Savannah Gilbo
speaker
3,356 appearances
13 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 18 Aug
Savannah Gilbo’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.
Appearances
There's a good chance that you picked it up for the same reason that so many writers do.
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It makes this enormous, overwhelming task of plotting a novel feel a little more manageable.
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Because instead of staring at a blank page, wondering what's supposed to happen over the course of 80,000 words, you now have 15 landmarks to aim for.
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You have a catalyst, a midpoint, an all is lost, amongst other ones, and suddenly there's a little more
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shape to this thing you're trying to create.
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But I've worked with a lot of writers who fill in those 15 beats and then hit a really frustrating point.
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Because sometimes what happens is on paper, the outline looks right.
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All the beats are there, everything seems to be where it's supposed to be, and yet something still feels off.
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Maybe the plot feels like a collection of events rather than one connected story.
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Maybe the middle just seems to drag, or maybe you sit down to draft and realize the outline isn't actually giving you enough direction to know what happens scene by scene.
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And when this happens, it's really easy to assume that maybe you've just done something wrong, or that maybe this
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Particular plotting method just doesn't work for you.
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But usually that's not the problem.
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More often than not, it comes down to how you're interpreting what those 15 beats are actually asking you to do.
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So that's what we're going to talk about today, and I'm going to walk you through the five mistakes I see most often when writers use Save the Cat to plot their novels, as well as what to think about instead.
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Now, real quick before we dive in, I have a free guide.
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all about using save the cat to plot your novel.
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It lists out all 15 beats and there are examples in there from popular stories so you can see how it all works.
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If you don't already have a copy go to savanna gilbo.com forward slash save the cat all one word.
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So savanna gilbo.com forward slash save the cat
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Showing 21–40 of 3,356 · page 2 of 168
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