Hey, it’s Emily!
I know what it’s like to devote days, weeks, months to writing a story only for it to feel flat. It’s an issue that can affect the overarching plot in a novel or individual scenes. The solution? Raise the stakes.
Stakes propel the plot. They are the answers to the questions, “What are the consequences if my character fails?” and “What does my character stand to lose?” Making sure your readers (and sometimes your characters) understand the risks creates tension in your novel, which will create an on-the-edge-of-my-seat reaction from your readers. They won’t want to put your book down.
Not only do stakes build suspense to keep readers engaged, but stakes can also drive the story’s plot and support its themes. The risks and consequences give characters a reason to act, initiate their arcs, and highlight their values. To use stakes in your writing, you must first understand the shapes they take.
Types of Stakes
Physical Stakes
Physical stakes, also called external stakes, are the risks and consequences that will affect the outer world. This could be everything from life-and-death situations to political disputes. In either case, the consequences will affect your world—a character dies, an alliance breaks, and the course of the novel shifts.
Take The Maze Runner by James Dashner. In it, the runners—who venture into the maze each day to search for an escape route—risk their lives with every outing, avoiding monstrous Grievers and facing some close calls. When the main character Thomas encounters a whole group of Grievers, the readers can’t help but share his fear and adrenaline, because they know what he will lose if he fails. His life.
“He scrambled to his feet and sprinted forward. Sounds of pursuit, this time from all four Grievers, followed close behind. Sure that he was pushing his body beyond its physical limits, he ran on, trying to rid himself of the hopeless feeling that it was only a matter of time before they got him.” —The Maze Runner, Chapter 21
Dashner increases the stakes and tension further by making his readers aware of the other consequences should Thomas and the runners fail. Without the runners’ maps of the maze, the other kids trapped in the center of the maze—The Glade—will never escape and return to their lives and loved ones. A lot rides on Thomas succeeding, and the readers are ready to stick around to see how it all plays out.
Emotional Stakes
But stakes can take another form as well. A good way to weave tension and nuance throughout your story is through emotional (or internal) stakes. With this kind of stakes, readers have a chance to glimpse into the characters’ inner world and emotional struggles. Whether it be secrets, insecurities, heartache, or desire, these factors will encourage readers to empathize with your characters.
In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling begins the first third of the book with a protagonist under emotional stress. (Spoilers ahead!) After witnessing Cedric Diggory’s murder at the end of the previous book, as well as Lord Voledmort’s resurrection, Harry is overcome with survivor’s guilt and a desire for vengeance, all the while dealing with nightmares and visions. When Harry finally reunites with his friends in the Wizarding World, his emotions erupt and threaten his friendships.
"Every bitter and resentful thought that Harry had had in the past month was pouring out of him; his frustration at the lack of news, the hurt that they had all been together without him, his fury at being followed and not told about it: All the feelings he was half-ashamed of finally burst their boundaries. [...] Ron was standing there with his mouth half-open, clearly stunned and at a loss for anything to say, while Hermione looked on the verge of tears." —Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 4
Harry’s turmoil continues throughout the book, sometimes alleviating and sometimes escalating with every new threat and loss. But Rowling keeps her readers invested in Harry’s emotional state. Will his friendships survive? Will he forgive himself? Will his fury push him off the edge?
These emotional stakes also support the novel’s themes, primarily those of loss and grief, as well as isolation, adulthood, identity, and justice. Thus, Rowling uses the logical progression of Harry’s trauma for efficient writing, strengthening the story’s motifs and giving her readers a reason to root for healing.
How to Set Up Your Own Stakes
Here are three quick tips for boosting the stakes and tension in your own writing, based on what I’ve learned as a writer:
Know Your Character’s Wants and Prevent Easy Access
Whether goals, desires, or needs, every character should be pursuing something. The obstacles that the character encounters on the road to reach his or her goals will then raise the stakes and increase the story’s tension—that is, so long as readers have a reason to relate to and root for that character. Your goal as a writer is to make your readers want your character to succeed, just as much as your character wishes to succeed.
Escalate the Obstacles and Give Them Variety
Without going overboard, writers should gradually escalate the obstacles over the course of the story. The first obstacle may be something small, like dealing with a minor antagonist. Think an academic rival or a henchman of the main villain. But by the end of the novel, readers will expect a much bigger threat—an evil wizard, a colossal beast, an enemy army.
The threat doesn’t have to be tangible, though. Minor and major obstacles alike could be an emotional turmoil—a loss of identity, the death of a friend, the end of a relationship. They could be a moral dilemma, such as a decision to do what’s right instead of what’s easy. The threat could be psychological, betrayal, or geographical (like perilous terrain).
You can give your story’s threats variety, but to raise the stakes the obstacles must grow more dangerous as the plot progresses. This will have your readers invested, wondering what could possibly come next, and what could possibly be worse.
Maximize the Consequences and Make It Personal
This tip may be the most essential in raising your story’s stakes. When you maximize the consequences for your characters should they fail, you maximize their losses should they fail. Just as students fear failing a test lest they should have to repeat a difficult class, or as judges fear condemning the wrong man, so should your characters reasonably fear failure.
These consequences don’t always have to be the maximum for the writer to maximize them. The end of the world, for example, is a massive consequence, but sometimes something so big doesn’t feel real to your readers. Big consequences are good, but—more importantly—make the consequences personal. His reputation is on the line. Her hometown could be destroyed. His dream is slipping through his fingers. Her memory is fading. Make the consequences hurt—whether they happen or not.
While these tips are mostly geared towards overarching plot, you can apply all these lessons in a smaller scale for individual scenes! Give it a try sometime!
Threats in The Threadborne Throne
In Honey’s story, like most stories, the stakes start small. The plot begins with Honey’s brother, Hunter, disappearing. Honey—and hopefully the readers—are asking, Where did he go? Did he leave by choice or force? Is he in danger? The consequences are personal for Honey, because Hunter is her little brother. If is in danger and dies, that’s a physical consequence, and the grief that the Heimsol family would suffer is an emotional consequence. Plus, Hunter’s disappearance wrecks the small town, close family life Honey has enjoyed and romanticized her whole life.
Later, Honey finds her brother but learns that he chose to leave. Hunter doesn’t want to return home because he’s found a calling of his own that contradicts Honey’s desire to hold her family close. Honey succeeds in finding Hunter, but she fails to bring him home, and now her status quo is destroyed.
Many more plot points lead up to this event, but towards the end of the novel, Honey will have to face an ancient evil that once lay dormant for years because of her ancestors and their noble sacrifices. The stakes are not so small anymore, because the consequences no longer just affect the Heimsol family but the whole kingdom. Honey will have to risk both the life she’s built up in her mind and her actual life to do what’s right, fight for a new cause she believes in, and save the people she loves.
In this example you can see how we know our character’s desires and withhold them from her, increase the obstacles over time and give them variety, and make the consequences personal. Hopefully, this means that readers of our story will find reasons to root for our character and feel the suspense we’ve built using stakes.
Updates!
Thanks for keeping up with our blog! Gabrielle and I love delving into our favorite writing topics and sharing what we’ve learned and researched! If you follow our Instagram, you will have seen that we’re making some updates to our posting schedule. Because Gabrielle and I are finishing our degrees, and because we want to provide quality over quantity, we will only be posting a blog every other week instead of every week for a while.
Another change, which you’ll see in our next blog post, is that Gabrielle and I will organize our posts a little differently. We would like to focus more on Honey Heimsol and the process of creating a story from scratch, which means we plan to rely less on examples from established works of fiction.
Please reach out to us—on Instagram, Twitter, or email—if you would like to give us feedback, recommend a blog series topic, or hire our editing services! We love stories and hope that we can be a helpful tool in polishing your pieces so they are publish-ready!
Till then, bee brilliant!
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