Setting the Stakes in Fiction

Make your readers care.

What does your protagonist want?

Cinderella wants to marry the Prince. Henry wants to help ET return home. Frodo wants to carry the One Ring to

Mount Doom. Romeo wants Juliet. Oa (The Child Goddess) wants to grow

up.

What if your protagonist fails?

Cinderella will be stuck in the ashes.

ET will die. Middle Earth will be lost to Sauron. Romeo will lose his beloved. Oa will never find her soul.

Stakes matter when characters matter.

Han Solo is a charming rascal; we fear for him when he gets frozen.

Anakin/Darth Vader is unsympathetic.

Oa has the eternal appeal of an abandoned child.

ET is noble and self-sacrificing.

Choose your battles. Stakes can be internal, as in Sophie’s Choice. Stakes can be global, as in The Forge of God. Don’t protect your characters; get them in

trouble. Kill them if you have to. (Simon in Child Goddess) Hurt them when they fall. (Superman) Make them suffer. (Henry begins to die with ET)

Use something that matters to you, and exaggerate it.

Characters have backstory.

Mal Reynolds (Firefly) was a disillusioned Christian soldier.

Henry is a lonely child of divorced parents.

Harry Potter is an orphan in danger.

Anakin’s backstory comes too late.

Great characters have flaws. Superman is vulnerable to

kryptonite. Data of Star Trek longs to

understand human feelings. Romeo is naïve and impulsive. Dr. House (House) is rude and

arrogant. Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby)

longs to be part of the aristocracy.

Reversals escalate tension.

Just when things can’t get any worse, they do. In AI, the little robot is abandoned by

its beloved mother, then captured by killers.

In House, patients always get much worse before they get better.

Just as Frodo finally reaches Mount Doom, Smeagol attacks him.

Endings: answering the questions.

Climaxes are internal and external. Conflicts converge at the end. (ET,

Cinderella) Success is never sure. (Lord of the Rings)

Allow the narrative momentum to carry the story to the end. A fast pace rockets to the climax. (Children

of Men) A more leisurely pace resolves gradually.

(The Queen)