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

Who is this woman and why does the truth threaten the life she's built?

Is she going to start investigating her husband?

Is she going to work to expose him?

Is she trying to escape him or trying to protect someone from him, right?

Like what is actually happening?

And then what kind of conflict is that going to pull her into, right?

So essentially, we would need to take this idea and develop it a little bit more.

Because right now what it is is it's an interesting premise and kind of like a collection of exciting possibilities, but there's no real story there yet.

We don't really know what's coming or what's going to happen.

And that is okay.

A lot of writers have not been taught how to develop their ideas into something that can support a full-length novel.

But this is also exactly why chapter one either won't come or it never feels solid enough for you to move past.

Because if you think about it, an opening's whole job is to set up the story that follows.

So if you haven't chosen what that story is yet, or if you don't really know what's coming, then your opening just has too many possible jobs to do and none of them are going to feel definitively right.

So the fix here is not a better first sentence or to keep polishing your first chapter.

Instead, it's to step back from your opening and develop your ideas into something that can support a full-length novel.

So this means you'll want to dig into who your protagonist is, what they want and why, what conflict they're going to face in the story, how they're going to change as a result of that conflict, and things like that.

Once you do that, chapter one stops being a guessing game and it becomes more of an informed decision.

All right, so if you're stuck in chapter one or right before chapter one, that is probably what's going on and you just need to develop the foundational elements of your story a little bit better before you start writing.

Now, the second common stuck point happens right around 20,000 words.

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