Savannah Gilbo

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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 over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.

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Fiction Writing Made Easy with Savannah Gilbo | How to Write a Novel & Writing Advice · #261. 5 Mistakes Writers Make Using the Save the Cat! Beat Sheet · 18 Aug 2026 podcast

to grab your free guide to help you plot your novel with Save the Cat. podcast-host

All right, now let's go ahead and dive into the first mistake I see writers make when using Save the Cat to plot their novels. podcast-host

And mistake number one is filling in the beat sheet before you develop your story's foundation. podcast-host

So one of the biggest mistakes writers make with the Save the Cat beat sheet is using it as a way to develop their story from scratch. podcast-host

And what I mean by that is let's say you have a protagonist in mind already. podcast-host

You have an interesting premise you want to explore, or maybe even a handful of scenes that you can already picture. podcast-host

So you open the beat sheet and you start working through the 15 beats, hoping that the framework will help you figure out the rest. podcast-host

And for some writers, that may work. podcast-host

But for most writers, this is where the beat sheet starts to feel surprisingly difficult to fill in. podcast-host

And that's because the Save the Cat beat sheet helps you organize your story around 15 minutes. podcast-host

Major beats, but you still need to know what story you're trying to tell underneath those 15 beats. podcast-host

And if that underlying story is unclear, then it can be really difficult for you to decide what should happen in each one of those beats, even if the beat sheet is really good at explaining what kind of event should happen in each one of those moments. podcast-host

And this is why I always recommend starting out with story development. podcast-host

So getting clear on the story you're trying to tell. podcast-host

Tell, specifically getting clear on things like what your protagonist wants and why, what's at stake if they fail, who or what stands in their way, what they're struggling with internally and how they might need to change, as well as what kind of story you're telling and what readers might expect from a story like yours. podcast-host

Now, this doesn't mean getting clear on every single detail about your story before you start mapping out your plot, but it does mean having enough of a foundation. podcast-host

foundation in place so that you have something meaningful to plot or so that you have something meaningful to put inside the 15 beats that the save the cat beat sheet calls for. podcast-host

Alright, so if this mistake resonates, I want you to pause and ask yourself: do I understand the basic pieces of my story well enough to start plotting? podcast-host

Or am I still trying to figure out who my protagonist is, what they want, what the central conflict's gonna look like, what's at stake, what their internal struggle is, and what readers might expect from this kind of story as I fill in the beat sheet. podcast-host

And if it's the latter, that podcast-host

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