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 · #257. Stuck in Chapter One or the Messy Middle? What Your Stuck Point Reveals · 21 Jul 2026 podcast

Now, I do want to be fair and say that sometimes writers stop writing or outlining for reasons that have nothing to do with their craft.

Life gets full, your energy gets low, a hard season just doesn't leave room for writing.

All of that is of course real and that's okay.

But when you keep stalling in the same part of the outlining or drafting process, outline after outline or draft after draft, then that pattern is worth paying attention to because usually it's showing you exactly where your story needs more support.

And after more than a decade of coaching fiction writers and editing manuscripts, I can tell you that those stalls tend to land in the same three places again and again, either in chapter one or right before starting chapter one, somewhere around 20 to 30,000 words, and or somewhere deep in the messy middle.

And each one of those spots is pointing straight at a specific piece of your story that isn't quite developed yet.

So today we're going to walk through all three, including what each one might be telling you about your story, as well as what you can focus on strengthening so you can start moving forward again.

All right, so let's dive right in, starting with chapter one.

Now, if you're stuck in chapter one or right before chapter one, here's what that tends to look like.

You have the idea, maybe even a whole folder full of notes, but every time you sit down to write your opening, nothing feels right enough to commit to, so you don't commit.

Or maybe you've started writing about 10, 15 times, so you write chapter one, you hate it, you delete it, and you start over again.

And now you've polished that opening until it gleams and you still can't make yourself move on to chapter two.

If you can relate, I just want you to know that none of that means you lack discipline or anything like that.

The real issue is that you're probably still working with a situation rather than a fully developed story.

In other words, you have an intriguing premise, but you haven't decided what kind of story is going to grow out of it yet.

So what central problem this situation creates, what it forces your protagonist to do, and where that conflict is ultimately heading.

So let me show you what I mean.

Let's pretend we're working with a premise like a woman discovers her husband has been living a double life.

That does sound pretty interesting, right?

But what is actually going to happen because of that discovery?

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