Making The Most Of The Stakes In Your Story

Ah, story stakes. They’re one of those fun writing elements that can make or break the tale you’re telling.

With no stakes, a story is in danger of boring the reader. Stakes too low will ask them to question why they should care, or stakes so ridiculously high you tip over into Do-Not-Finish territory because your story has become eye-rollingly bad.

So, how do you ensure your story stakes are the best they can be? Give these tips a try!

Making The Most Of The Stakes In Your StoryStart Small

While it’s perfectly fine to start your story with stakes laid bare to get the reader on board, if the first stakes they come across are the biggest, there’s just nowhere for the story to go.

Stakes work best when they start out small and spiral into something bigger, so keep that in mind and plan accordingly.

Build The Stakes

After starting small, it’s important to build on the stakes. Losing a bet might be a small stake for your MC, but if that bet loss leads to a gambling issue that then leads to a job loss, a relationship loss, and even a loss of life, that small stake builds to the biggest stake of the story and makes things worse for your MC.

That’s the beauty of stakes, and that’s what will keep readers turning the pages.

Don’t Repeat the Stakes

While you’ll need to build the stakes, don’t fall into the trap of repeating them.

If you find your MC trapped in the dark more than once, even if it’s under different circumstances, you’re just repeating stakes to create mini cliffhangers or interesting chapter endings without actually using the stakes to your advantage.

Create and keep the tension with different stakes and don’t rehash similar stakes.

Don’t Go Overboard

While your final stake should be big enough to shift your character, circumstances, or outcome, it should never be so high that it becomes ridiculous.

One of the fastest ways to lose readers is by ripping away their care factor when the stakes get so overboard that the situation your character is in loses its place in reality. Yes, you want the highest stakes to mean something, but if it’s too unbelievable, you’ll risk screwing up the ending and losing the reader.

Personalize The Stakes

Obviously, this depends on the story being told, but if you can, keep the stakes as something that affects the characters.

A bomb killing an office full of random people versus a bomb killing the MC’s husband are two very different stakes. Both will add interest to your story, but only one will make the reader really care about what is happening.

Add A Condition

When the major stakes are resolved, it’s usually down to the MC winning or the MC losing. While both will create a satisfactory or disappointing ending, a win/lose stake resolution can be seen a mile away.

The cop living his career dream and stopping the serial killer from killing the girl is a classic stake. It will cause the classic good triumphing evil ending that readers expect/want, but in what condition does the cop “win”?

Is he injured so badly during the last battle that he can no longer be a cop? Resolve the predictable stakes, but add something unpredictable too. You’ll satisfy the classic side of the stake, but give something new that the reader will care/think about after finishing the last chapter.

Sacrifice Stakes

Stakes that end with a sacrifice are like candy to a sweet tooth but don’t immediately think this means killing off your MC to save the world.

A sacrifice stake can be small like the MC giving up their life in the city to move to the country when the cowboy makes them fall in love on that one last trip back home. Or a side character giving up their share in a business deal so someone else can benefit.

If the story allows it, add a sacrifice stake—big or small—that means something to one or more of your characters. If the sacrifice works for them and the story, it will work for the reader too.

And there you have some tips to make the most of the stakes in your story. My favorite one is not repeating stakes, which is something I learned after doing that very thing! What’s your favorite stake to add to your stories? Let me know in the comments!

— K.M. Allan

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