Raising the Stakes
Sometimes when reading over my work, I find that the story feels...dull. Recently, I’ve come to realize that it’s because I’m not giving my story high enough stakes! Without a solid risk to back up your conflict, what is the point of your conflict at all? High stakes are a necessity to grip your reading and keep them engaged in the story, so what can you do to raise those stakes if they’re feeling flat?
Figure out what your characters want, and stop them from getting it. This relates back into your conflict. Your conflict is sourced by what your character stands against in achieving their goal. Your stakes are what they risk losing if they don’t achieve this goal, and there what they stand to gain if they succeed.
Give them a personal reason to care, and show how their world will be shattered if they fail. Your stakes don’t need to be world endingly huge, but they should seem that way to your character. Maybe they aren’t trying to stop the apocalypse, but if they don’t stop this Baron from making a deal with the King, they will lose their homeland. The more your stakes matter to your character, the more they will matter to you reader.
As with all things writing, do this on a macro and micro level. Across the entire narrative, your story will have a couple major stakes and sources of conflict, but try to achieve this on a more chapter to chapter level, too. For example, your character is trying to sell their gemstone brooch to a pawn shop so they have enough money to pay for a ride to the next village, and the pawn broker is a known swindle. The entire book isn’t building to the outcome of this deal, but if the deal fails then they’re going to lose two days travel time. See? Even that little risk makes things much more interesting.
At the end of the day, raising the stakes = giving a character more reasons to care. If you can make it matter intensely to your character, you can make it matter intensely to your reader.
εїз Happy Writing, Creative Minds! εїз