Stakes as Story Fuel

A two-step test to find and fix the stakes of your story

Do you know what the stakes of your story are? Does your story feel sluggish in the middle? Maybe the first few chapters of your book came easily, but you’re starting to feel your story engine either idle…or come to a stop altogether.

The issue I most often find in authors’ work is an error so big, that when you get this wrong, you’re going to see evidence of it in at least three aspects of your work:

1. Your story’s pacing will be meandering or slow.

2. You’re going to struggle with writer’s block.

3. Your hook won’t be deep enough to catch very many readers in your net.

Today, I want to share a two-step test you can apply to see if your story has stakes. And if you fail the two-step test, I have a simple fix to ensure your book is not missing this critical building block.

I believe a story’s stakes are so important that when I teach writing or editing, I define stakes in the very first lesson. So let’s start there. What are the stakes of your story?

Stakes are the critical story-building elements that provide time pressure to a character’s goal or which create imminent and authentic consequences for a character’s goal.

Applying Stakes to a Story - The Case of Delia

Let’s take the first aspect of that definition first. What does it mean to provide time pressure to a goal? I’ll give you an example:

You’re writing urban fantasy. You have a character, Delia, a young woman who comes from a family of powerful witches. When Delia decides to attend a college for humans, her mother casts her out of the coven. The book opens when Delia is twenty-seven and a successful software engineer. There is no room in her life for magic and the danger and chaos it brings. It’s been years since she’s spoken to her mother, but Delia can’t deny there are changes happening within her. Dark nightmares, spooky visions, and something that might be sleepwalking has landed her in the hospital twice. If Delia wants to figure out what’s happening, she is sure she needs to repair their relationship with their mother, the leader of their coven. Can Delia, who swore off magic forever, save herself before it’s too late?  

If we look at our storybuilding checklist, this premise checks a lot of boxes:

• We have a main character, Delia, and we know she has a backstory and problems.

• I see a plot—Delia’s goal is to figure out what’s happening to her before it’s too late.

• There is worldbuilding present, in the form of magic and technology.

• Do we have internal and external conflict? I can see where conflict might happen, even if it’s not entirely clear from this brief blurb.

I assume there will be external conflict—obstacles that keep her from saving her job and herself—as well as internal conflict—obstacles that come from Delia herself that stop her from reaching her goal. But certainly if I want to feel my premise is air-tight, I might look deeper into the specificity of the conflicts.

But next let’s look for the stakes.

Analyzing the Story - Does It Have Stakes?

Let’s apply the first test to determine whether or not a story has stakes. Ask yourself this question:

1. Is there a clear deadline or timeframe within which Delia must reach her goal?

Let’s look back at the premise and see if we can find a deadline or timeframe. The only mention of timing I see is

Now don’t be confused by this. Yes, there is a mention of time and time pressure, but it’s very general. Let’s add the second test and see if we feel more clear about what’s there and what might be missing.  

2. Are there imminent and authentic consequences that will happen to the character if they do not reach their goal by a deadline?

Here’s where I can be very confident that the story is missing stakes.

Think about this: do we know when Delia MUST figure out her magic by? Do we know what will happen when that moment or milestone arrives? How will we know when it happens?

Delia is experiencing changes, but I cannot tell from the write-up provided what will happen to Delia if she doesn’t figure out her magic by a certain moment or milestone.

Let’s try and add stakes to the story and see how that changes the story and its pacing.

Delia comes from a family of powerful witches. After Delia’s father, headmaster of the Coven Academy for Witches, is mysteriously murdered, Delia is devastated and swears off magic for good. She decides to attend a college for humans, and her mother casts her out of the coven.

The book opens when Delia is twenty-seven and a successful software engineer. There is no room in her life for magic and the danger and chaos it brings. It’s been years since she’s spoken to her mother, but Delia can’t deny there are changes happening within her that feel magical in nature. Dark nightmares, spooky visions, and something that might be sleepwalking has landed her in the hospital twice.

Everything changes when Delia wakes up after one of these episodes in the hospital only to find her father standing over her bed. He disappears—literally disappears from her sight—before she can speak to him, but he leaves a message in the secret code he taught her as a child.  Stop her, the message says, before the Tenth Veil Ascension, or there will be no bringing me back.

The Tenth Veil Ascension happens only once every ten years. This ceremony elevates a witch to queen or king of the coven, and gives that leader absolute rule for a period of ten years. After all this time, Delia doesn’t know who she must stop from ascending to Queen of the Coven. But if there is a chance to bring her father back to the plane of the living and bring the person who murdered him to justice, she will stop at nothing to do just that—even if that means going home and facing her mother.

Can Delia solve the mystery of who killed her father and bring him back before it’s too late?

You can probably tell that I’ve added quite a bit to the above premise; that’s because in creating the stakes, we naturally deepen every other essential building block of the story! Notice what’s new. Now we have a time deadline for Delia’s action, right? She has to stop whoever it is that is likely to ascend at the Tenth Veil ceremony, so that means there is a date when this ceremony will take place. Throughout the story, Delia will be in a race against time to accomplish her goal before the ceremony takes place.

What will happen if she does not succeed in stopping whoever this she is? There we find our authentic consequences! She will not solve the mystery of what happened to her father and she will not be able to bring him back!

The Effect of Stakes on Storybuilding

In creating that time element and the consequences, we are forced to give our character more depth and the story more specificity. Now when we write Delia, we’ll have emotional anchors for her. She’s got to be someone who is suffering as a result of losing her father. She’s got to be someone with issues because she was cast out by her mother. That gives us motivation for her goal and sets up some delicious conflicts, rights? Internal conflicts are much more clear: she’ll likely suffer guilt and anxiety over going back to the coven; fear and a sense of betrayal. As far as external conflict goes, there will be obstacles that come between Delia and this ceremony because I’m sure whoever is ascending to power won’t want anyone to stop them. And I can’t imagine whoever is responsible from Delia’s father’s death isn’t going to try and stop her from solving the mystery!

Even the worldbuilding deepens because I need to focus more clearly on the magic system, the coven structure, the society that Delia left as well as the one she lives in among humans to build a world that can consistently support the things the writer wants to happen. And all of that is solved by adding or deepening the stakes of the story!

Is the topic of stakes a challenge for you? Do you struggle to write sharp stakes or find the stakes of your story? Post below in the comments and let me know how you struggle with stakes in your story!