Saul Goodman was supposed to appear in four episodes of Breaking Bad. He was comic relief. Vince Gilligan read the room, changed his mind, and eventually built a six-season prequel around him.

Sean, Dave, and Johnny use that as the on-ramp for a longer conversation about what separates a character that can carry IP from one that can't, and whether a creator can engineer that kind of popularity or whether it only exists because an audience decided it does.

The guys then talk about characters taking over shows not meant for them, why some asshole characters work and others don't, and much more in this episode of The Smarter Artist Show.

Timestamps

01:37 Episode intro: Your characters are assets. Are you treating them that way? 04:20 — Something Cool: Dave on Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed (new Apple TV show, Tatiana Maslany) 09:04 — Sean's Something Cool: building custom apps with Claude, and why off-the-shelf task management never quite works for him. 10:00 — Johnny's Something Cool - he's doing an appearance at Comicapalooza in Houston. 21:34 — Sean on the Sterling & Stone AI hallucination problem (Forbes quoted something wrong; now the AI believes it) 24:00 — The actual topic: characters that become bigger than the story they inhabit 25:40 — Better Call Saul as the case study. Dave's original take: it'll never work 29:20 — Sean talks about Boricio Wolfe. Why it was their best example, and why it couldn't have been engineered? 34:00 — Sean on characters that take over shows they weren't written for. 40:00 — Johnny: what happens when the audience loves a character you don't? "Assholes are fun to write." 41:00 — The likability question. Succession, Meyer Dempsey, and why some audiences reject complicated characters. 47:50 — Dave on what makes an unlikable character work for him, when the reader can understand or identify why they're the way they are. 51:55 — Ending, theme song

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SUMMARY Sean, Dave, and Johnny open with Something Cool, including Sean's announcement that he's finished his first album and wants early listeners before it drops publicly next month. Then they get into the real subject: collaboration. How it starts, how it breaks, how it makes you better when it works, and what happens when you write with someone who can see your blind spots before you can. By the end of the episode, three collaborations are on the table. Sean and Dave on Yesterday's Gone. Sean and Johnny on The Beam, Unicorn Western, and Future of Sex. And the specific mechanics of how each partnership works differently, from character-by-character chapters to skeletal reference beats to the value of a calling out Sean's old bobblehead ticks in the writing.

TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Cold open, Piss Daddy, the email, and why YouTube apparently wants them to lean into it 14:04 Something Cool: Johnny's early read of How Music Works by David Byrne 6:00 Dave's Something Cool: the TV show Something Bad Is Going to Happen, and the soulmate vs. soul match debate 14:31 Sean's Something Cool: Ethan's graduation, and the announcement that Sean's first album is done 20:01 How to get early access to Sean's album before it drops (reply to the Dispatch with one sentence) 25:21 The Piss Story, origins of Piss Daddy, and what it revealed about how well Sean actually reads Dave's work 28:14 How Dave and Sean's collaboration started, and what Dave's instincts gave Sean early on 29:57 The Ira Glass gap, pattern recognition, and the bobblehead note that cured Sean of a writing tick forever 33:06 How Sean and Johnny's collaboration process works, and how it's changed over 10+ years 35:18 Unicorn Western: the reference Western method and why they didn't hide the homage 36:05 The Beam's world-building and how Johnny invented Shift by interrogating the premise 43:06 Yesterday's Gone: how Dave and Sean each took characters independently, the serial killer collision, and the Boricio revelation. What a great collaboration actually demands: writing to impress your partner, not just your reader 48:45 The Future of Sex cliffhanger that cut off all possible escape routes, and why neither of them worried about it 50:54 Pattern Black, overbuilding, and when a collaboration spools out too much rope 52:11 Knowing your strengths and weaknesses as collaborators, and the new script Dave is nearly done with 56:35 Outro, Smarter Artist song

LINKS MENTIONED How Music Works by David Byrne (book/audiobook): https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Works-David-Byrne/dp/1938073533

Sean's album (early access): Reply to this week's Dispatch email with one sentence about why you want to hear it. Public release next month. Comic Palooza Houston (Johnny's appearance): https://comicpalooza.com

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Dave spent twelve years writing bits and pieces of stories at a gas station. He never finished one. Sean spent three years nagging him to publish his first book. Now they've written more than 60 novels together.

In this episode, Dave and Sean dig into the real reasons writers stall, why AI won't save you if your process is broken, and the one habit Sean says matters more than any tool or technique.

WHAT THEY GET INTO The vomit pass. Sean breaks down the system he's used since his blogging days: brain drain first, clarify second, polish third. Never try to write something you're proud of on the first pass. That's what slows you down.

AI as brainstorming partner, not ghostwriter. Sean makes the case that using AI to brainstorm, pressure-test outlines, or generate naming options isn't cheating. Dave disagrees. Loudly. The argument is one of the better ones they've had, and Sean eventually lands on the real point: you're cheating yourself when you make obstacles out of things that aren't your superpower.

Dave's fantasy novel. He's been world-building in journals for five or six years. He still hasn't named the continents. Sean has opinions about this, especially after Dave rejected the solution in front of him.

The consistency principle. Sean writes every single day, not because he loves every session, but because stopping means starting over. Twenty minutes a day beats two hours once a week, every time.

The million-word year that wasn't. Sean challenged Dave to write a million words in a year. They wrote 30k.

The book: How to Write Fast (With or Without Robots)* is available now at http://smarterartist.net/htwf

The Dispatch: Weekly newsletter with a story, a pattern, a reframe, and a shift, every Friday. Free at https://smarterartist.net/dispatch. Subscribers get a copy of The Smarter Artist Method at signup.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Into SOMETHING COOL 2:00 — Sean talks "Beef" and Dave talks about his love for Grimace. 8:00 — Dave talks about Apple TV's "Widow Bay" 12:40 — The topic of the show — writing fast, and updating the book "How to Write Fast" with advice on using AI in the planning process. 20:00 — Dave talks about his fantasy series he's been planning for 5-6 years. Dave and Sean then argue over whether it's okay to use AI to name towns and cities in his book. Dave would like to, but feels like it's cheating. Sean has a different opinion. This argument goes on for some time! 37:00 — Sean talks about how he came up as a writer and how he got so fast. He talks about some of the methods that have helped him write millions of words.

Sean, Dave, and Johnny dig into one of the most neglected pieces of real estate in any author's catalog: back matter. The highest-leverage moment you have with a reader is the thirty seconds after they finish your book, and most creators waste it with a generic thank-you and a mailing list link that goes nowhere.

This episode is a post-mortem on real mistakes from the Sterling & Stone catalog, including a back matter page that thanked readers for a book they didn't read!

The practical takeaway is simple: every book you publish should know where to send the reader next. Not a list of everything you've written. One book, same emotional register, direct buy link.

Sean, Dave, and Johnny walk through why standalones are the hardest to monetize, why Johnny thinks we systematically misread buyer psychology, and what Colleen Hoover's publisher is doing right that authors ought to emulate.

Get your weekly Dispatch here:

Https://smarterartist.net/dispatch

Timestamps

00:00 Something Cool: Sean's castle in Ireland where C.S. Lewis and Tolkien used to meet (and yes, 666 acres of Celtic forest)

10:21 Something Cool: Dave's son discovers Seth Rogen, Martin Scorsese, and then Goodfellas via a Zane Lowe interview

12:09 Chris Stuckman's micro-budget horror film Shelby Oaks and what it means to take your shot 17:35 The main topic: what is back matter, and why does it matter more than anything else in your book

19:15 The Sterling & Stone back matter fail: the Crash/Threshold story

21:09 Back matter as catalog architecture: how books should know each other

25:00 Brandon Sanderson's back matter and why you're not him yet

27:04 What makes a standalone profitable vs. a reader dead-end

29:31 The leaking bathtub debate (Johnny officially retires the metaphor)

31:32 Don't make readers click twice: direct buy links, specific CTAs, order matters

36:10 Aging series and the dead link problem: Dave's website domain story

40:24 How often to audit your back matter (at least once a year)

41:29 What Colleen Hoover's publisher is doing that you should steal

43:03 Johnny on convention buyers vs. online buyers: why you keep assuming wrong things about your readers

51:33 One thing you can do right now: open your last book and read your own back matter like a stranger 53:11 Sean's final take: look at the actual page shipping under your name, then fix it

Resources Mentioned

The Smarter Artist Method by Sean Platt, free with Dispatch sign-up Back Matter Checklist, exclusive to Dispatch subscribers

Crash by David Wright

Threshold by Sean Platt

Pretty Killer by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant

Yesterday's Gone by Sean Platt and David Wright

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

Shelby Oaks (film, dir. Chris Stuckman, produced with Mike Flanagan)

The Studio (Apple TV+) *

Platonic (Apple TV+)

Sean Platt built a publishing company that shipped hundreds of titles over 14 years. And somewhere in the middle of all that output, he realized the model was broken. In this episode, Sean, Dave, and Johnny introduce The Smarter Artist Method: the idea that most working creators are stacking inventory when they should be building IP.

One produces diminishing returns. The other compounds. They're not the same thing, even if they look identical from the outside. They cover what the shift actually means in practice, why the exhaustion most creators feel is a structural problem rather than a talent problem, and what Sean learned spending a year working with clients who made immediate and dramatic changes just by changing how they thought about what they'd already built.

They also use John Wick as a masterclass. One screenplay, written in a month, named after the writer's grandfather. Now a billion-dollar franchise with five films, a TV series, a spinoff, a video game, a theme park attraction, and an anime prequel in development. Nobody planned that. But somebody built something that could become it.

The Smarter Artist Method is the book Sean and Dave built all of this around. It's free. Always. Grab it and sign up for the Dispatch at https://smarterartist.net/dispatch

This week we talk about writing science fiction in an age where sci-fi feels more like science fact. How do you write sci-fi while the world feels like it's falling apart? How do advances in AI and robots change our stories? We also talk about classic sci-fi, like Twilight Zone, and how it dealt with issues and questions of the day.

TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Introduction to the Sci-Fi Discussion 11:47 Exploring Modern Dystopia and Its Impact on Fiction 17:55 AI and robots as depicted in sci-fi 22:17 Evolving Sci-Fi Tropes 26:38 The Nature of Truth in Sci-Fi 32:35 Consequences of AI and Technology 38:04 Exploring New Sci-Fi Concepts 42:36 Smarter-Artist-Show-Outro.mp4

Next week — We're finally going to do the show that we've been promising for a month!

In this episode Sean and I decided to experiment and let the AI Claude ask us questions. It was a surprisingly fun conversation, touching on writer's block, and the story we hated most that the other presented or worked on, how we collaborate on writing books, and (fittingly) whether AI will ever be at a point where it writes better than us? So, join us for another fun, expletive-filled episode.

TIMESTAMPS SOMETHING COOL Dave — Jim Wilbourne's YouTube channel. Sean — The Jury Duty show on Amazon Prime

Q&A SEGMENT 18:00 — How did you two actually start writing together? 19:00 — How many books have you written total — do you even know? SIDE TANGENT 21:00 — Dave talks about the fantasy book he's been working on for several years and Sean asks why he hasn't shared it with him yet. Q&A CONTINUED… 23:40 — Do you ever get writer's block, and if so what do you actually do about it? 25:00 — How do you split the work when you co-write? 27:00 — (Sean asks Dave) What is your favorite collaboration and your least favorite? 30:00 — Have you ever hated something the other one wrote and had to say so? 34:46 — What genres have you written and which ones surprised you? 40:25 — Do you write every day or is that advice overrated? 43:00 — Do you think AI will eventually write better books than you? And does that bother you? 47:40 — What do you read, and does it feel like work or escape? 52:30 — What's the one thing about being a writer nobody tells you before you start? 56:00 — Outro music

Next week's topic: Writing Sci-Fi in the age of Science Non-fiction.

In two weeks: The useful episodes begin, starting with our newest book, The Smarter Artist.

Thank you for watching/listening!

Note: This isn't the show we'd planned. Our "useful" episodes will be here in two weeks as we take care of some behind-the-scenes website stuff, and put the finishing touches on something we'll show you in 2 weeks.

For this week, we talk about how growing older has changed our writing, and what we want to write. And the things we won't write anymore. We also discuss content from our youth vs. today, and the effects of content on kids today. And lastly, we talk about the role of hope in stories in dark times.

TIMESTAMPS

INTRO 0:00 — The opening song and some nonsensical talk for a few minutes.

SOMETHINGS COOL 4:00 — Dave tells the guys about "The End of Oak Street" trailer. 5:40 — Johnny talks about the Nic Cage movie "Mandy" 9:00 — Sean talks about a wasp problem. Or, as Dave calls it, a Wasp Opportunity! And some Cybertruck rants. 14:20 — Dave talks about a movie that recently disappointed him which launches a discussion of how Johnny can't figure out whether Dave's dislike of a movie (like "Hereditary") is a good or bad thing, and how movies Dave hates Johnny winds up liking. And movies Dave endorse traumatize Johnny.

THE MAIN COURSE 20:00 — The Impact of Gore in Film 24:05 — Visceral Reactions to Real-Life Trauma 25:11 — One more Something Cool — Johnny shouts out C. Dennis Moore. 26:35 — Evolution of Writing Styles 31:02 — Experimentation in Writing 32:03 — The effects of content on our kids, young people in general and how that affects our writing. 38:06 — Changing Perspectives on Humor and Writing 45:48 — The Role of Hope in Storytelling

LINKS IN THIS EPISODE

The End of Oak Street (Trailer) — [The End of Oak Street | Official Teaser Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoHWPAN6FPg)

C. Dennis Moore — https://cdennismoore.com/

In this episode of The Smarter Artist Show, we talk about making and breaking habits. Specifically making and breaking Dave's habits. Dave has never kept a habit up for more than 30 days. So Sean challenges him to pick a habit and stick to it for that long.

What habit will he choose? Will he succeed a 30 day streak or will he fail miserably by Day 6?

Join Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant, and David Wright for a discussion on habits, along with lots of ball busting.

**note: For the first 10 minutes of the show, Sean's audio sucks. Sorry!

00:00 — Introduction and Episode Overview 04:03 — Something Cool (Dave) — Obsidian 05:00 — Something Cool (Sean) — WhisperFlow 09:15 — Something Cool (Johnny) — Sean's bad audio, Johnny going to Comic-con in Kansas City 12:09 — Challenges in Maintaining Routines 17:28 — Workshop on Developing Writing Habits 21:30 — Building Creative Muscle Memory 25:13 — The Power of Streaks in Habit Formation 28:51 — The Role of Perfectionism in Creativity 33:47 — Understanding Personal Rhythms for Productivity 37:10 — Accountability and Writing Habits 42:27 — The Importance of Self-Knowledge in Habit Building 45:42 — Integrating Habits for Better Health 50:15 — Smarter-Artist-Show-Outro.mp4

Visit us at https://www.Smarterartist.net

In this episode Sean and Dave go over a few pages of Sean's corrections on the rough draft of a movie script they're working on.

Dave was rusty having been away from scripts for a bit, as he's been working on other things and the podcast.

So tune in and hear some of the things he got wrong and how to fix them. Most of these lessons can be applied to any kind of writing.