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 months

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 · #258. 5 Myths Keeping You From Finishing Your First Draft · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

It can explain what the central conflict's purpose is in a story, but it can't decide what the central conflict of your story should be, right?

A podcast can teach you why your protagonist needs a clear goal and what the function of that is in your story, but it can't choose your specific character's goal for you.

Those kind of answers only start emerging when you start making decisions about your own story.

Again, what your protagonist wants, why they want it, what the central conflict is, and how one event leads to the next.

Now again, a caveat here, that does not mean that you need to stop learning or blindly start drafting.

It just means letting what you learn lead you back to your story.

So instead of asking, what else do I need to learn about writing or what else could I learn?

Because we know there are so many things that you could learn and read up on, right?

There are so many things.

Instead of that, I want you to start asking, how can I apply what I'm learning to the novel that I'm actually writing?

And the truth here is that you're never going to feel as ready as you think you should.

That's because no amount of preparation or reading or learning can remove the uncertainty that's always going to be there before you start writing.

It's just never going to happen as much as I wish it could.

So at some point your progress is going to depend less on finding another answer and more on making decisions for your own story, all while knowing you can refine things later.

So you're not locked into the decisions you make, but you do need to start making those decisions.

All right, so the key takeaway here is that learning, of course, helps when it gives you a new question or a new tool that you can apply to your novel.

But more information alone is not going to make you feel ready to start writing, start outlining, or to ultimately finish your draft.

So just remember that progress comes from using what you already know to make real decisions about your story.

Now next up is myth number three, and this is the myth that beautiful writing makes a good story.

Now when most people picture a successful writer, they picture someone who just produces gorgeous sentences, vivid descriptions, clever metaphors, and paragraphs that just flow out of them effortlessly.

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