by Sean Platt
DAVID: Oddly, one of my favorite reviews was from someone who gave one of the episodes (or maybe it was the season) three stars. They had some issues with some elements of the story, which I completely respected. The cool thing about the review, though, was that they didn’t outright trash the book. I DON’T LIKE THIS BOOK, THEREFORE, NOBODY SHOULD OR WILL. Instead, the reviewer wrote how fans of specific titles would likely enjoy the book. I loved that they were objective enough to say that.
As a writer, I don’t think you ever stop learning, and sometimes that means learning from your critics.
Thank you to everyone who sent in questions! We appreciate you taking the time to be part of the conversation!
POST-SEASON INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHORS
(Note: Oct. 2013) This is an interview with our original editor, Matt Gartland, (we’ve since had the season re-edited) who interviewed us as a bonus for the season compilation. If you haven’t yet read Season Two, and you’re one of those weird people who reads the back of the book first, you might want to wait and come back to read this AFTER you finish the season.
In other words, spoilers below!
Interview conducted February 2012
MATT: So, after that ending, what’s next?
DAVID: I can’t say anything other than find out on June 19.
SEAN: Ditto.
MATT: Season 1 was a tremendous success. How did that challenge you in Season 2 to at least meet, if not exceed, your high standard of creativity?
SEAN: Season 1 was an amazing creative experience, and really drove us to do something different than a lot of what was happening with self-published fiction. Season 1 was about establishing the world and proving it would work. Proving that readers would return week after week, then come back after hiatus hungrier than ever.
Season 2 was about building on that world, and rewarding returning readers with a narrative that was tighter and better, and grew along with them. We wanted to do more and say more, and do everything better. We wanted to start strong, and finish with an ending that made readers say, “WOW! What happens next?!?”
DAVID: The big fear lurking in my mind was the whole “sophomore effect” you read about where musicians, novelists, and TV and movie producers attempt to duplicate what worked so well the first time only to come up short, or worse, fail miserably. But when it comes down to it, I saw areas for improvement over season 1, things we’d learned during the first season, that we could apply to the second. So, in my mind, Season Two would be better. And looking back now, I believe it was.
Now the trick will be topping an insane season finale! I’m glad we have a month or two to think about it!
MATT: How did your process change from Season 1 to Season 2? And more generally, how do you both continually look to tweak and improve your process Season to Season and episode to episode?
SEAN: The exchange between Dave and I gets better by the day. A weekly series is a demanding task, so communication must be fluid, honesty must be everywhere and professional shorthand must be tight. Season 1 started out making it up as we went along. Dave would write his characters, I would write mine, then I’d polish them all and he’d blend them together. This worked beautifully.
Season 2 was more plotted, and has gone even better. Dave is pencils and I’m ink. Some stuff he writes note for note, and some stuff is just a sketch. I fill in the blanks and color the pages. We’ll be carrying this flow with us to our next serial, ForNevermore.
Also with Season 2, we’ve had the awesome work of our editor, Matt Gartland, who has helped us have great copy produced at a tremendous clip.
DAVID: The overall process was relatively the same, but we had to work much faster with a goal of releasing a new book each week. As for tweaking, I believe the more you write, the better you get. So we keep writing and aiming for that perfect blend of story and character that defines serialized fiction for us.
MATT: What new inspirations did you weave into the fold of the storytelling in Season 2 that weren't there in Season 1?
DAVID: Our opening sequences in Season One weren’t exactly gripping. Between seasons, we were watching back-to-back episodes of Breaking Bad and LOVED how that show often opened up with something compelling and then circled back to deliver WHY it was compelling. LOST did that with its flashback openings from time to time, also.
So we opened up Season Two with the attack on the farm where the Drury group was staying. That was the biggest shift in writing this season, the opening sequences. Start strong or start compelling, or start weird, even, and then come back and tie that into the current timeline. We didn’t follow that formula in every episode, but overall, I think the openings were much better this season.
SEAN: I think our inspirations were mostly carried over from one season to the next. The biggest change was that we were writing for an active audience the second time around, and that changed the mood. It was wonderful to have readers waiting each Tuesday. One of the best parts of my year so far for sure.
MATT: What "magic" can you share about how well you produce such captivating stories at such a high velocity?
SEAN: I think speed is our key. Dave and I have written together for three and a half years, and I’ve had to write thousands of words a day professionally for all of that time. The velocity has always been there, as has the quality. That’s how I made my living. But now I’m getting to point that velocity toward something I love, while doing it with a creative partner who makes the writing fun, and deep, velocity isn’t the problem so much as deciding which stories we want to tell next!
DAVID: Trying to keep up with Sean! And prodigious amounts of diet soda.
MATT: What was the hardest scene or episode for each of you to write, respectively, and why?
DAVID: The hardest episode was Episode 11, “The Loophole.” I wanted to write a romantic storyline with elements of fate, destiny, and choice which would set the stage for the season finale in a big way.
The big challenge was that we were asking readers to care a lot about Will, who had to that point been only a background character. So we had to slow down the plot to introduce Will’s back story. Initially, the Big Reveal at the end of Episode 11 was that Will had foretold his own death. But there was no parallel in that and what happened with his boyfriend, or in Episode 12.
Sean and I brainstormed and then it hit us ... Will didn’t see his own death. He saw Luca’s! Will wasn’t trying to protect himself, he was trying to protect someone he loved. That revelation changed everything, bringing not only Episode 11 full circle, but it set up the season finale perfectly.
Episode 11 was the hardest, but it was also the most rewarding. I’m not sure how many readers consider it a favorite, but it might be one of my favorite things I’ve been a part of.
SEAN: Boricio’s origin. I really wanted to get that right. It’s important to get Boricio just right, and he’s definitely the most specific character I’ve ever written. That scene needed to say everything, and it had a lot of heavy lifting. Boricio is obviously central to the story, and it’s important that readers care about him, even if they hate him. That scene had a helluva job to do, and when I read it out loud to my wife, I knew it did it. It may not be the best scene in the series, but it’s my favorite. So far. Probably.
MATT: Did you ever feel, individually or collectively, that you were writing yourselves into a corner? If so, how did you work out of that?
SEAN: Ha, a bunch of times. Not really, but we would have if we weren’t careful. We have our straight lines because of Dave. I’m more haphazard than he is, and would miss the details that help keep Yesterday’s Gone in key. Whenever we had something that looked like it would lead down a dead-end, we untangled it together. That made the final section of Season 2 take a little longer than we’d planned, but the payoff was explosive and totally worth it.
DAVE: I worry about that stuff a lot. There’s a lot of tiny details to keep track of, and it’s easy to overlook something as you’re writing. Before the season
began, I started a chart and even a secret website to keep track of all the data so I’d better remember it. But with the speed we’re writing, I don’t have time to keep track of every little thing. So far, I think we’ve done a pretty good job, save for a few minor continuity errors which I’m fixing as I find them.
There’s also a concern when killing characters off, where I need to make sure I’m not killing an idea I had for later in the series which required that character. So far, we’ve avoided writing ourselves into anything too bad. Knock on wood.
Not an easy thing to say given how the season ended.
MATT: What do you hope your readers interpret from the messages interwoven into your characters and the story arcs overall?
SEAN: I think everyone sees life through their own prism, and I’m happy as long as people are reading and enjoying what we create. I never sit down with an agenda. I write the characters as people, and have them react how I think they would react in that situation. I think the same is true for Dave. If someone wants to read something into what I’ve written, for good or bad, that’s there side of the prism and nothing more. I’m happy if a reader sees our work as an honest interpretation of life, even if the circumstances in the story are extraordinary.
DAVID: My primary goal is to entertain, to create a world that you will want to spend time in. We’ve got a broad base of characters and ideas within the story, so there’s no overarching political, religious, or philosophical worldview we’re driving at.
I love that people have connected with the characters, though, and have found something deeper within the story to enjoy.
I’m attracted to writing about dark subject matters, and part of that is to better understand why people do what they do or how people respond to horrible situations. I’m fascinated by stories of redemption and corruption for much the same reason. Why do people go bad? Can bad people become good? Those are themes I tend to drift toward.
And though it’s not intentional, I try to show a sense of hope in the world. However, I’m pretty sure that people who read our books will think I have a pretty twisted idea of hope.
MATT: Do you feel the reader base is accurately understanding your narrative, characters and all? Or do you feel that there's something that they just aren’t “getting?”
SEAN: I’ve not seen any evidence that the readers aren’t getting it. The reviews have been wildly encouraging. I’ve only seen one where I’d say the reader didn’t get it. If there was confusion, I imagine we’d see that reflected in reviews or in our Goner’s newsletter, but we’ve not seen it in either place.
DAVID: Yeah, they get it. At first, I was worried that people might not care for serialized fiction, but that hasn’t been the case at all.
I get email every day from readers who get it and are enjoying the ride. I’m surprised how many readers have reached out to us. It’s easily the best part of our job, connecting with people. There’s still some people who prefer to read the full book all at once, but they still enjoy the roller-coaster type ups and downs in our story.
MATT: So much has already been written in this saga. How do you keep it fresh at this stage?
SEAN: We’re not modeling Yesterday’s Gone after written work so much as televised work. The TV serial is an art form and vibe we’re trying to capture with Yesterday’s Gone, and the upcoming ForNevermore, and all our titles.
Treating it like a TV series allowed us to do some new things creatively, and I think that’s paid off in the reader experience.
DAVID: We keep it fresh by following the road we started down and telling the story of these people. We respect the story and the characters. We started out wanting to do three seasons. Sean and I talked it over, though, and realized that we’d need at least four seasons to tell the story properly. I don’t see it going much longer than that, though. There’s too many other stories to write.
That being said, if we had a great idea to return to this series in the future, or any series, we’d never close the door completely.
MATT: Do you have a finale already conceived for the series? Or is the serialized storytelling truly serial in that there is an indefinite end point?
SEAN: We know when it will end and approximately how it will end. It’s serialized in spirit, not necessarily in fact. We don’t want to tire our readers or bore ourselves. There are too many stories to write. Our road is clear, but we’re not sure exactly how we’ll cover the distance in between.
DAVID: I know what will happen to a few key characters. I’m waiting for the others to show me their endings. There IS an end-point to this series, though. But there’s also a lot more to happen between now and then!
MATT: Is serialized fiction turning out the way you had hoped and dreamed it would? How about for your readers; is the reader response what you were hoping it would be?
SEAN: It’s been exactly as I hoped, and I CANNOT wait to get started on Season Three. June 19 seems so close, yet so far away! Reader response blows me away, and I can’t wait to kick the story harder in the balls for the third season. The reader response makes me want to impress them more. Least we can do to say thank you for all the support.
DAVID: Sean was always more optimistic than I was. I was afraid people might not want to wait for the story to be continued. I knew I loved the format, and hoped that others would, but I couldn’t be certain until we put the story out there and found out.
And response is turning out even better than I’d hoped! Even more impressive, is the number of people who are rooting for us to succeed! These are people who are connecting with us through this story. They’re buying our books, telling their friends, writing to us, and leaving reviews. In doing so, our readers have made our writing dreams a reality. We’re humbled and thankful for how readers have responded.
Thank you!
MATT: If you could start over from the very beginning of Yesterday's Gone, including the pilot, what would you do differently?
SEAN: I would remove some of Luca’s infantile language. That’s one of the only things some readers have questioned, and understandably so. I’ve seen a few comments about how the author must not know any 8 year olds and that Luca must be slow. My son is Luca’s age, and my daughter is two years older. My son, Ethan, is extremely bright. But he turns small when he’s sad or scared. And if his world went away, he would be terrified enough to see the world in terms of “terrible scary.” Knowing what I know now, I would spend more time developing the thought that he was feeling infantile, not slow.
DAVID: Like I said earlier, we didn’t really give much thought to opening sequences before this season. This is even more evident in Episode One, which quite frankly, opens up pretty damned slow for a post-apocalyptic book.
While we’ve drawn a large audience, I can’t help but think that the slow open is not representative of the overall series, and we likely lost some readers in the opening pages. I’d love to go back and just change the beginning of Episode One a bit, just to bring the action in earlier, set up the stakes right away.
In fact, I might just do it in the next few weeks. I won’t change anything which affects the timeline or history, just the opening sequence. If I do it, I’ll leave a note in the Author’s Notes to indicate what I did, in case anyone is re-reading it and thinking they lost their mind, “This isn’t how it originally opened!”
Other than that, I love how the series is playing out. I can’t wait to take what we’ve learned with Yesterday’s Gone and bring it to Young Adult paranormal genre with ForNevermore next week!
Season 3
::EPISODE 13::
(FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON THREE)
“Paths Not Taken”
One
Other Will Bishop
Other Earth
June 14, 2011
Black Island Research Facility
Black Island, New York
FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE OCT. 15 EVENT …
One month had passed since the boy last opened his eyes.
When Will got the call from Boricio, his heart nearly burst from his chest. “Your brother? He’s okay?”
“Yes, Dad, he’s fine.”
“I’ll be right there,” Will said, almost falling as he jumped from his seat and raced down the hall, to the elevator, and slipped inside just as the doors were closing.
Will smiled at the researcher already standing in the elevator — a man whose name Will didn’t know, even though he’d seen him several times. The keycard/badge hanging from the man’s lanyard read, Eric Rodgers: Aerospace Division.
Though Will had occasionally consulted for the aerospace division of Black Island, most of his work was now with the psychic warfare and genetic engineering branches. He rarely spoke with anyone outside of his division, except for the all too regular but unavoidably awkward moments in the elevators and dining hall.
Will closed his eyes, trying not to pick up any of the man’s thoughts. Too late.
Oh shit, it’s the freaky guy. Is he reading my mind now? Oh shit. Stop thinking. Think about anything other than last night . . . cocaine . . . Shit! Did he hear that? Oh God . . . Come on, elevator, come the fuck on!
Will kept his eyes closed to shield his vision from the man’s nervous face.
