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

And here's what this stuck point feels like.

Maybe for you, the first stretch of your story flew by.

So whether you were outlining or drafting, either way, you were excited.

The words and ideas came and you thought, maybe this is the draft I'm finally going to finish.

And then somewhere around 20,000 to 30,000 words, often right near the end of your first act, you open your document and you realize you have no idea what's supposed to happen next.

And typically what I see is that writers will tell themselves that they've just lost inspiration or that maybe their idea wasn't as strong as they thought.

But what may have actually happened is that your whole first act was running on setup.

So introducing the characters, establishing the world, and revealing the problem that's about to disrupt your protagonist's life.

And yes, that gives you plenty to write at first, but eventually the setup is going to run out.

And when it does, the only thing that can carry your story into the next act is a protagonist who has decided what they want and who has set out to get it.

So to clarify, if you're stuck here, you might need to do a little bit more work developing your protagonist goal.

And for your protagonist to actually drive your story forward in pursuit of this goal, it needs to be something specific.

So what I mean by that is it's not really enough for your protagonist to want something broad like happiness or freedom or safety or love.

Those big desires definitely matter, but something like happiness looks differently for everybody, right?

How are we going to know if your particular character achieves happiness by the end of the story or not?

Those big desires matter, but they're not exactly helpful in terms of telling you what should happen next in your story.

So your protagonist needs a specific result they're going after.

Maybe they want to solve the murder.

Maybe they're looking to win a competition or rescue a missing child.

Maybe they're trying to escape their marriage.

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