Amanda Frederickson's Blog: Musings - Posts Tagged "stakes"

I'm continuing some thoughts on establishing danger since it's a multi-faceted thing that deserves some more depth.

Ultimately, in any given story there is no suspense if there is nothing being threatened. Therefore, you need two things: a threat and something threatened. It's the simplest and hardest factor in writing anything because this is what will hold your audience or lose them.

Let's start with the thing being threatened. The stakes. This is what will make the audience care about your story. It can be the old standby of life, the universe, and everything, it can be the fate of a relationship, or it can be as simple as lunch. (Don't disregard the power of where the next meal is coming from; many a character has effectively hooked an audience by being hungry. Too many to start naming examples.)

So much for the easy part.

Any and every story has something at stake. The trick to it is making the audience care as much as (or more than) the characters do.

First, it has to matter to the characters.

An excellent example of this can be found in The Hobbit. J.R.R. Tolkien opens with a detailed description of Bilbo Baggins' home and its occupant, establishing his comfortable and predictable life (which of course is about to be disturbed). Why, given that Bilbo has "apparently settled down immovably," would he ever leave his hobbit hole for the dangers and discomfort of an adventure?

Because the stakes of the quest become personal.

...the music began all at once, so sudden and sweet that Bilbo forgot everything else, and was swept away into dark lands under strange moons, far over The Water and very far from his hobbit-hole under The Hill.... And suddenly first one then another began to sing as they played, deep throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes; and this is like a fragment of their song, if it can be like their song without their music.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold....

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him!

As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick.... He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns... he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered....

There's a little more that goes into Bilbo's ultimate decision to join the party, but this is his hook. Through the conveyance of the dwarves' haunting song, Bilbo gets a taste of what is at stake for them and it resonates with him, not only paving the way for a change of heart but also drawing in the reader. The words find a place in the reader that also empathizes with that longing and that's when the magic happens. The reader shares in that desire, that longing, and the stakes become personal.

The stakes for the characters become the stakes for the reader.

Jumping straight into things, the threat is whatever is trying to ruin your hero’s day. For this particular application I’m assuming some sort of monster-type threat (versus an evil empire type threat or interpersonal type threat or any other type threat). The threat is the foundation for the story’s conflict, so you want to make it a good one. A hero is only as good as the opposition, which means your threat cannot be easily defeated. Like, say, by a leaf.

Here’s the thing: the threat can’t just threaten the hero (though it certainly should do that as well). It has to threaten what’s at stake.

Think of our little hobbit hero. What is the main thing standing between Bilbo Baggins (and the dwarves) and reclaiming the dwarves’ halls of gold? The nice whopping dragon curled up in the middle of it all.

Are dragons dangerous? Of course they are. Everybody knows that. But why?

Because they breathe fire and eat people. Through Thorin’s detailed story we have the example of what this particular dragon has done in the past when it took over the Lonely Mountain in the first place. He set fire to everything (and just about everyone).

But is it enough to show that the monster in question is capable of destroying things? Actually, no. Simply being capable of threatening what’s at stake doesn’t mean that it will. It needs its own stakes and the motivation to pursue them. These opposing goals are what will truly make any conflict compelling. The audience can see what would result if the monster achieves its goals, and it needs to be bad. The dragon comes into play when its stakes (the heaps of gold) cross with Bilbo’s actions, and when it happens things really heat up. (Haha. ^_^;)

This is where tension is born.

So, the monster has its own goals and we see that it is capable of achieving those goals. Now it needs to do something about it.

(Because this thing ended up very long, I decided to move the detailed application for Rings of Akhaten to a second post. If you like seeing things applied to examples or if you like to see things torn to shreds, go on to that one. Coming soon: gratuitous deaths.)

Returning to the original example of the Rings of Akhaten, (you don’t really need a spoiler warning, do you?) on the surface there appears to be stakes, and there appears to be a threat, but is the monster dangerous?

What is at stake? We’re fairly convinced that what’s at stake is the life of the Queen of Years. Got stakes? Check. No problem. Cute kids make instant stakes.

Is the monster capable of threatening what’s at stake? Erm…. Getting shaky. We don’t know what’s supposed to happen if this “old god” or "grandfather" wakes up. Everybody on the asteroid with their Festival of Offerings seems happy. There’s no dreading of a fearsome laying waste to the asteroid field. No one is afraid of what the monster is capable of. More to the point, besides a vague assertion that it would be bad, we have no idea if it is capable of anything once it wakes up.

Capable of destruction? No details. Not cutting it. Not convinced yet.

Ok, then. What does the monster want? We’re finally told (after the thing is starting to wake up) that the big bad monster is going to eat everyone’s souls. Erm. Right. How is it going to do that then? We don’t know.

Which brings it to the most important question: what does the monster do to achieve its stakes (souls)?

Let’s see. We see the Queen of Years snatched away (oh no!) and a big heavy door closes between her and our heroes (the Doctor and Clara).

But. Was it the monster that snatched her? Huh. No clue. That's not really clear, actually. She's just picked up and swept off by some kind of force. We're left to assume that it's because the monster is waking up (though no reason is given for its waking besides "it's time").

Then what?

There’s a bit of consternation when the girl is swept away, but no one runs for their lives because the big bad monster is going to eat them. No one even lifts a finger outside of the Doctor and Clara. Not convincing if we’re supposed to believe that big bad things are happening.

The Doctor opens the big heavy door with his magic wand (yes, it’s a sonic screwdriver. I hate it when my brother-in-law calls it his magic wand, but in this case it applies. [Random trivia: it was originally for screws, with the occasional electronics, not for being a catch-all]). What do we get once the door is open? A creature behind glass. Sleeping.

This is Doctor Who. Scary looking creatures aren’t necessarily dangerous. We’ve already seen batches of different weird looking creatures in this episode. We've even seen one act in an apparently aggressive manner, but that was just its language (conveniently not translated by the Tardis).

Then what do we see?

The Queen of Years pins Clara to the glass with her mind! Not the monster. The girl at stake! (Ok, it’s not exactly unusual for characters to act against the Doctor even while he’s trying to save their lives, but in this case the girl is now more dangerous than the monster because she actually did something).

Now the creature behind glass is awake and snarling. Oh no! Everyone is going to be eaten!

Except they aren’t. No one is, in fact. Not in the entire episode.

Now the Doctor talks. A lot. They might be pretty words, but all we see from the monster is growling and snarling. Oh, wait! That’s not the real monster. The real monster is the planet. (Oh, and in between this “the vigil” – which seems to be creepy military androids [also not sufficiently explained] – tries to make the Queen of Years sacrifice herself to the monster. We still haven’t seen evidence of a legitimate threat from the monster itself.)

Now we have a snarling planet.

What has changed? Nothing. Because the monster hasn’t done anything. It doesn’t matter that it’s now planet sized.

What are its goals? What does it want? “I vant to suck your blood souls.”

Thing is, this planet sized monster hasn’t done anything for itself to achieve that goal. (Furthermore, we haven't seen anything holding it back now that it's awake.)

The Doctor decides to give it what it wants: his soul. Because that totally makes sense. Feed it a Time Lord soul and hope it gets indigestion instead of motivation, even though it hasn’t made any move to actually take any souls. Even if it could. Which we technically don’t know that it can. We still haven’t seen any evidence. Of course the Doctor wouldn’t do something so rash if he didn’t have reason.

Riiiiight.

What does everyone else do, now that there is a snarly face on the planet? Do they run in terror now? No. Why should they? The monster isn’t dangerous. They stand there and sing. Not much terror there.

Planet monster finally makes a move. Sort of. It touches the Doctor with some orange light. Apparently this is supposed to be feeding on his soul. All the while, the people are singing and the Doctor is giving a lengthy monologue on how awesome he is. I’m not joking. I wish I were.

Well, the Doctor is looking a little under the weather, so Clara jumps to the rescue and feeds the planet a leaf. Again, not joking. The only thing that semi-almost-pseudo redeems this move is that all through the episode they’ve set up that this leaf is important to Clara because it’s how her parents first met, and she kept it in a book through her childhood.

She sacrifices a childhood keepsake to a planet that really hasn’t done anything but take what it’s given. Just let the dumb thing starve to death already. It’s not like it will come after you.

So, from what we’ve seen, what would be the consequences if this snarling monster were to move its lazy self away from its steady food supply of suckers to travel the universe? The flu? Fatigue? Not pleasant, but not exactly dangerous. This is assuming it would even try to sweep over the universe, because we haven't seen it make a move for itself. The minions don't even seem to be under its direction. For all we can see, they're acting on their own.

(I’ll also add a brief note here regarding tone. Happy singing, a cheerful festival, an asteroid belt that apparently has enough atmosphere that no one needs space suits anywhere, and offering the monster valuables does not a dangerous atmosphere make. Dark lighting and cramped, inescapable quarters surrounded by vacuum that leads to a black hole is much more effective.)

What do we have at the end of this episode? A monster that can’t even scare a kid. Not exactly up to Doctor Who standards.

Verdict: not dangerous.