In a new post, Janice Hardy offers advice on raising the stakes for your character. “When the stakes are low, reader engagement also tends to be low,” she says. “When there’s nothing ‘bad’ hanging over the character’s heads, and there are no consequences for their actions, the plot becomes less important—and less compelling—to readers. Even a well-written scene can lack tension if there’s nothing at stake for the people in that scene.”
Hardy suggests five ways to raise the stakes in your scenes:
- Add a negative change. Even small changes can add stress to your character and make big moments tougher to handle. “Small things going wrong can also signal trouble brewing, and is a useful way to foreshadow a bigger upcoming problem,” Hardy adds.
- Show the cost of failure. “Stakes typically have more impact when readers know what price the protagonist and their allies will have to pay if their plans don’t work,” Hardy writes. “You can also show the consequences by letting them happen to another, less important character.”
- Make it personal. If the stakes don’t affect your protagonist, your reader won’t invest. Personal stakes can also be smaller, because the reader knows your character’s weak spots.
- Have something go wrong. “How would the scene change if something in the scene didn’t go the way it you planned?” Hardy asks. “Take a few minutes and look at all the possible moments in a scene where things could go wrong, then brainstorm what would happen if one of them did.”
- Give it far-reaching consequences. Adding complications or making things worse doesn’t mean you’ve altered your story. Even if a character suffers an injury while reaching a goal, it will mean less if that injury doesn’t have repercussions throughout the rest of the story. “Not every stake needs to be a story-changer, but don’t just throw a consequence in there that isn’t really a problem,” Hardy says. “It’s the ‘or else’ that makes readers worry.”
