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 · #256. Why “Just Start Writing” Can Be Terrible Advice for New Writers · 14 Jul 2026 podcast

So you don't need a perfect outline, you don't need a 100-page document mapping out every detail, you don't need every scene planned before you write a word, you just need enough clarity to understand what you're writing and where things are headed so that when you sit down to draft, you're not inventing the whole book from scratch every single time.

Now, at minimum, this means knowing a handful of things.

Number one, the genre that you're writing and the kind of experience readers of that genre are expecting.

So what is your genre and what do readers expect from a book like yours?

Number two, who is your protagonist?

What do they want and why does that matter to them?

So you do want to flesh out your protagonist.

Make sure you know what they want and why they want it.

Number three, what is standing in your protagonist's way and what's at stake if they fail?

So what is the central conflict that's getting in their way and what is at stake?

Number four, you want to have some kind of idea of what the major turning points are in your story that force your protagonist to make harder and harder choices and grow and change, right?

So what are those key turning points?

And then lastly, number five, what is the theme of your story or what is your story really about underneath the plot?

All right, so I highly recommend answering these five questions.

And this is the work of story development.

And it's what will give you the level of clarity that you're hoping for.

So you'll have enough clarity to move forward with direction, even if you end up taking a few detours along the way.

All right, now what you do with this kind of clarity is up to you.

So some writers will take those five questions and they'll use that information to map out every scene in a detailed outline.

That's totally fine.

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