On writing: Stakes

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Do you have a killer concept, a promising premise, a protagonist worth a damn, and a goal worth pursuing? Then you should ensure that your characters gamble something meaningful on the outcome of their risky venture.

-How is this story the record of how a character, through strength of will, fights with death? What combination of the three types of death (physical, professional, psychological) are at work in the story? Sum up the main plot with at least one of the three deaths woven into the summary.
-Given how passionate the protagonist is about his goal, what is he willing to risk, what danger will he be willing to face, in order to reach the goal?
-What are the things your protagonist loves and cherishes the most? Can you set up the conflict so that he stands to lose those as he goes after the goal?
-How do you establish what does it mean for the character to achieve the goal stated for the desire line? The more the outcome affects your character, the more will be at stake. And the more that’s at stake, the more invested your audience will be.
-When you think of high stakes to establish for your characters, how do the risks they take align with their nature, values and personality?
-Can you make the stakes in your work even greater by adding a personal component, having them affect people we care about? In other words, this time make it personal. The more personal, the better.
-If the protagonist does not succeed, what would be lost? Could he lose more?
-Could it be for the protagonist that the thing at stake is what he values most?
-How does the plot problem have a clear consequence that the reader can begin to anticipate from page one?
-Who and what else will be adversely affected if the protagonist fails to reach his goal? Can you make it worse?
-If at any point your protagonist can simply decide to give up without suffering great personal cost due to her inaction, consider that the story is wrong or insufficient.
-How there will be something clear and definite that will occur if the protagonist fails or, worse, doesn’t take action? It can’t be vague, conceptual or iffy.
-How can you make the reader care about the story based solely on those stakes?
-What is the fight? How is it important and urgent enough for the reader to root for the hero to win?
-How are the stakes measured by the value the protagonist puts on the thing at stake?
-Is there a real-world, specific, impending consequence that this escalating problem will give my protagonist no choice but to face?
-How would the reader feel the stakes, and what might be won or lost?
-What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
-Regardless of whether or not the protagonist achieves his goal, will the approaching consequence cost him something big, emotionally speaking?
-How do you show clearly the consequences and price of success or failure and its ultimate effect on everyone involved?
-How does the protagonist truly suffer to get through the story, both for the reader and for the character himself to care about what happens to him?
-How will the character realize he’s probably going to die (physically, professionally, and/or psychologically)?
-Does the protagonist find himself with no way out at some point in the story, making it the story not be on his terms?
-How do you make the reader believe the threats in the story to your protagonist are real?
-Make sure most of the characters involved in the goals have something to lose. Can you expand the stakes to all the characters?
-How far can you muddle, push, exacerbate the situation to raise the personal and public stakes?
-To increase the public stakes, meaning what impact will this story have on the world, ask yourself: how could things get worse than they already are? How could this matter more than it already does?
-Make the external and internal stakes as big as they can possibly be.
-How does the story walk us to the precipice of human experience and allow us to peer into the abyss?