In a recent post, Tiffany Yates Martin examines character stakes and why they are the key to pulling your reader into your story. “What happens in real life isn’t the same as what makes good story work in fiction,” she writes.
Yates Martin examines the Netflix film Scoop, about UK Prince Andrew’s connection with Jeffrey Epstein. While photos and interviews with Andrew are highly sought after by paparazzi, news producers, and interviewers, their pursuit of the prince lack personal stakes. None of them have a personal interest in the story, other than job-related, and none of them seem on the verge of a career bust or breakthrough that would be helped by landing a scoop. There’s no special importance attached to their goal and no pressure to achieve it.
As far as the film is concerned, the scandal doesn’t seem to affect Andrew. His family and status aren’t at risk. Generally, he finds the repeated questioning a nuisance. While that portrayal may be true to life, a character’s indifference to challenges doesn’t make for good drama. “Is Andrew fighting for his position in the royal family, the good works he feels he can do with it, or even the validity of the institution of monarchy altogether?” Yates Martin asks. “That may have inadvertently been part of the fallout of his damaging interview, but it’s not what seems to lie in the balance for him or the story as he gives the interview, which is (kind of?) the climactic event of the story.” The fictionalized interview itself is tepid, and the interviewer reveals no personal stakes or motivation for conducting it.
Further, even the story itself seems to serve no purpose. “The interview happens, Sam smiles in relief, Andrew goes off camera forever, and that’s that,” Yates Martin writes. “Social media buzzes about it, Emily thanks Sam, the news team congratulates itself or remaining relevant, and readers learn about the fallout for Andrew in a few title cards after the final scene.”
Stakes give your readers a reason to care what happens to your characters. If your hero’s failure won’t result in a major emotional, physical, or psychological loss, there’s less reason for your reader to keep turning pages. “If the characters don’t have something substantial and meaningful that they stand to gain or lose in the pursuit of their goals, then the story falls flat, as this one did, no matter how strong the rest of the story may be,” Yates Martin says.
