In an article for Writer’s Digest, Bob Johnson shares five tips for revealing the stakes in your story. “Many writers strive to suggest a story’s coming complications—its ‘stakes’—in the first paragraph or two,” he writes. “These details reveal something that will intrude on a character’s happiness or prevent them from getting what they need.”
But how can you do that? Johnson suggests a few techniques:
- Put your protagonist in an uncomfortable place. Create a scenario where your main character is clearly out of place or compare their status quo with their peers’.
- Use stark, physical details. Uncomfortable or unusual physical characteristics can convey your character’s unhappiness or isolation.
- When you do use an abstraction, make it a lightning bolt. Instead of telling the reader that your character is lonely, show them a few of her unacceptable suitors.
- Take two weeks off and then quit altogether. “If you’re mired in the mud over stakes or anything else, try shaking things up,” Johnson says. “Change your protagonist’s name from Harold to Lucille. Switch from the close-third to first-person POV.” In other words, forget that you’re stressed about your opening and listen to what your story is telling you.
