Episode 69 – Solving the Complex Novelist Workflow with Jay Rosenkrantz from Plot Drive

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This week on the Brave New Bookshelf, we are exploring the intersection of professional storytelling and cutting-edge AI technology. Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite sat down with Jay Rosenkrantz, the co-founder of Plot Drive. Jay’s background is as eclectic as it is impressive—spanning from professional screenwriting to high-stakes online poker and VR game development—all of which led him to create a tool specifically designed for the “messy” workflow of novelists.

Meet Jay Rosenkrantz: Screenwriter, Poker Pro, and AI Innovator

Jay Rosenkrantz didn’t take a traditional path into the AI writing space. After studying film and television, he became a professional online poker player during the internet boom. This unique combination of narrative training and an understanding of complex systems eventually led him to the world of virtual reality and, finally, to generative AI.

Along with his brother Scott, Jay founded Plot Drive after recognizing that novelists face one of the most complex workflow challenges in the creative world: managing long-term context, character consistency, and intricate plot details over hundreds of thousands of words. By collaborating with early adopters like the members of the Future Fiction Academy, Jay has refined Plot Drive into a workspace that helps authors stay in “flow” and break through the most stubborn creative blocks.

The Bookstore Experiment: Can Readers Tell the Difference?

One of the most intriguing parts of our conversation was the “Bookstore Experiment” conducted by Jay’s brother, Scott. To gauge public sentiment, Scott visited bookstores and asked random readers to compare two passages—one human-written and one AI-assisted.

The results were illuminating:

• Quality is King: Most readers struggled to tell the difference within 20 seconds. Their primary concern wasn’t how the book was written, but whether the story was engaging.
• The Transparency Paradox: While readers expressed a desire for transparency, the current “witch hunt” culture in the author community often forces AI users to keep their tools a secret.
• Normalizing AI: Many readers revealed they already use AI in their own lives (like helping their kids with schoolwork), suggesting that the “polarized” view of AI may eventually soften as the technology becomes more ubiquitous.

Breaking Through Creative Blocks

Jay shared several moving success stories from the Plot Drive community. One author had been “holding a book in their head for 67 years” and finally finished it using Plot Drive. Another case study featured prolific author Russell Nohelty, who used the tool to overcome the debilitating brain fog of long COVID, eventually writing and editing 800,000 words.

Jay views AI as a “continuous flow engine.” For writers dealing with anxiety or “blank page syndrome,” Plot Drive acts as a developmental editor and writing coach that is available 24/7 to help bridge the gap between an idea and a finished draft.

A Deep Dive into the Plot Drive Workflow

Plot Drive is designed to feel familiar to writers—resembling a mix of Google Docs and Scrivener—but with “Co-writer,” a powerful AI agent, integrated into the sidebar. Key features of the workflow include:

• Context Management: Authors can toggle specific documents (notes, character beats, or previous chapters) on or off, ensuring the AI only “knows” what is relevant to the current scene.
• Redline Mode: Co-writer can act as a developmental editor, leaving comments and suggestions directly in the document margins, which the author can then accept, reject, or refine.
• The “Fix It” Button: A customizable tool that allows authors to highlight text and give a simple command to polish, expand, or change the tone of a specific section.
• Screenwriting Support: Because of Jay’s background, Plot Drive supports the Fountain format, allowing authors to draft screenplays that can be seamlessly exported into professional screenwriting software.

Advice for Authors: Intuition Over “Perfect” Prompting

A common mistake for AI beginners is chasing the “perfect prompt.” Jay argues that professional writers already possess the most important skill: judgment.

“Don’t struggle and fight the model,” Jay advised. Instead, focus on the context you provide the AI. If the AI understands your world and your characters, your intuition will tell you when a generated line is right or when it needs a human touch. He encourages writers to “be like water”—use the AI as a teacher or a junior partner to get the words down, then use your professional craft to make them sing.

Join the Team: Plot Drive is Hiring!

Plot Drive is currently looking for an Author in Residence and Community Leader. They are seeking a mid-career indie novelist who is “Plot Drive pilled”—someone who loves the tool, understands the craft of AI writing, and is brave enough to lead community events and teaching sessions. If you’re interested in stepping out in front of the AI movement, you can reach out to Jay directly at Jay@Plotdrive.com.

Favorite Tools & Recommendations

Jay highlighted several tools that have been instrumental in his work:

1. Plot Drive: His primary workspace for writing and project management.
2. Claude (Anthropic): Used for high-level brainstorming, presentations, and even coding “snack box” apps for personal projects.
3. Codex (OpenAI): Essential for the backend development of Plot Drive.
4. Cursor: An AI-powered code editor that Jay credits with the rapid development of Plot Drive’s features.

Key Takeaways from This Episode

1. Focus on Context: The quality of AI output is directly tied to how well the model understands your story’s “state” and “notes.”
2. Story First: Readers care about the experience of the book more than the tools used to create it.
3. Use AI as a Teacher: If you’re a beginner, ask the AI what you don’t know about story structure or genre tropes.
4. Trust Your Intuition: You are the “decider.” Use AI to generate options, but use your human judgment to make the final call.
5. Embrace the Flow: AI is most effective when used to break blocks and maintain creative momentum.

Resources Mentioned

• Plot Drive – Start your 7-day free trial.
• Plot Drive Success Stories – Read about authors who have finished books using the tool.
• Plot Drive on Instagram – Watch the Bookstore Experiment videos.
• ReelShort – The “vertical drama” platform mentioned by Jay.
• Cursor – For coding.
• Fountain – For screenplay formatting.

Transcript

Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.

Steph Pajonas: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we’re teaching authors how to use AI in any part of their process. And we’re publishing AI forward books on the press. We’re having a lot of fun doing both of those things, talking about spring and summer and all the stuff that’s to come.

And some of that stuff is secret, so I won’t be talking about it here today. I will just say that I’m excited, because i’m looking forward to doing more with, the press, especially, doing more systems for the press, writing for the press. I am, I’m really excited about the year to come.

2026 is already looking up. Thank goodness we’re, by the time this is out, into March [00:01:00] and we’re through January and February. I mean, my birthday is in January, so I kind of like it, but still I’m not a winter person, like at all. So I’m very happy to put them in the rear view. But I’m here as usual with my lovely co-host, Danica favorite.

Danica, how are you doing today?

Danica Favorite: I’m good. I’m good. Yeah. So as I mentioned the last episode, we’re doing the Publish Drive industry report and, uh, yeah, by the time you all see it, fortunately, my craziness with getting that out will all be done, but it’s still useful information, so happy to share about that and keep sharing about that.

For those of you who don’t know, I am Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors at every stage of their journey, from getting their books formatted to the perfect metadata and book description, to AI book covers. And then we can help you distribute your books to the widest audience [00:02:00] possible.

And finally once your book is out there selling, we can help you with some promotional tools, and if you’ve got authors to split royalties with, we can help you with that. So between us and Steph, we have all of the bases covered. Whatever the authors are looking for, we’ve got something that can help you and, uh, yeah, I think that is about it.

Steph Pajonas: We just saw each other fairly recently, so it’s like, ah, I think I’m out of news.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. I’m like, what else do I have to share? So, but today I do have someone very cool to share with you. And it’s really funny, because I do have sort of a running list of people we want to invite, and I’ve literally been saying, oh, we should get Jay on.

We should get Jay on. And then I forget, or I lose the list, and I have to make a new list. Someday I will remember all of the things. But I’m glad that we finally get him, because the other day Jay [00:03:00] was posting something online about one of the things he’s doing with Plot Drive and I’m like, oh, that’s so cool.

So before we started recording and we were like, okay, what are we gonna talk about today? I was like, yeah, I wrote down, talk about cool thing with Jay. And I didn’t remember. And so Jay reminded us of the cool thing, because Steph remembered, and this is why it’s a collaborative effort because we do need each other and we work good as a good team.

Steph Pajonas: We, we need to collaborate more often. Stop, collaborate and listen.

Danica Favorite: I like this.

Steph Pajonas: It’s like a hit it back, back.

Danica Favorite: You can just tell, once again what generation we’re from. It’s all good. So, um, yeah, so Jay Rosencrantz is with Plot Drive, and we have seen the various ways that Plot Drive has developed and grown over the years.

And it’s a really interesting and cool tool for authors to be able to use in writing [00:04:00] their book. And they’re doing a lot of neat things with helping authors when they’re in that stuck point, especially. So I’m gonna hand it over to Jay. He is going to tell us all about himself and Plot Drive, and then we can get into the cool thing that he’s doing as well.

So, Jay.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Good to see you both. It’s good to, it’s good to be here. All about myself. Bullet points. Uh. I went to school for screenwriting. I studied film and television, and then I became an online poker pro during the internet poker boom and an entrepreneur. So my whole career has been at the intersection of like technological disruption and different kinds of games and storytelling modes across all media forms.

Before this company, I started with my brother Scott, um, we built a VR game studio in the early days of virtual reality. One of the first narrative adventure games. We shipped [00:05:00] that to like Meta platforms and Valve. And then we started this new company that, you know, Plot Drive is a culmination of a long arc of trying to understand new technology, narrative, and new economics, for creators during this time where media is really changing very quickly. And I think what brought us to Plot Drive into the indie author space was. We got early access to the ChatGPT API about three years ago, and we started building prototypes just because, like I’m a writer and storyteller and was just fascinated, like probably everybody listened to this, I’m like, what these models can do. I’d known James Yu at Sudowrite for a while before that, and I remember trying Sudowrite and I was just like, this is cool, but it’s not useful yet. And then had that ChatGPT moment. And so built this storytelling prototype, and we’re throwing it at like literally anybody we knew who [00:06:00] might be engaging. And I think it was like you chat to a chat bot, and you could build a world. And we saw a lot of engagement from romance novelists, and started talking to them and they were like, very clear earlier on, they were the early adopters of AI and storytelling workflows. And whatever was going to happen with this technology was starting there. And I think what Scott and I really got us excited about starting to build something that would ultimately become Plot Drive, uh, and also came out of a great collaboration with Future Fiction Academy was, oh, these, these mostly women are like entrepreneurs.

They’re solopreneurs, they’re business owners. They are incredibly transparent and open about like their workflows and the economics of their business. So wouldn’t these be incredible customers to build for? And also the more you start to look at a novelist workflow, like this is the most messed up, [00:07:00] complicated, complex workflow problem that I’ve ever seen before.

And we like, we built some products for like the messiest storytelling workflows and other technology formats like other kinds of creators, and these are the messiest. ‘Cause they require like long context management, state management, over an enormous amount of text where their audiences are incredibly dialed into the details.

And there’s a huge gap between the time when you write book four in a series potentially, and then the time when the reader reads book one through four. And so we’re like, oh, this is like a pretty exciting challenge. Let’s build here. And then, um. I think Plot Drive came about through that. And so what is Plot Drive?

Plot Drive is like uh, a writing workspace with AI inside of it that gives authors control of the context of all their notes, their research, their materials as they write the book, allows them to offload what they don’t need to [00:08:00] control to the AI models, and control everything that they want so they can break their own blocks and stay in flow and get to the finish line.

So we have this AI agent that developed inside Plot Drive, sits alongside you. It’s called co-writer. It’s like a developmental editor, a writing coach, a ghostwriter assistant, all in one, specialized tools that can help you draft, outline, edit, market, whatever you need and really knows your work and knows what you’re trying to do.

So it feels like it’s there for you 24/7. And I think the outcome of like the most successful writers who are using Plot Drive are like, they can go five to 20 times faster to finish work that they’re proud of. Some of the work that they’re creating… it’s in the market. Readers are incredibly happy.

They say, these are the best books that you’ve ever written, and the best scripts that I’ve ever read from you. The cost of production of [00:09:00] these books has gone way down for them, and I think most importantly, they feel like they’re like the writer that they always wanted it to be, like they feel in flow way more often.

I think that was our biggest discovery is like AI is this continuous flow engine that like, if you learn how to control the models, raise into awareness where’s, where are my anxieties, where are my blocks today, can break every single one and keep you continuously moving.

At the end of last year, we did a deep dive into what was happening in Plot Drive and we created this page, PlotDrive.com/stories that have like about 10 incredible author success stories from people who like never knew how to write. Plot Drive taught them how to write, and they were able to finish their first book.

Somebody who was like holding a book in their head for 67 years finally got unstuck and finished it, to like very prolific authors. There’s a Russell Nohelty, who we’ve been working with, case study about how he had long [00:10:00] COVID and broke these blocks, where he thought he was never gonna be able to write a fantasy series again, and wrote 800,000 words, was able to edit it, and put it together, and get it on the market.

So I, I absolutely recommend, anyone even interested in AI listening to this, check out that page, I think those stories are really inspiring. And show, like, as authors get more and more comfortable going public with AI use in their workflows, you start to actually have those embodied stories of like, this is how I find it helpful, and I am a writer, and this is what it gives me as a writer, me as a storyteller, in this new era. The end.

Steph Pajonas: I love these stories because, I came to AI, and a lot of people know this story, but I will just reiterate it really quickly, is that I came to AI because of long COVID as well. I got COVID in 2022, and I suffered for like months and months with it and brain fog and all that kinda stuff. And then this is when I found Sudowrite, it was just before ChatGPT, [00:11:00] and it really just, it unlocked so much for me, it unlocked storytelling in ways that I didn’t realize I was doing. It helped me codify the things that I was doing, and make them into processes that I could work through, break those blocks just like you broke these blocks with these particular writers you’re mentioning on the stories page.

So it makes me super happy to find that other people have also been able to break these blocks with AI, get the stories out of their heads that they’ve always wanted to tell, and they’re doing it with your tool. So that is, that’s just really incredible. I love that. Don’t you, Danica, I see you over there nodding.

Danica Favorite: I do.

Yeah. Yeah. I really do. Because, like, this isn’t about AI in terms of taking over a writer’s place. This is really someone who is saying, I’m a writer. I’m struggling. Here’s a way to get that assistance. [00:12:00] And I know that we talk about this a lot, but it really is that ability for people who maybe have those extra needs, and to really enable people who are struggling with writing for whatever reason.

Now they have that ability. And it’s so important to recognize that this is helping people who wouldn’t have otherwise been able to write a book, and they’re able to write a book and a good book. Because what I love about what Jay says is the idea of the fact that it’s teaching people how to write.

They’re learning that process, and I love Jay’s writing background of, he’s a screenwriter. He helped write the stories behind the games. This is important because this is somebody who knows AI tools from that perspective, and even though it’s [00:13:00] a little bit different kind of writing, there’s still that understanding and knowledge, and even as Jay was saying, I was just kinda laughing. He’s like, yeah, this process is weird. You know? Yeah. We, we all have our own weird processes. And I think it’s important to keep that in mind, because I know Steph and I, every day we see people coming into the AI for Authors group with some new AI tool, Hey, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? And a lot of them are just tech bros wanting to make a buck on an AI tool and hey, let’s market it to writers. But this is someone who’s got a good background on that and I appreciate that.

One of the things I wanted to talk about is that cool little thing that initially piqued my interest and was like, oh yeah, I remember, I’ve been trying to get Jay on. So Jay you were telling us about the successes that a lot of your authors have had, and learning to write a book and publishing the book [00:14:00] and, whether or not it’s safe to be out. As an AI author, you guys did an experiment with readers about AI writing, and I want to hear more about that, because I know our listeners are gonna be fascinated.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah so this came out of, and I think just to, to like paint a picture of the overall landscape that we face right now, is Plot Drive was developed…like a huge focal point of the community on the internet that’s AI positive is in the AI Writing for Authors Facebook group. There’s also a subreddit r/writing with AI, that is quite prominent. And like we developed Plot Drive hand in hand with the Future Fiction Academy and many of our first customers were FFA members.

And we built this workflow that was like, allow people to save prompts to the LLM in buttons. Like, come with 50 buttons for drafting, editing, marketing, polishing, whatever, and [00:15:00] you could act where your cursor is right in the document or select text, and that was great. People fell in love with that.

And then, um, we had the benefit of working with FFA, which does incredible courses and educational material. Now to grow though beyond that funnel and reach the wider world, you get a lot of people who are finding out about you from other channels, and so then they’re just coming directly to the app. And so we had to solve the problem of what is the best experience for somebody who’s coming, they’re either like a writer who is curious about AI, they haven’t used it before, but maybe they know how to write like pretty well, or they’ve used ChatGPT or Claude. Or they have no experience writing, but they have a lot of experience with ChatGPT or Claude and Gemini.

And so like how do you teach them like the core principles of how to work with these models so they get a good experience? And we started like talking to a lot of the, these people as they came in. We started building co-writer, because co-writer we thought, what if you had a, [00:16:00] a writing teacher, a coach right alongside you that you could just talk to, and it knew how to use the tools. And it could also adapt to your level of conversation, and it knew your project, knew what you were doing, it could guide you towards an optimal workflow Like that sounds like hard, but also fun challenge and also like, if we could do that, like that’s gotta be the best way to teach somebody how to do it without making them watch a video first.

So we went down the rabbit hole on that. And along the way we partnered up with Russell Nohelty, who, you know, prolific indie author. He put together Writer MBA, runs a Hapitalist substack, a lot of like nonfiction and fiction writers learning how to make a career.

And like we, we started trying just more and more growth channels, partnerships. We ran a virtual conference, and we started like just experiencing, okay, outside of the like really pro AI bubble, there’s a lot of people who have all sorts of [00:17:00] things in their head about AI. And what’s very clear, no matter what they have in their head, whether they’re anti AI or they’re afraid of it, they’re still dealing with is it ethically okay. Or like I only use it to draft, or I only use it to brainstorm or whatever. It was, there’s a lot of people who are clustered in silos who because of the anti AI sentiment in the market, there are no incentives to just like step out in front because one, who wants to deal with the noise and the witch hunt and the shaming and that’s just a drag on your life, after a while. I mean, we, we have ads running, and we delete so many nasty comments, bullying comments for people who are like gatekeeping what it is to be a writer. And also the second part, and Russell brought this up, is that authors who are using AI are in this phase of a lot of private adoption.

Like they are afraid or don’t know how their readers would react if their readers found out. [00:18:00] Like, that they were using AI in these books. Like of, all some of ’em like top quality books, again, like these are authors of 15-year careers who are like, book five in the series is like heavily AI assisted, but their readers don’t know.

So we were, Scott and I, my brother, we like, we’re trying to solve this problem. We’re thinking about that. We’re like, what are our, like we literally wrote down a hundred ideas for how to like grow or go viral or create content that would get people’s attention. We had all sorts of ideas and then one that really stuck was we would go into bookstores. I mean, Scott, like was really the solo operator here. We’d go into bookstores, we would show real readers like two passages from books and like, uh, opening pages. One was, human, all human written, one was written with AI help. And they had 20 seconds to [00:19:00] guess which one is AI. And if they get it right, they get a $15 gift card to Barnes and Noble.

And so we wanted to like see firsthand what like random readers and bookstores actually think about this because we couldn’t find that answer anywhere on the internet. And then the second thing we wanted to see is could that drive attention to, to Plot Drive? Could we, writers who are like, have these questions inside of ’em now that we’re shining light on the actual answer, could we do it?

And like the results are pretty fascinating. I think for one, and it’s on our Instagram Plot Drive, you can check out the content. For one, I think there, there were definitely people who were like, I’m not gonna talk to you. I hate AI. There, there were people like that.

But I think the consensus of the people who did read was that it’s very hard to tell. And the thing that matters most to a reader is, there’s two things actually. One is like, is the story great? Ultimately, at the end of the day, they [00:20:00] want to, readers want to read something that is, equally good or better than there are other choices in all the books they could possibly read.

So like that’s the bar for like satisfying a reader. It always has been. It always will be. Like it’s gotta be a good book. No matter what, how the words are arranged, how they get there, you have to create an experience that gives the reader what they’re looking for when they look at the back cover and they read the blurb.

Second thing was trust, which was interesting. And it’s I think a challenge for the market as a whole during this time, which is like they said that I would read it, but I would want the author to be transparent about what tools they use. And if they were transparent, I wouldn’t mind because transparently, like I use it myself and like, this is like, I’m using it to like teach my kids, somebody said. And so like I, this is where the world’s going. It’s where the world is. But I like would want to know, and I think what’s interesting there is if you think about like the incentives [00:21:00] at play where we go back to I don’t want to deal with the witch hunt and I’m worried about what my readers will think.

And there’s definitely if you’re trying to reach the widest number of readers, there’s definitely some who are just like, they’re in that phase right now, that will probably eventually, however long it takes, it will just go away. People get used to it, but right now they’re like, no, I don’t wanna read anything written with AI.

So you really have to be quite like brave to get out there and be like. And I’m using these tools, and I wanna establish that transparency with you, because some of you might not care, but some of you might. And like, it’s much easier for a new author or a new pen name to do that or not do it than it is for somebody who’s got a long career, got a series that people love, but still want to use the tools.

So I, I totally recommend checking out the content. It was very fun. I thought Scott was gonna get kicked outta the bookstores. But it made it for some like, it was quite illuminating for [00:22:00] us because, when you go really deep, like we were very deep on the problem of like, how do you build a co-writer agent to teach people how to use Plot Drive, which is really how do you build an AI to teach people how to write with AI?

And those people are, have every sort of different brain and every sort of different experience coming in, to, to then being like, okay, we have to zoom out. What’s the market want right now? What is the actual market here? And, and I think we’re in this phase of, at first it was like first wave, AI can’t write well at all. And then it’s now it’s like, is amazing and like I’m using it. Are you using it? Like how do you use it? And you have these communities where people are now open about it. But the wider world is still very like polarized, right?

Steph Pajonas: Yeah. Scott was super brave to be going in there and asking random people questions about different different prose, options between the human and the AI.

I think it’s interesting that a few people who were readers [00:23:00] said they would just want to know if you used AI, because maybe they use it too and they would find that cool or whatever. I think that in the beginning a lot of authors felt that, hey, yeah, sure, I’ll, I’ll disclose my tools if that’s going to help readers.

Maybe they’ll love it, maybe they won’t, but it quickly turned into, we have to hide the fact that we use these tools, because other authors are sending the pitchforks and torches after us because they find it threatening to their own career. So unfortunately a lot of people had to go underground about their tool use, and they couldn’t say anything for fear of their career.

Now, I wish things had been different. I wish we could have said. Hey, I use these tools and I love them. And then the readers would’ve been, there would’ve been a subset of readers who have been like, that’s awesome. I use these tools too. Look at all that you’ve accomplished with it. [00:24:00] And then there would be another small subset of readers who’d be like, I think that’s cheating and I’m not going to buy your stuff.

And then they would move on. But it unfortunately, um, swayed towards authors trying to ruin other authors’ careers, which is unfortunate. But, you know, um, for sure we’re doing what we can now to try to educate people and let them understand that these are tools and that we’re using them to enhance ourselves.

Not necessarily to put somebody else out of business or anything like that.

Danica Favorite: Yeah.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah. It’s a long, it’s for sure a long journey. And it’s been a long journey, right?

Steph Pajonas: Yeah.

Jay Rosenkrantz: And I think the future’s gonna look quite weird. And the deeper you go into AI, the more you recognize that, right?

As the models get better and as the agents now become a thing. And vibe Coding becomes a thing. I don’t know how much you’ve talked about it on here, but like how easy it becomes to just talk to Claude to make you a tool to help you in your, business. [00:25:00] It’s like that is, that, like, you can’t build a sand castle and expect it to hold up in a tsunami.

And like, I think some of the stuff that I’ve seen in like the larger media market is, I’m curious what you’ve seen in traditional publishing, but what I’ve seen in like, I don’t know if you’ve talked about or heard of these like vertical drama platforms, like, um, ReelShort. They do…

Steph Pajonas: Yeah.

Jay Rosenkrantz: romance, soap operas and video.

Steph Pajonas: Stacy at the FFA is obsessed with them. She has all of her favorite creators on there and she, we told her, we’re like, oh, we’ll go check out real shorts. She’s like, don’t do it. You’ll just get addicted and you’ll hate me for it eventually. Just don’t do it. So obviously…

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah.

Steph Pajonas: they’re popular.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah. So like it started in China, now it’s coming to the, the Chinese companies. Like with the West being like the primary audience, but now Western companies are getting into it, and they’re looking at, wow, this is a validated content format. People love these like 60 second trope, [00:26:00] trope driven, cliffhanger driven, serialized narratives that last a long time on video. Let’s do it into like other genres. And the amount of content that they need to create with consistent narrative is enormous. And also the quality of the narrative is like very tropey.

It’s it’s not, you know, this is not an Oscar winning movie or like Breaking Bad or whatever. It’s like the, it is not great so far in terms of…but, but it’s addictive. And so, um, a lot of these companies, they either make the content in house, they have content teams, or they work with like third party content providers. They contract writers or whatever, and they are all like super into AI in terms of helping increase the throughput and speed of production. Because what they’ve seen, some of these companies actually, like the video content is AI. So it’s like the whole thing is AI and they see it [00:27:00] as not, not just like a huge edge in the economics, but also the audiences like love it, like there’s a clear, like they love the AI content and and they love the platform. Like they don’t really know in some cases who created it, but they just love the show. And so I think that’s a good indicator of like where this is going. And it pro, it’s doubtfully going to come, in my, I’m curious what you think, but I think it’s doubtfully gonna come from suddenly traditional publishing is like, AI is great for writing and like all novelists write with AI.

I’d be surprised if it comes that way. I think it’s much more gonna be like, people watching consuming media on these other kinds of platforms are gonna really develop this appetite and understanding of, oh, this is good. I love this stuff, and I want it all the time, and the rest of media will follow suit.

But what do you [00:28:00] think?

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, I think so. If you just spend any time at all on LinkedIn, you’ll notice that the majority of the traditional publishers are asking for AI. They are recruiting for AI jobs, is what I mean to say. So, you, like Simon and Schuster, Penguin Random House, Hachette, like all of them have in the past year put out calls to bring AI people in-house. It’s just, it’s inevitable. They all are using some kind of AI in-house for things like marketing and pulling reports and doing all that kind of stuff. Penguin Random House has a, has a warehouse in Western Europe. I think it’s in Spain. I can’t remember, Spain or Portugal, where the whole thing is run by AI systems.

It’s not necessarily generative AI, but definitely AI systems. They’re all, thinking about it. They worry mostly about copyright, are they gonna be able to copyright the stuff that they make, [00:29:00] whatever. Um, I think that they, if they’re going to go AI, they’re going to do it mostly in-house.

Just like these vertical shorts companies are doing. They’ll hire some people in to run the tools and get works out, and maybe it’ll be something like a big Nancy Drew series type thing or, Hardy Boys type thing. More like a syndicate type of stuff, but we’re not necessarily going to see them be super open about it I don’t think. I, I think that they’re, they’re gonna protect their business as much as possible. And there will be whisperings for a long time, and we’ll hear rumors and whatnot, but until they, somebody comes out and says, hey, we’ve been publishing AI books actually now for so long. Then we will hear about it then.

But until then, uh, I think we just have to watch, we have to watch the job boards, see what people are hiring for, um, see what people are talking about and then see the kinds of things [00:30:00] that are coming out on the new releases and where they’re going with those. I think that we can only speculate until then.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah, that makes sense.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. I think they want the transparency, like the, you, like you were saying, Jay, that the readers want the transparency, but, you’re not gonna see it from the publishing houses. So much of what they’re gonna be doing is proprietary. They’re gonna have NDAs signed, left and right. And so it, it’s going to be secret for a really long time, but, all signs, as Steph was saying, all signs are pointing to the fact that they are actively seeking how to use that in their company, in their workflow. And so even though they’re not gonna come out with a big statement about how they’re using it or what they’re using it for. It’s gonna be there and the signs are there, you know, just, you know, you see, you know, you see the little rabbit prints [00:31:00] in the snow, there are rabbits even if you don’t actually see the rabbit.

So I think that’s where we’re going.

So, yeah, let’s talk about workflows, because Plot Drive has a very interesting workflow, I think, in terms of really being able to work within the system. So why don’t you tell us what the basic workflow in Plot Drive is like?

Jay Rosenkrantz: Sure. Two paths. You starting something new or you’re importing existing work. Basically we, we customize the project depending on what you’re working on in the sense that like you bring in all your notes, your documents, half finished book, draft, whatever. Um. Left side of the screen is like a very simple sidebar.

You can organize them all in folders, make new documents, and most importantly, you can flip a switch so the AI knows, hey, pay attention to what’s in this document. Um, in the middle is your writing [00:32:00] workspace. It’s like a word processor, right? Google Docs. Very simple. And on the right, right sidebar is co-writer.

That’s the agent. And when I say we customize it to what you bring in, like that’s the kind of magic is like co-writer understands whatever’s in your context window. Like whatever document you flipped on, it knows your whole project structure. And you talk to it, it understands like what you’re trying to do, what’s blocking you, where you want to go, what your work is doing ’cause it can read everything that is there and help you out. And so like a typical workflow, I would say for, let’s say drafting might be like, whether you’re stuck on something that you’ve brought in or you’re starting from something new, like you create like a story foundations folder. It’s got your pitch, like your back cover blurb, your character profiles, your location profiles, your tropes, themes, major conflicts, your [00:33:00] outline, work it to develop that to be really strong.

Then you, you also work on a writing style. So whether or not that’s your, you know your voice really well, it’s based on existing work or like you need to develop something new, if you’re trying a new genre, you get that all like pretty solid. And then you work on like chapter one or chapter one and chapter two, get those locked in and then you go forward from there until you get a draft.

What’s happening in editing is really cool. And I think also something we’re excited people have just started using, we developed this like tool for co-writer, we call it redline mode, which there’s a comment system inside the document. We also have a sharing feature that’ll let you, like, bring in collaborators or editors so you can leave comments on any document, like in Google Docs.

Your collaborator can leave comments on the document. You can see this from, but co-writer can also leave comments and has awareness [00:34:00] of all the comments. So you can, like a, a workflow for editing might be like you have a draft. You say co-writer, act as a developmental editor who’s like a master of romantasy and give me a developmental edit of this, go in red line mode, leave comments on every document. So co-writer will go in and like actually leave the its commentary on top of the relevant paragraph section sends inside the document. And then you can go either chapter by chapter, you can go act by act. You could try to go the whole book at once. Don’t recommend that.

Definitely recommend like, reviewing what gets done, ’cause ultimately, you are the decider on whether or not these comments are good or the edits are good, but you can just literally tell co-writer, uh, whether by text or your voice, go make the edits for me. Handle those comments. Or you can reject some of the comments and be like, yeah, I like these, but I no I don’t agree with that.

You can even reply [00:35:00] to the comments yourself and be like, yeah, that’s good, but what about this? And then just say like, do it. And it will run and like an operation across like all those comments and clear them and .Give you the edited work that you can then export to .docx and Markdown and .txt. We also have, for the people who are writing screenplays, we’ve added support for Fountain, which is pretty cool because it allows you to write in text, inside Plot Drive, export to TXT, and then import into screenwriting software, and it shows up like it’s a screenplay, like with the right indentations and write, like, dialogue and all of that. So that’s like basically the workflow. Like you, we, when we started, and they’re still there, we have a library of these one click tools that are basically colored buttons that are for write, generating or editing.

And you can make your own. And those are like single prompts, your favorite [00:36:00] prompts, that you can save and reuse and you can pin them to the top of your text editor. So they’re there…like one that people love that’s really handy is called Fix It, where you like, highlight any section of text and then you just say how you want to fix it, and the model that you’ve selected just runs it, fixes it in place and you can accept, reject, you can keep both and you can, uh, you know, basically like work with the model directly in the document. Have the deepest control in that way.

Danica Favorite: I love that. It’s so funny, I was just looking at Typing Mind the other day, and I still have in Typing Mind my prompt to create a button for Plot Drive from quite some time ago.

And I was like, oh yeah, I remember that. So it is neat that it’s really customizable for authors, and what they’re trying to do with Plot Drive. And one of the things I really wanted to highlight is this screenwriting capability, because so many authors are talking, I’ve heard [00:37:00] it. What about screenplays? What about screenwriting? And I’ll be honest, I’m like, I don’t have a clue. But here we do have this person, Jay’s got a screenwriting background, and so he’s coded that ability into Plot Drive, which I think is really useful for some of the authors who are trying to figure that piece out. Because you’ve got someone who’s an expert who’s created a tool that can import it right into screenwriting software.

So I thought that was super cool. I’m really glad you mentioned that.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah, I think it, like enough people had asked about it. And it, just to give you a sense of like the speed at which AI is moving. I think like when we started building Plot Drive, like I was using Cursor, it was kinda like Antigravity for those familiar, like using AI to help code like 14 months ago or something like that.

And the degree to which the [00:38:00] coding agents have gotten better is, it’s freaky sci-fi stuff. And now we have a workflow where I was like, like a, a screenwriter friend was like, oh, this is cool. Can, but can it do screenplays? And I was just like, all right, now it’s at the point where I think maybe I could figure out how to do this in a day, and let me try just outta my own curiosity.

And so that’s how it came about. But, um, yeah, I mean, I think the big thing about Plot Drive that we learned from working with the FFA and the, early adopters that I consider like pro novelists who are experts at AI on both the creative level and a technical level, was that like writers, especially authors, they work in documents. That is the interface and they need control of the models.

And so how do you give them the most control? Because at the end of the day, it’s like, writers should be the best of all time in using these models, because it’s just text [00:39:00] to text. Like it is communication and that’s what writers are better than anyone else in the world at. It’s like clarity of thought expressed like word by word and sentence by sentence.

I think that design philosophy has always stayed with us. Even in developing co-writer, it’s like, how do you, how do you build like an agent now that a writer can have deep control? And we always look at it, and like maybe this is just a poker imprinting on my mind, it’s like that game is like very simple to pick up, but a lifetime to mastery aim, and I view writing the same way.

And so how can we make Plot Drive really accessible, simple to pick up, so you can just like a pen and a paper or typing at a word processor, but really endlessly deep with everything. Like you can learn more, you can go as deep as you want. You can get as technical as you want and leverage that to where you have no shackles, there’s no constraints.

I think that was a big differentiator and like why, ultimately, like why we decided to go on the journey to make Plot Drive [00:40:00] was like, oh, there can be a, like a web-based cross platform application that would provide a, could, could provide writers access to like simple to pick up, lifetime to master. And in a way that they understand, like not inside boxes, not inside, not us saying, hey, you should do it like this, but the workflow like adapts to the way you think because you, as you get familiar.

It like second nature, you build your own, like everybody’s got their own workflow. All those success stories, you ask them how they use Plot Drive to do it. It’s all different.

Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I appreciate that. That’s why I always ask, because it’s so important for the people listening to understand. It’s a variety of ways to do it and ways to make it work for yourself.

‘Cause when you were talking about the different workflows and the folders and things like that, or, and the documents, it reminds me of Scrivener. [00:41:00] And I know authors who swear by Scrivener. It is to them the ultimate thing. It is the best way to write. And I’ll be honest, I tried it. I took Scrivener class after Scrivener class, and I couldn’t figure it out, and I could never make it work for me.

And it’s just because that’s not my workflow. And so that’s why it’s really important for authors, as you’re listening to this, just take the pieces about the workflow that you find useful, that is going to work for you and help your workflow and adapt it to make your workflow your own. Because with all those success stories, like Jay was saying, they all have a different workflow.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah. I think, yeah, Scrivener, I use Scrivener a lot too. Like I, I wrote books that I hated in Scrivener, and I definitely use very few of the features. So I very much was just like, just believe, like simple, like deep for sure, but simple accessibility to software is important, especially with [00:42:00] complex kinds of products. And so like, you need to really, your job is to really design something. It’s not unlike designing a story, right? You gotta make sure somebody gets on the train so then they can really experience the ride. And if you don’t get them hooked, then you’re gonna lose them.

And I think, um, the other thing I’ll say is like, learn from just talking with so many writers, from like beginners with different levels of AI experience to advance with different levels of AI experience. The major difference that separates, that I think is illuminating, that separates, like the beginners from the pros, is it’s not like the perfect prompts.

It’s not about that, because generally you see the pros like, they, they have really good judgment about what the story needs. So sometimes any prompt is good enough to get them to see what isn’t good enough or make that final choice to get all the way. Whereas like the beginners, they don’t know what they don’t know, so they don’t even know.

They might be like, I need this perfect set of prompts, but they don’t even know what, [00:43:00] like how to write, or what to do, how to solve problems within a story. So the way I really recommend, I, I don’t prescribe a workflow to like, if you’re a beginning writer and or you’re on the way or you’re stuck on a new genre, ask the AI what you don’t know.

Use it like a teacher. Have a teacher. And then if you are much more advanced, don’t worry about like perfect prompting, actually worry about does this, like is the context in the model’s mind right now, the right context it should have? Does it know everything it needs to know about my story to do the thing I want it to do?

And then whatever you tell it to do. Just rely on your own intuition and skill to get it to where you need to go. Don’t struggle and fight the model on no, this isn’t exactly how I wanted to say it, or whatever. Just go with what the model wants and your own judgment. And I think you’re gonna have a much, like, it’s like, uh, that old saying be like water, like [00:44:00] just go with the flow.

Steph Pajonas: Go with the flow.

Jay Rosenkrantz: And trust your own judgment, intuition, because you, the most common thing with everybody who’s using AI, using any tool, it’s frustration at the models. Like it’s not following their instructions, it’s not doing what they wanna do. And like you just kind of like, yeah, that’s what I wanna say. Like em, embrace that it is like a non-deterministic kind of software. There is no like thing where it will always do exactly the thing that you have in your head that you want it to do. And, and just if you’re newer, go into the understanding this thing more than like, um, a printing press that just executes for me, it can be an incredible teacher and make me better at being a writer.

Danica Favorite: Yeah.

Steph Pajonas: It can be an incredible partner. It can be an incredible teacher. It can be a lot of things, which is, I think, all things that beginner writers don’t even realize they need or [00:45:00] that they’ve never worked with. So yeah, I agree.

Go with the flow. There are a lot of times where I’m just like, I have this idea. I have this idea for a story, and I’m gonna try not to be too rigid about that idea, because I don’t think that this particular thing needs to happen in chapter two, or this particular thing needs to happen in chapter 10, et cetera.

I try to have an overall v ibe of the whole work and then see where the AI takes me because that in itself is an adventure too. It’s fun.

Danica Favorite: It is an adventure, and I like that idea of not being so rigid, because what I’m finding the more I work with AI, if I go in with a rigid sense, it’s never gonna do what I want it to do.

And so I love what Jay was saying about, it’s not just this printing press kind of thing, it’s, it really is you, you go with the flow. And I really like what you said about trusting your intuition, because so many times we keep hearing about AI taking over and making us less human. The most human part of ourselves is our [00:46:00] intuition.

And for me, when I go into it with this rigid idea, I, and I’m working on a story right now where that is exactly what happened, is I had this really rigid idea of what was gonna happen in this opening scene and the AI wasn’t just getting there. And so actually I went back to old Elizabeth Ann West advice of you are not a T-Rex, sometimes you just write it yourself. And so I got out my phone, and I dictated this whole scene, and then I was like, okay, yes, this is what I want. And then I made it pretty and I gave it to the AI, and I can say, okay, AI, this is my opening scene that I want, now let’s continue.

And so it’s really trusting yourself and trusting your intuition. And if there’s that piece that has to be a certain way, that’s not the AI’s piece, that’s your piece. And so as we go into this last bit of the interview, I think the answer is pretty obvious, but if you have anything you wanna [00:47:00] add, what’s your favorite AI tool?

I, we know you’re gonna say Plot Drive.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Favorite AI tool. Well, I love, I actually love Codex from Open AI, because it helps us build Plot Drive. So, uh, it, it’s like it makes me feel less like a vibe coder and more like an agentic engineer. Because it allows you to have like multiple AI agents running at once, and they really do a good job.

If you like, explain to them what you’re trying to do, they really do a good job. It’s been, it is actually been fascinating, ’cause like yeah, everybody in in writing is like, oh, is AI gonna replace us? But seeing that happening in software engineering, we’re like, the software engineers have reckoned with this feeling and like understanding that like, the way, like in a lot of tech companies right now, the AI is writing all the code, and the job has become intuition, instinct, judgment on what the AI is doing. And so I like Codex a lot. I mean, I, I love Plot Drive, obviously [00:48:00] to write. I like the Claude app, um, a lot. Like I mix between Claude Cowork and Claude Code to just get stuff done, presentations. Built my girlfriend like a Valentine’s Day app with Claude Code that was pretty cool. It was like a snack box of different memories. So feel free, for those of you romantics out there, feel free to steal that idea. It was also inspired by Scott, so yeah, I like all those tools.

Steph Pajonas: I love all those tools as well.

That’s a lot of…you can get so much done with all of those tools. Right? Now, before we go, I wanna make sure that we talk a little bit about the fact that you guys are looking for somebody to join the Plot Drive team. Isn’t that…

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah.

Steph Pajonas: right?

Jay Rosenkrantz: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So like we’ve gotten to the point where we’re like seeing Plot Drive and, and writers accomplish incredible things.

But we want to like. I think the thing that, [00:49:00] that we’re seeing is like, the most valuable thing right now in a, the cross section of AI writing, is teaching and community. And so what we are looking for is like, let’s call it an author in residence of AI craft, uh, title TBD, a community builder and leader.

And I think what we have in mind is like mid-career, indie novelist, although open to all, uh, existing audience, like they’re part of the community. Maybe they’ve been on this podcast. Maybe they have their own Facebook group. They’re present in many face group book groups. People know who they are. They’re a regular on the podcast circuit.

But I think most importantly, they are brave warrior who loves AI and they love teaching about it. They love talking about it, and they wanna step out in front. And for us, what that would mean is like training writers how to use co-writer, helping coordinate, like writing sprints, community events.[00:50:00]

And they ideally would love Plot Drive and love using it. I think that’s actually a necessity. They’d have to, be a, be Plot Drive pilled and wanna, come on board for a share of the upside as we grow. And so that’s what we’re looking for. If that resonates with you just send me an email, Jay@Plotdrive.com.

Say hi. Say, I was intrigued. We can talk, but yeah, I think o overall we’re seeing, we can only do so much as the builders and during this time of transition, I think like. one of the great shames of this, like these walled silos where you’ve got communities who are pro AI and then you’ve got the rest of the world’s anti AI, and there has to be private adoption right now, ’cause the incentives don’t align. One of the great shames is like so many great writers could be teaching this stuff to other writers and helping them, but they don’t. And so there is there’s this need for, and this is what I love about [00:51:00] working with Russell, it’s like writers who are writers, they love the craft of writing, and they also really love what AI brings to the table, and they see a feature in which the craft of writing and what it means to be a writer continues in the way it’s always been and it’s meaningful to people’s lives, helps ’em live creative lives. And you can talk about craft, and part of talking about craft is talking about how to use the AI as part of craft, because it is part of craft when you use it, right?

And it’s not about like technology, it’s about like how to solve these story problems using the tools in front of me. So if that resonates with anybody listening, would love to chat about it.

Steph Pajonas: We’ll definitely keep some of that information in the show notes for people so that they can come by and, uh, talk to you about the position, if you’re, um, if they’re interested.

All right. That’s excellent. So we will make sure that [00:52:00] we link to Plot Drive, but is there any place else that you wanna send people to besides that?

Jay Rosenkrantz: I think just Plot Drive.com or, um, got a seven day free trial if you haven’t tried it, and, um, Plot Drive on Instagram would be a good place if you wanna see that.

You wanna see Scott going into Barnes and Noble, secretly a secret agent of, you know, the pro AI and the creative arts movement, asking real readers what they think about an AI assisted writing.

Steph Pajonas: I love it. ’cause it was very fun to watch those videos. So we’ll send them to, we’ll send people to those as well.

Excellent. All right. Everybody who’s been listening in, thank you again to Jay for being here. We will have the show notes available for you bravenewbookshelf.com. Come read those, sign up for our mailing list so that you can get those show notes straight to your inbox the next day after the episode goes live. You can come by and also check out all the other fantastic show notes [00:53:00] and other podcast episodes that we’ve done if you’ve missed any of them.

So definitely come on by. Um, Danica what else do you wanna end us with?

Danica Favorite: Yeah. So, um, One of the things I kept trying to find a way to sneak in and get there, and I didn’t, is that Jay mentioned Russell Nohelty. He has been on the podcast here before talking about Plot Drive, and so be sure to go back and look for that episode as well if anything that Jay said with you is really intriguing, because Russell talks about it as well. And please remember to go to YouTube, like, and subscribe to us on YouTube, watch the videos, like the videos, um, and also of course on social media. And make sure you are like, following, subscribing all those things to Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press and Publish Drive on all of those channels as well.

We would certainly all appreciate that. So [00:54:00] until we see you next time.

Steph Pajonas: Bye everybody.

Danica Favorite: Bye.

Jay Rosenkrantz: Bye.

Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us@bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.