An essential part of plotting a story is to raise the stakes as the story progresses. Your character has to have something to lose to make the story meaningful.
And the things they stand to lose should increase or get bigger over time over time.
In this way, stakes act as a kind of negotiation between the protagonist and the narrator. The narrator figuratively asks, “Are you willing to go this far to achieve your goal?”, “OK then, how about this far?”.
To establish the stakes, just make it clear that something bad will happen if your character doesn’t do a thing. The “bad thing” should not leave them in a neutral state, either. If they don’t do what they should, and the bad thing happens, then the character will be worse off than before.
For example, suppose your main character has been infected by a zombie virus and they must find a certain scientist to get the cure. The “bad thing” that will happen is that they become a zombie, which is much worse than their normal state.
Suppose they find the scientist and get the cure, but there is only enough for one person, and by now, many people are infected. Now the stakes are raised.
There are several reliable ways to raise the stakes in a story. Here are some of them:
Make the Consequences Worse
If your character were to fail at their task, something bad will happen to them or the world around them. These are the external consequences.
To raise the stakes here, just make the consequences worse. If a building was going to blow up, now two buildings will blow up. If a stranger was going to die, now it is a close personal friend that will die.
Raising the stakes like this is a kind of bait-and-switch where the character thought they were trying to stop one thing, only to find out it was worse than they thought.
Create Emotional Consequences
The stakes don’t just have to be physical. Quite often, a story will revolve around emotional stakes.
This means that there is something your character cares about a great deal that they stand to lose. It can also mean that the “bad thing” that could happen is some kind of emotional pain, like being embarrassed, or traumatised.
You can combine external consequences with emotional consequences to make the stakes even higher than they would be if it were just one or the other.
Suppose your character wants to kill the werewolf that killed his child. If he fails, he will be unable to avenge his child and will drown in misery. These are the emotional stakes. The werewolf will also be free to kill others. These are the external consequences.
Use a Time Limit
One of the easiest ways to raise the stakes is to add some sort of ticking clock. If a bomb will go off after twenty minutes, it is a much more tense situation than if a bomb will go off sometime in the future.
As the timer counts down to zero, the tension naturally rises.
Of course, you don’t have to use a bomb. Any kind of time limit will raise the stakes. For example, your character may need to catch a plane and they are running late. Or, they may need to solve the mystery of a curse as it kills off a group of house guests, one by one.
Time limits work well in stories that revolve around curses. The movie Ring is a good example. It’s about a cursed videotape. Whoever watches it will be killed in seven days. The main character watches the tape, thinking it’s nonsense and gets cursed. She must then rush around, trying to solve the mystery of the curse as she slowly falls into despair.
Set Clear Goals for Your Characters
The stakes keep the reader engaged, but the stakes need to make sense. For that, you need to know what the character’s goals are. The goals suggest the stakes.
For example, if a character wants to build a bridge, the goal is to build it and the stakes are that he will fail. Further stakes could be that someone will prevent him from building it, or someone may damage it after it’s built. Something could happen that causes the bridge to fall down mid-construction.
Each of these stakes arise from the character’s goal so it’s a good idea to give your character a clear, well-defined goal.
Your character may have a personal goal as well as an overall goal that is tied to the plot.
For example, they might have the personal goal of becoming a piano player, while the plot has them in a town overrun with zombies. The overall goal is to escape the zombies.
The stakes are that they may be eaten by zombies. But there is also the personal stake that their hands may be damaged while fighting, and they may never become a piano player.
Learn how to setup a Horror Scene here
Create an Emotional Dilemma
You can create a high-stakes situation by making your character face a terrible choice. If they have to choose from two evils, they are going to lose something no matter what their choice is.
The stakes are now the fact that if they choose the wrong option it could destroy them.
For example, suppose your character must kill someone they love to prevent them from turning into a monster. If they don’t do it, the loved one is doomed to suffer. If they do, then the loved one dies.
Either choice is terrible, but what if your character chooses to kill the loved one, only to find out later that they could have lived as a monster and learned to manage it? Or they may have chosen to let the loved one live as a monster, but the monster goes and kills a bunch of children.
There is no right choice, it’s a matter of which of the two tragedies your character is willing to bear.
Another way to use an emotional dilemma is by having your character make a sacrifice.
If your character has to give up something to proceed, they will have to question if it is worth it. You can show how high the stakes are by showing what your character is willing to give up in order not to lose.
Sometimes, they may have to give up something external to avoid losing emotionally, other times, it is the other way around.
Your character could give up one external thing for another. For example, a bank robber might drop the bag of money they stole to escape from a monster.
Your character could also pay emotionally, to preserve another emotion. For example, they may face an embarrassing situation to protect a friend.
An emotional dilemma involves testing your character’s core values.
Learn how to write a Horror Story Opening here
Things to Avoid
One of the major pitfalls in writing a story is to only pay attention to the major stakes while ignoring the minor ones.
Sure, there are a small number of high stakes that form the theme of the story, but they aren’t the only ones. Every scene has its own stakes and every character has their own stakes too.
The stakes are what give each character their motivation. Nobody does anything unless there is something they stand to lose or something they will miss out on. So every character, no matter how minor, must have stakes or some kind.
Each scene in the story can be framed as the establishment of new stakes. You can think of a scene as a block of story where the motivation changes, or in other words, where new stakes are introduced.
If you don’t pay attention to the minor stakes of each character and scene, your story can come off as flat and your readers will lose interest.
You should demonstrate a clear escalation of stakes throughout the story to show why the characters act the way they do and why the scenes unfold in a certain way.
Another thing to avoid is plot armour. This is when the reader is certain that a character will not come to harm simply because they are the focus of the plot.
When a character, usually your main character, survives certain death too many times it becomes obvious that they cannot be hurt. The writer won’t let them. This is plot armour.
The problem with plot armour is that it takes away all the tension you have built up. The stakes no longer matter if a character is invincible.
They could be dangling upside down above a pit of crocodiles, and it doesn’t matter, because we all know they are going to survive unscathed.
Plot armour is the opposite of establishing stakes. It takes away a character’s motivation and makes scenes seem random and arbitrary.
Now, you can’t just kill off your main character in the middle of a story just to show that they are vulnerable. But you do have to carefully balance the stakes against the character’s actions.
Try to make it clear that the danger is real with the suggestion that your character could be hurt. Playing on the suggestion is the key.
For example, in the above situation with the crocodiles, you could establish that the main character might be killed because there is a new character that could replace them.
Suppose your character is an investigator, and he is going to be captured by an evil cult that will feed him to the crocodiles. You could introduce your character’s replacement in an earlier scene.
Your character might say to the new guy, “If something happens to me, make sure you bring these guys down.” Now, when he is dangling above the pit of crocodiles, the reader can’t be sure if he is going to survive.
It can be a tricky balancing act, but avoiding plot armour is one of the skills you need to develop to become a great writer.
