What are stakes?
If someone told you that your story needs better stakes, there’s a decent chance you’d have no idea how to fix that. “Stakes” is a word which has been so thoroughly analyzed and deconstructed, it can be hard to recognize anymore.
We know stakes serve an important function: to give a sense of gravity. They’re how we communicate the importance of our plot events, and the dangers our characters face. They’re how we keep readers glued to the edge of their seats. But how do we come up with stakes? And how do we know when we’ve got the right ones?
Try this question instead
Ready? Here it comes.
What is something bad that could happen?
This question might seem vague, but that’s why it works. There are a million bad things that could happen; we have no trouble coming up with those. Stakes should be just as easy, because they’re simply the awareness of bad things that could happen.
Stakes are looming danger. They’re the possibility that our characters’ hopes and dreams could be dashed to the rocks. They’re the very present threat of something bad that could happen.
A photojournalist is traveling to a war-torn country. What is something bad that could happen?
A young entrepreneur is about to make the deal of a lifetime. What is something bad that could happen?
A boy has discovered his magic powers. What is something bad that could happen?
This question asks us to consider the potential dangers of the world. But it also has another function: forcing us to think about the specific desires of our characters, and find those which are most at risk. Stakes function best when they’re not about the commonplace bad things that happen to everyone, but the specific bad things that ours characters fear most. They’re personal. And narrowing the list down from “anything and everything” to specific, character-centric fears should reduce that million to just a few biggies.
They might want to have a child. Or a friend. A husband or a wife. A dream job, or abundant wealth. A specific outcome. A cultural movement. Survival, adulation, notoriety–or infamy. Stability. To get revenge. To heal. If our characters want any of these things or want to keep what they already have, and if those things are imperiled by the world, or by the villain, or by their own wayward hearts, then we have stakes.
Stakes are something our characters want but might not get. Or they are something our characters have but could lose.
And don’t make that loss a remote possibility. Make it terrifyingly real. The more certain readers are that something bad could happen to our characters, the more they will fear the worst, hope for the best, and keep on reading to find out if they’re allowed to breathe again.
Creating stakes
In order for personal stakes to exist, our characters have to care about something. Whether it’s in the past, present, or future, they must have skin in the game. And that’s what creates the potential for something bad to happen.
Building stakes, then, is a matter of creating characters who have specific desires in an environment where obtaining those desires is not guaranteed. An apathetic character has no stakes, because they have nothing to lose (except, perhaps, the equilibrium of apathy). But a character with desires, with dreams, is someone whose fate is uncertain, who could meet victory or defeat.
And here’s the good news: if stakes are the expression of specific, personal desires, then they’ll come about naturally when we’re writing complex characters. Part of making someone true to life is giving them something to long for. The more we are able to pinpoint whatever it is that gets them up in the morning, or the hill on which they would gladly die, the closer we’ll be to having stakes.
One last tip
I think there’s a perspective shift that can help in knowing whether you’ve done your job. Try switching the angle of this question. If you were to ask your readers, “What’s something bad that could happen?” would they have an answer?
If so, you have successfully created stakes.