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

Or maybe they want to expose a conspiracy.

Whatever it is, you want a clear and specific goal.

Because once your protagonist commits to a goal like that, their decisions and their actions are going to start generating your plot in act two.

So they're going to try something, they're going to hit a consequence, they're going to adjust their plan.

They're going to try something else, hit a consequence, adjust their plan, right?

And it keeps going over and over.

One action will create the need for the next.

But without a goal that is specific, your protagonist will spend the first act of your story probably reacting to things that are happening, you know, reacting to new information or to whatever's happening around them.

And then once all of that has been introduced, there's nothing pulling them forward and nothing helping you go into the next part of the book.

So again, the fix is just to make sure that by the end of your first act, your protagonist has landed on and committed to that goal.

And that is something specific to go after, achieve, accomplish, get, whatever, once the central conflict can't be ignored anymore.

So ask yourself, what exactly are they trying to achieve?

Why does it matter enough to keep going when things get hard?

And what could happen if they fail?

And then once you answer those questions, you'll have more to work with, you'll have more than just an interesting setup, and you'll have the direction you need to carry your story into the middle past that 20 or 30,000 word mark.

All right, so that is what to do if you are stuck somewhere around 20 to 30,000 words.

Now, stuck point three is the big one.

This is the messy middle.

This is the one we all dread, right?

And when you're stuck in the messy middle, it does not feel good.

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