.
00:27:07
We want to make everything to the point where nobody's doing anything that anybody can rip apart.
00:27:13
We play off each other like that and just say, "No, that's not what that character would do."
00:27:17
Yeah.
00:27:17
Again, we accept it for what it is and then figure out a way to write around it.
00:27:21
Yeah, it's pretty much it.
00:27:22
So we kind of come out like, you want a terror movie apart?
00:27:25
Go ahead, give it a shot.
00:27:26
Get in the ring.
00:27:27
Get in the ring, you son of a bitch.
00:27:29
What's the next question about it?
00:27:30
Fung.
00:27:31
All right, so the next question comes from Chris J.
00:27:34
Nope, I'm sorry, it comes from Darth S, then we'll get to Chris.
00:27:37
Darth Sick.
00:27:38
Sick girl.
00:27:39
However, co-DM, D&D can't be right?
00:27:43
Have you both DM'd the other?
00:27:46
We have both DM'd the other.
00:27:47
There's no co-DMing in our high school group where we started the D&D.
00:27:52
There was one time when we went to GenCon in Milwaukee and we co-DM'd the Kumate, but that was just fighting.
00:28:01
It was a fighting tournament that eventually led us to our ultimate hand-to-hand fighting champion.
00:28:09
So we worked together on that one.
00:28:10
Kumite was a game for champions by Iron Crown Enterprises, Super Hero playing game champions.
00:28:16
And it was blood sports, but with daredevil-y type superheroes.
00:28:20
And it was great, super fun.
00:28:22
So imagine.
00:28:23
Charlie.
00:28:24
Charlie.
00:28:26
Bricks not hit back.
00:28:28
[LAUGHS]
00:28:29
All right, so have we both game mastered the other?
00:28:34
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
00:28:36
And it was obvious from our early teenage years.
00:28:40
The one who would poke all the holes in Rob's plot was me, and the one who would poke all the holes in my plot was Rob and a fucking hated game-assuring Rob.
00:28:48
A fucking hated it.
00:28:49
But the other side of that coin was the one who would roleplay the most.
00:28:56
Like, they would stay in character, and even if Scott knew that this wasn't the right thing to do, if his character, Lance Coyote, invested gave a specialist,
00:29:06
if his character would do that, Scott would do that, even if Scott knew that he shouldn't be doing that.
00:29:13
Because he stayed in character the whole time.
00:29:16
We were both excellent game masters.
00:29:19
We have the best.
00:29:19
Excellent roleplay.
00:29:20
We have the best, and we were excellent actors.
00:29:23
We understand the human condition, and we can channel it through our pristine souls.
00:29:31
To you, the pedestrians at home.
00:29:34
All right, let's get to Chris Jay's question, because he's been sitting there going, "Will you almost read my question?"
00:29:38
All right, Chris Jay, let's go.
00:29:40
Does the location of the retreat matter since you always do it in your hometown?
00:29:45
♪ In my hometown ♪ ♪ That's not how the song goes ♪ No, the location is completely relevant.
00:29:53
We're delighted to do this in our hometown.
00:29:57
We grew up here.
00:29:58
It's fun to drive downtown and watch how much things have changed, things how things continue to change.
00:30:03
Being here, let's us see people that we don't ever get to see otherwise.
00:30:07
For example, tomorrow, we're gonna go on a glass bottom boat cruise to Mackinac Island with people that we absolutely adored in high school.
00:30:17
People that we just treasured, and we're just tickled pink, that we get a chance to spend some time with them again, with this far, far removed point from high school.
00:30:25
So this place has a lot of benefits, however.
00:30:29
I think Rob will agree.
00:30:31
Some of these benefits get in the way of the purpose of the mission.
00:30:34
Yes, yes.
00:30:35
So locking ourselves in, I wanna dink closet somewhere, we might be able to get more done, but we certainly would not have as much fun.
00:30:42
We need some more sex gnomes in the next location.
00:30:45
That's what we need.
00:30:46
Nice, yes.
00:30:47
Nice.
00:30:48
So, but yeah, I agree, honestly, and we've talked about, maybe we do need to start mixing it up, maybe we can both fly to a location next year, somewhere in the middle, somewhere we've never been,
00:30:59
but again, that will have different distractions, because if we're somewhere we've never been, we're gonna wanna go out and see the stuff that's there.
00:31:07
And I gotta tell ya, be able to walk out and sit in that lake and go swimming every day and mullet lake.
00:31:13
I don't know, it has quite a bit of charm.
00:31:15
Hey real girl, excuse me, if you could make a note, I'll make a webpage called Scottsyglor.com/retreat.
00:31:23
And on that page, I will post one single picture of what Rob and I get to enjoy every morning at sunrise and every day at dusk.
00:31:32
- I think you sure it's not gonna be retreat and you're gonna have a picture of a bunch of Frenchmen.
00:31:36
- Frenchmen, I'll be a hoistin' on my own petard.
00:31:40
- All right, we do have one question on this episode of "Slay" that we did this week.
00:31:48
- Okay.
00:31:48
- Episode number six, let's go.
00:31:49
Our good buddy Bruce Bach, who was the valedictorian of our graduating class.
00:31:56
- Probably an engine, we're not sure, probably, most likely.
00:32:00
It had the greatest valedictorian speech.
00:32:03
First of all, it was only about four minutes long.
00:32:05
- It's nice.
00:32:06
- Which we appreciate.
00:32:07
- And he got to say, who am I?
00:32:09
What am I doing here?
00:32:10
And any of us who were friends with us at high school, know exactly what that was about.
00:32:15
- That's great.
00:32:15
- Bruce, to you.
00:32:17
- Nice to meet you, Bruce Bach.
00:32:19
- All right.
00:32:20
- Can Lincoln still be the man in gray without the cloak?
00:32:25
We had a discussion about whether or not Lincoln would be willing to give up his cloak in order to go take care of Teddy.
00:32:37
And it was not, we talked about it for a while.
00:32:40
- Who did we?
00:32:41
- Yeah.
00:32:42
- Yeah.
00:32:42
- You were there.
00:32:43
- I don't remember a lot of things.
00:32:45
- I literally channeled all my energy into creating story for the first thing, was maybe he'd give up his acts.
00:32:51
And I'm like, that's not enough.
00:32:53
- No, no, no, that's not enough.
00:32:54
And it doesn't affect him, right?
00:32:57
And he is, he's a smart guy.
00:33:00
He knows his cloak might not work inside the buzz.
00:33:03
So he had to give up something.
00:33:08
And it was not an easy decision for him to give up the cloak.
00:33:11
- And I try, we try to look at this from a visual perspective, too.
00:33:15
And we, Rob and I put an enormous amount of thought into the appearance of Lincoln Frank.
00:33:20
So you can see him in your mind, the way you envision him, in the books, in the audiobooks.
00:33:27
But eventually, this slays going to be a graphic novel.
00:33:31
Slays eventually going to be, hopefully, an anime or something along those lines.
00:33:34
Hopefully, Sam ordered it to Blue Eye Samurai.
00:33:36
If you've not seen that, it's fantastic.
00:33:38
Watch it.
00:33:38
- Watch Blue Eye Samurai.
00:33:39
- Watch it.
00:33:40
- It's so good.
00:33:40
- Blue Eye Samurai is the template for what we want to do with Dan Baker's the one that introduced me to Blue Eye Samurai.
00:33:44
So we put an enormous amount of thought into what everything about Lincoln looks like as Lincoln is the brand of this show.
00:33:53
And now here we are, late in book two, in season two.
00:33:58
And we're totally taking away one of the two things that makes him what we think to be sort of a unique character.
00:34:04
So it's a bold decision, Rob.
00:34:05
It's a bold decision.
00:34:07
- Yeah, versus right, though.
00:34:08
Yeah, how can you take the gray from the man in gray?
00:34:10
It kind of defeats the day on purpose.
00:34:12
- Hopefully, Teddy will make fun of him.
00:34:13
- Yeah, I hope, Teddy.
00:34:14
Well, hope we find a way for Teddy to make fun of him.
00:34:16
Thank you.
00:34:17
- Where's your cloak, you son of a bitch.
00:34:19
- I have a question from an A B Sigler.
00:34:22
- Oh, she sounds sexy.
00:34:23
She sounds sexy as hell, dog.
00:34:25
- Is face to face writing week useful?
00:34:29
Are you more efficient together than working remote over the internet?
00:34:34
Let me start on this one.
00:34:35
- Okay.
00:34:36
- So when, for instance, we are writing a weekly chapter to select.
00:34:41
A lot of times what will happen, Scott will send me.
00:34:43
Scott does the heavy lifting.
00:34:44
Does the first pass at the script will email it to me.
00:34:47
I put in my notes and thoughts for discussion.
00:34:51
A lot of times, if we text back and forth, Scott will say, okay, let me rewrite that.
00:34:55
I'll text it to Rob, see what he thinks.
00:34:58
If it's something that really needs a lot of discussion, it'll turn into a phone call.
00:35:02
That kind of stuff.
00:35:02
But it is pretty inefficient, which means Scott has to have the chapter written days before to give me time to send back notes.
00:35:12
And then him time to rewrite it and a little back and forth.
00:35:15
The face to face stuff, we are able to have the discussion as it's happening.
00:35:20
And it can be a lot more fluid that way because of that.
00:35:25
- And even though we're literally sitting at a kitchen table together, because we're used to the format, after I wrote 68 and Rob did all of his notes on 68, I was still copying text and texting him.
00:35:37
He's freaking three feet away.
00:35:39
'Cause that part of it would just, that hit the flow.
00:35:42
But there are a few unique advantages to being in the same room, being able to do it.
00:35:49
But overall, once the main plot is done, I think overall we could be anywhere.
00:35:57
Every now and then we'll zoom, if we really need to talk through something in detail.
00:36:00
But the advantage to Rob and I having known each other for so long is some things are done by email, some things will be done by text.
00:36:08
A few things need to be done by face to face, almost nothing needs to be done by phone call.
00:36:13
But that is also the benefit of knowing each other for 30 plus years.
00:36:16
- Yep.
00:36:17
- All right.
00:36:18
That is it for this episode of Deep Cuts.
00:36:20
Next episode of Deep Cuts, A Real Girl herself and I will be back in California, talking about the multifaceted job of being a writer today.
00:36:31
Thank you for joining us.
00:36:32
You all smell enough, let it like flowers, Rob.
00:36:34
Do you have anything you want to say to goodbye to everybody?
00:36:35
Bye, bye.
00:36:37
Goodbye.
00:36:38
Greetings adventures.
00:36:50
Today we're excited to introduce you to a new story, Dark Dice, a horror podcast that blurs the line between actual play and audio drum, where the story is determined by the role of the dice.
00:37:02
Six adventures embark on a journey into the ruinous domain of the nameless God.
00:37:06
They will never be the same again.
00:37:08
One of the players is now what they've seen after a doppelganger, a creature that can assume the form and voice of whatever it kills infiltrates the team.
00:37:15
As the players are picked off and replaced one at a time, can they figure out who the monster is before it's too late?
00:37:20
Can you?
00:37:21
Here's a quick example of what our show sounds like.
00:37:24
- The, uh, Shambler with the jar of liquid inside of him.
00:37:27
- Soren arcright let loose an arrow that cracked the glass, passing through the spine of the creature.
00:37:32
The Shambler's still managed to maintain its forward momentum, but stumbled as it eagerly tried to bite and swipe at Soren landing near his feet.
00:37:40
- As Jeff Goldblum is now joined our cast, Dark Dice is available, however you listen to podcasts.
00:37:45
