Stop wrestling with tangled plotlines and scattered notes—visual story planning is here to save your writing life! Join us as sci-fi fantasy author and inventor, Cameron Sutter, shares how his popular visual story planning software, Plottr, helps writers organize their entire series, from character arcs to world-building details, and introduces Storysnap, which automatically generates detailed outlines and even simulated beta reader reviews from your completed manuscript.
Here’s a 15% off discount for Plottr: SPP25
And here’s a 30% off discount code for Storysnap: SPP25SS
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Transforming Story Planning: Cameron Sutter Discusses Plottr, Series Bibles, And New AI Innovations
Our guest is Cameron Sutter from Plottr. We’ll get to that in a moment. I want to remind you guys that on August 1st at 9:00 AM Mountain Time, we are having our monthly training. You can sign up for it at BAMagTraining.com. The August guest is Iris Goldfeder, and she’s going to be talking to us about SEO. If you haven’t figured it out already, AI is rewriting the rules. The old SEO is not working anymore. She’s going to be giving us tips and tricks on how to use all of this with all the new rules. You can sign up once again at BAMagTraining.com and join us for that event.
Our guest is Cameron Sutter. He is a sci-fi fantasy author and the inventor of Plottr, a popular visual story planning software. We’re also going to be talking about Storysnap, which is another piece of Plottr that’s a little bit separate that they’re building on. He has escaped death by explosion, rock slide, disease, and car accident. He loves doing funny accents for his kids, but he believes his life’s mission is to serve writers. He also lives near Oklahoma City with his wife, six kids, and too many pets. A normal family like the rest of us.
You guys are going to be excited about Plottr and what you can do with it. If you’re someone who likes to watch the demo on this or wants to watch the demo on it, I encourage you to go over to our YouTube channel, Superbrand Publishing, and watch this episode over there. You can read this, but if you want to see how this plots out and how it works, go over to our YouTube channel. Stay tuned for Cameron.
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“Writing Journey Challenges And Growth”
Cameron, welcome. I’m excited for you to share this platform with my people.
Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
We’re going to be doing a little bit of demoing here, but before we get started with that, what inspired you to create Plottr, and did your own writing experience influence that?
I’ve been a writer on and off my whole life. I remember in 1st grade, I was giving 3 aliens to my brother for his birthday. That was my first story that I ever wrote. I was writing in English class, and I remember getting in trouble. The teacher came over, whacked me with a ruler or something like that, and was like, “Pay attention.” I couldn’t believe that. Looking back, I can’t believe that I got in trouble for writing a story.
I’ve been writing on and off my whole life. I have three books published. When I was doing the second one, I was rewriting it over and over. I was like, “This is not working out for me.” I started brainstorming how my process could be better or what would be the perfect tool. I saw threads in my story, and I was like, “There’s got to be a way to visually see that and plan your story that way.” I tried spreadsheets. I tried a couple of different ways and a couple of tools that were available. By day, I’m a software engineer. I was like, “Nothing exists. I’m going to start building this.” Once I did, I was like, “This is awesome. I love this.” Other people noticed it and they wanted to use it, and it started spreading.
That’s like me. I had this bad publishing experience, and then I started my own publishing company, and people started coming to me. I was the accidental publisher. It sounds like you were the accidental software engineer.
It’s better that way, though, because you’re doing it for yourself. The important choices you make, you know what needs to happen and what needs to be done. It’s like for writers made by writers. It’s better that way.
I used an AI software. I’ve had this fiction novel. I used to write mystery novels for a while. I was disappointed using it because it took the story off in a different direction, and I couldn’t get it back. I was like, “I don’t like the way that’s going. That’s not my whole story.” It probably would’ve done me some good to have Plottr and done a little bit differently. I’m sure it was the prompts. There was something I probably did wrong with the prompts to do that.
I’m going to let you take this away. Talk to us a little bit about what you’ve done. What I’ve seen so far, I love. I love the way you’re laying things out on there. For me, these would’ve been index cards on the floor. We’ve got dogs and kids. You’ve got kids, too. You’ve got tons of kids. I can imagine at this point in my life that they’d be running through, and the story would be completely messed up.
This one lady was telling me she did that. She put index cards on the floor, and then she stood on a chair to take a picture of them. She laid out everything perfectly, and it took her hours. The dog comes running through, and all the cards go flying. She didn’t get a picture of it.
I used to do that. Tell me if this is your process, too. I would lay them out, but then I would walk through them a few times in and out of the room and think about where to move different things. That was my process.
It’s not a very linear process. It’s not like, “I come up with a book idea. I start filling in the details, and then I’ve got a book.” It’s very much back and forth, going in circles, and trying to figure out how the story fits.
Moving it around was part of it, too. When I was in college, I always found that if I studied before bedtime, I retained the information and chewed on it in my subconscious. I feel like I did that with the index cards, too. When I said I walked over it, it wasn’t like I walked back and forth and paced. It was more like I woke up, looked at it, and thought, “This should be here, and that should be there.”
When you’re taking a shower or mowing the lawn or something, your wheels are spinning, and then you come back to it. You’re like, “Yeah.” You come up with ideas and decide where pieces need to go.
Tell us what Plottr is.
We have the main screen of Plottr, which is what we call the timeline. This is where you’re going to visually arrange your story. You’re able to see the threads of your story weaving together. This makes making a story so much easier and more fun, honestly. You’ve got your chapters across the top. I’m using the story of The Great Gatsby. It’s one of the classics. I don’t know if your audience is going to be familiar with it. It’s only nine chapters, not very long.
Plot And Characters Breakdown Method
Down the side, we’ve got the main plot and then a line for each one of the main characters. Jay Gatsby, the title character, doesn’t show up until a little bit later, but then we have a couple of the other characters here, and there’s a line for each one of them. It’s flexible, so you can do it in a way that makes sense to you.
What we normally tell people is that the main plot is what shows up on the actual page. You can click into each one of these and fill in tons of details about what happens in that scene, but you’re not writing your story in Plottr. This is for the outlining and then the series bible, which we’ll get to in a little bit. You’re outlining and putting down your ideas. It can be as little or as much as you want. It depends on your process. You’ll probably fill it in more as you go. You have all the space you could want.
The main plot is what happens on the page, but then the different lines down are the pieces that make that scene. They’re not separate scenes necessarily. They’re either what part that character plays in that scene or what is meaningful to that character. Maybe I’ll have lines if it’s a mystery and there are clues being dropped, relationship changes, and things like that.
Anything that’s changing throughout the story, you can have a line for that, and you can put the pieces for that scene. The top part is what happens, and then the lower parts are, “This clue was found in this scene,” or, “This is a running joke that is going on,” or, “This is the theme that’s running throughout my story. There’s a piece of it here in this scene.”
Everything is drag and drop. You’re able to move things around as you need to, and they change color as you do. Everything’s color-coded. You can change that color and make it look however you want to and stuff. You can add chapters in between chapters if you need to expand pieces, which happens often. You’re visually able to see the threads of your story weaving together. That helps you to see plot holes easily. It helps you to see where characters aren’t involved as much, or maybe where a character arc is stagnant, or nothing is happening.
Character Visibility In Stories
For example, in this story, there’s a big hole with Jay Gatsby at the beginning. That may tell you, especially since he’s the main character, why the main character isn’t showing up beforehand. If you read this story, in this first chapter, Nick does see him, so we could mention that he was seen at a party. It gives you an indication, at least, so you can think through that.
You could be like, “Does this make sense? What is my character’s motivation? Why aren’t they showing up? I thought they were the main character, but they’re not in half the scenes. Maybe they’re not the main character.” You’re able to see those things visually very quickly and pick them out instead of trying to think of 100,00 words or 50,000 words and have all the pieces of where people come in and out and where they are location-wise throughout the story. That visually helps you to see that.
Do you know what I love about clicking on the box? When I wrote mystery novels, I used to be, and I still am, a people watcher. I would go sit and have a soda and a cupcake at a big outdoor mall, and I’d come home and write like, “Daisy has this tick or this thing that I saw when I was out.” This is a great way to get those little character things that make the characters unique in there and remember them throughout the story. You get home and you’re like, “I love the way that person ticked,” but then you forget about it. I like that you’ve got these little boxes, and you can get that information in and remind yourself.
Plottr: Unified Story Planning Tool
That is a great transition into the other piece of what Plottr is. Besides visually seeing your story and helping you to do that in a brand new way, it’s also what we call a series bible, which is all your notes about everything in the series in one place. I don’t know about you, but I had different apps on my phone. I had notebooks here and there, napkins, or wherever I could find to write something down when I had an idea. All my notes for my stories were scattered. This helps you to keep it in one place, and I’m going to tell you how it does that.
We’ve got tabs, which are the Notes, Characters, and Places. For the characters, this has all your characters for the whole series. Even when you’re on book 2, book 3, or book 4, all your characters are in one place. You can see all of them here. You can easily sort them or filter by attributes that you care about. You can search for them. If you’re looking for one with blue eyes, for example, you can easily find them.
I’m sure you’re familiar with this, but you’re going to have hundreds of characters. For those minor characters, a few books into the series, it’s going to be hard to remember all of them. This is going to help you to easily stay organized. You can not only have all your characters, but also all your places. Any place that your story happens, you can put that in and organize it here.
There’s also your notes. Your notes are whatever you need. It’s dependent on the type of story you write. If it’s a mystery, you’d probably write down about the clues, the killer, if there’s a killer in the mystery, the backstory, worldbuilding, or brainstorming. Any of those things can go here. As you’re coming up with those ideas or people watching, maybe you can put ideas in here or in the Character’s tab. You could be like, “The doctor has this tick,” and so forth. This is a great area to put all that.
Plottr makes making a story so much easier and more fun. Share on XI keep saying that this is good for your whole series, but let me explain how that works in Plottr a little bit, because it’s awesome. I talked to you about book one, Jay Gatsby. This is the timeline for book one. Within Plottr, each project is a whole series of books. I can go to Project, and you can have as many books as you want in the series. You can have 20 or 50, as many books.
Each book has a separate timeline. You’re able to arrange that story separately. Each story has a separate one. We can easily flip back and forth between the books. If I go back to The Great Gatsby, the first book, there it is. It also has the Series View. This is meant as a bird’s-eye view of the whole series. There’s nothing special about it. It’s a normal timeline in Plottr, but you’re able to think of the character arcs throughout the whole series. Maybe there are subplots running throughout the series. Maybe you have a spinoff series in the same world that you could put in here. All those things are great in the Series View.
I love that. I know you wrote a series as well. Yours is sci-fi, right?
Yeah.
Mine’s a murder mystery. What I love about it is that sometimes in the course of a series, you’ll have a flashback to something in another book or bring it forward. This is a great way to go back and grab it and not have to go search for it and rewrite the whole scenario again. You can pull it and revise it.
It makes that easy because you can search for things. Maybe you start with 7 books or 10 books, and you’re trying to find where that 1 scene was where they did that one thing. Maybe you’re able to search for a party. I know there’s going to be a party in The Great Gatsby. You can look through, search for the parties, and be like, “Here’s the party that I wanted.” You can click, and it’ll take you right to that one. For a flashback, you wouldn’t have to recreate it or even go back and reread the books. You’re able to look it up here and find it.
That’s very cool.
Your whole series is in one project. It’s organized, easy to find, and easy to search through. That means all your characters are in one place. All your notes for the whole series, worldbuilding, magic, and anything are all in one place, organized. Let me talk to you about some other examples because I’ve got some others.
“Detailed Notes On Jurassic Park”
I love Jurassic Park. This is a bigger one. It’s got 60 chapters. There are some stories that have hundreds, but sixty is a pretty decent size. We’ve got the Velociraptors here and the T-Rex as their own characters. I love showing this view because it’s more of a zoomed-out view of the story. You can see, for example, the T-Rex, where does that show up? Is that an important part of the story? It was John Hammond who created Jurassic Park. I’m trying to remember here. Where does he show up? You can see the part that he plays in this. This view is handy.
The notes, for example, we’ve got detailed notes here about the technologies in the book. For example, the tranquilizer gun that they use. You can put as much or as little detail as you want. We have the type of gun. There is other stuff about the technologies that they use, the DNA extraction, and then different things about their organizations, like the Hammond Foundation that created Jurassic Park, and so forth. You’re able to put as much detail as you want in there. I often write with magic systems or technologies. You’re able to put all your details in there. That’s another one.
The Hunting of Hill House is another classic if you like scary stories. I’ve never read this one personally. In the notes, we have things about our marketing. You can have your book blurbs here and your Amazon description. Not only the parts of the book, but also the marketing parts of it, or the supplementary content that you need to be able to get that book out there. You’re able to keep it all in one place.
I hadn’t seen this part before. This is amazing. We do so much with AI and putting it through, what does the book blurb look like? What are the keywords? If you’re using Amazon, this might be a great tool for someone who’s self-publishing. What are the Amazon categories? What are the BISAC codes? All of those things, how do they interplay?
Some people, when they self-publish, do part of it on Ingram and part of it on Amazon. I have an upload sheet I do for my authors, but you could put the ISBN in here. You could put the bio in here. You could put all sorts of details in there, like the cost of the book, the wholesale, the retail, and the royalties. Everything you could put in this little spot here. This is amazing organization.
Everything you need for your book is in one spot. Talking about AI, this is probably a great time to bring this up. Plottr doesn’t use any AI. Everything is up to you. You are putting it in. You’re putting your humanity and creativity into this. We did build a tool that uses AI, and it makes doing some of this handy if you’ve already got a manuscript written.
“Automated Manuscript Detailing Tool”
We’re calling that tool Storysnap. What it does is it takes a finished manuscript and builds the Plottr file for you. A lot of these files that I’ve been sharing, like The Great Gatsby and The Haunting of Hill House, came from Storysnap. We didn’t do this manually. We uploaded the manuscript to Storysnap, and it built this detailed, organized Plottr file for us, which is what we call a series bible.
It filled in all these details about all the characters in there and went to town. Every detail about all the minor characters and everything about the main characters is here, like physical characteristics, psychological backstory, and all this kind of stuff. It did that automatically for us. We uploaded a file, the manuscript, and a couple of minutes later, we had a Plottr file.
Especially when you're starting out as a writer, it's hard to have no shame and put yourself out there. Share on XIf you only want to use Storysnap, we’re not locking you into Plottr or anything. You’re able to download a Word document as well. It takes a couple of minutes, and you’ll have your whole manuscript. If you’ve already written that manuscript and you want a detailed outline or something, or if you’re on the first draft and you want to be able to move things around visually, then Storysnap is going to help you to do that.
This is interesting because you can probably see if you have holes in your story before it goes to the editor as well. Believe it or not, when you’re writing fiction, you find lots of holes in your story. That would be amazing for that as well. Can they use Storysnap without buying Plottr, or is it part of Plottr?
It’s a separate thing. They work together, but they’re separate. We can get into pricing if you want, but Storysnap is a one-for-one. You buy 1 credit and upload 1 book, and then you never have to pay again. It’s a one-time use kind of thing. You can buy more credits, but you don’t have to consistently pay in Plottr. There is a lifetime option with Plottr, or you can get a subscription and pay. We’re always doing new updates, new features, and things like that. We’re working on a family tree feature, which is going to be cool. It’s a visual way to see the families in your stories and rearrange them and things. We’re always building new features into it.
You have some other things you’re developing here with it, too. Can you talk a little bit about that? One of the things you told me I thought was amazing because it takes so long to do. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I’m trying to remember what that thing was. If you can remind me.
The reviews.
AI-Powered Beta Reader Simulation
That’s going to be something in Storysnap. We are building what we’re going to call a beta reader simulation. You’ll be able to upload your manuscript. With AI, it’s going to give you different personas in book reviews. It’s going to be AI. That’s why I call it a simulation. With different personalities, different age groups, and things, it will give you what someone like that might give you as a review. Not necessarily how many stars, but whether it will interest this person, whether it hits the tropes that they like, and that kind of thing. It’ll automate it for you. That’s one of the things that we’re building. Let me pause there. Do you have any questions about that?
Yeah. This is like a critique of your book, a little bit. If you’ve used actual review services, they can be expensive, and they take months. I had a client participate in a romance novel. It took 3 or 4 months to get it back. It was a while, and it was between $500 and $800. When you ask somebody to beta read, there’s always the thing that happens.
I’ll give you a great example. My best friend never read my first book. We would walk every day. Finally, one day, I said, “Why haven’t you read my book?” She said, “It’s because I’m your best friend. If it’s bad, I have to tell you.” Don’t ruin your relationships. Let AI tell you if the book is good or not. It’s objective. There’s no emotion involved in what it’s telling you. It still probably will land a little odd, because remember, the book is your baby. It’s like somebody’s criticizing your children or criticizing you. It’s much easier coming from an objective third party that we don’t have any relationship with.
Challenges Of Finding Beta Readers
That is so true. It’s so hard to give my books to my wife because it hurts. If it’s not the best thing she’s ever read, it’s going to hurt. It’s not going to be the best thing she’s ever read, so I know it’s going to hurt. There’s also the emotional capital. When you give your book to a beta reader, if they’re also a writer, often, you’ll have to beta read for them. There’s that time component. It does take 3 to 4 months, a lot of times.
If you’re in a writer’s group, then you’re trading beta reads with people. It can take a lot of time. If you’re the only one writing, maybe they’re not going to read your stuff because you are always giving them stuff to read. It could be hard to find people to read your stuff. This is going to give you an objective view. We’re still testing it to see if it’s going to be a good review, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’m pretty impressed with how it’s going to be. It’s like a pre-beta reader simulation, like, “What can I expect from beta readers?” You don’t have to ruin relationships. You can give it to your super fans or something like that.
The other part of that, too, is that in being a publisher, I see two groups of people. There are people who are good storytellers, and I am, but I know that I have limitations when I write. I go with that deep edit because I know that I write like I speak. If you are having someone critique, the other part of that is what I call the grammar Nazis. If you know you have limitations like me and you want someone to review the story, the story can be reviewed without the grammar Nazi coming at you because the editor’s going to take care of that part. You need to make sure the story’s flowing and good first, and then come in and fix all of the other stuff.
A lot of times, when you have friends or family beta read it, they’ll underline grammar mistakes and stuff. It’s like, “That’s not what I need at this moment, but thanks for finding that.”
We’re working on an AI program with someone. The people who are doing it said, “Give me your book.” I was like, “You might find out what a bad writer I am.” I gave it to them anyway. I have no shame.
Especially when you’re starting out as a writer, it’s hard to have no shame and put yourself out there. This will help people to feel comfortable enough so they can get real readers, gauge what the feedback is going to be like, and know that there is going to be some critique.
There always is. You’re right about that.
There are a couple of other things that we’re building. We probably don’t have time to go into all of them, but another idea that we had with Storysnap is that it could take this book bible that is created for you and build a marketing website for you. It could build like a Wiki about your book so that it could tell you the family relationships on your website or a character overview on your website. After people read your book, you can say, “Go to my website,” and they can see the different characters or maybe glimpses into book two or something like that. It could become part of your marketing efforts. That has a lot of potential, too.
You guys that are reading, if you have a nonfiction book, it’s much easier to build an audience than it is with a fiction book. For fiction, you have to get people involved in the story. Is it relevant? Is it the characters? There’s so much that you have to get people interested in to even get them to read it. This could be a great tool to build a fiction platform and get things out there in advance. With AI the way it is, you can take part of a book, put it in, draw your characters, and then animate or make clips. There’s so much you could do to get people excited about the release that you couldn’t do before.
It’s pretty exciting. I know some people are scared about that, but I feel like there’s what it can do to help you to be a better writer. There are also people trying to use it to skip the writing part and not be a writer. That’s good for them, but there are also things they can do to help you become a better writer, to connect with the audience better, or to do new visual mediums that you couldn’t do before, like pictures, videos, and stuff. I’d love to hear your opinion on that kind of stuff, too.
What else are you developing?
Upcoming Plottr Features Preview
We’ve got a couple of features in Plottr that we’re working on. There’s the family tree. By the time this goes live, that might be available for people. If you write an email and you have multiple emails open, you can pin them on the side and see multiple emails that you’re writing. We’re going to build something like that into Plottr.
You’ll be able to see your characters or your different places pinned down at the bottom, and you’ll be able to expand them. As you’re building out your story, if you want to reference things, you’ll be able to go back to them very quickly. That’s an extra great thing in Plottr that makes it even easier to use. We’ve got lots of things like that we’re building. We’re always making it better.
I love this. Where can we find this program? You have a pretty generous trial on it, too, don’t you? Is it 30 days? I played with mine a little bit.
“The Software Your Brain Needs”
We’ve got a 30-day free trial, so you can try it out and see if it works for your process and if it’s going to be great for you. Many people have told us, “This is what my brain needed. This is the way my brain works.” A lot of people have told us that of all the software that they’ve built, this is the best investment in their writing career that they’ve ever made. That makes me so happy because I built it for myself. To hear other people saying, “This is how my brain works,” it’s like, “We think the same or something.” You can try it out for free. Our website is Plottr.com. Storysnap is Storysnap.ai.
I love that. I was going to say before it slipped my mind that if you guys have read any of the books generated by AI, you’ve probably noticed how darn boring they are because there’s no personality there at all. This is super exciting. Thank you for sharing it with my audience. I’m sure they’re going to come and want to play because I thought it was fun to play with.
I can’t wait for this other stuff to come out, especially the reviews. The review is going to be a credit. It works with Storysnap, so it’ll be a credit versus a lot of money that we’re paying the reviewers. When you put it in, how long does it take to turn it around, typically? I know you’re testing it, but what’s the turnaround time?
The turnaround time will be a couple of minutes, five minutes probably at the most. Depending on whether there are a lot of people using it at the same time or something, there’s a queue. It will take a couple of minutes, and you’ll have a beta review for you to look at. That’s going to be cool, too. That’ll work on credits. We’re thinking it’s going to work differently than Storysnap credit, so we’ll see. It’s probably going to be a lot cheaper than a normal Storysnap credit, so we’ll see. Something I’d love to do for your audience is get you guys a discount code for both Plottr and Storysnap. Let’s work on that. When this goes live, we’ll have a discount code for you guys.
That sounds amazing. That’s great. Thank you. Also, thank you for coming on. This was amazing.
Thanks for having me. It was super fun. It was great talking to you.
Important Links
- Plottr
- Storysnap
- Superbrand Publishing Monthly Trainings
- Superbrand Publishing on YouTube
- The Great Gatsby
- Jurassic Park
- The Hunting of Hill House
A 15% off discount code for Plottr: SPP25
A 30% off discount code for Storysnap: SPP25SS
About Cameron Sutter
Cameron Sutter is a sci-fi/fantasy author and the inventor of Plottr – the popular visual story planning software. He’s escaped death by explosion, rock slide, disease, and car accident. He loves doing funny accents for his kids, but believes his life’s mission is to serve writers. He lives near Oklahoma City with his wife, six kids, and too many pets.
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