If Nothing’s at Stake, Why Are We Reading?

I’m in the process of querying for an agent again. Most agents these days are using QueryTracker, and on the latest sub one of the agents asked something specific that I had not seen in more than a hundred subs over the course of years of doing this in multiple iterations. It was straightforward and surprising that I didn’t have a ready answer.

Typically, most agents ask for a query letter, with a 1or 2 page synopsis, single spaced, and anywhere from 5 to 50 pages of your manuscript, or maybe the first 3 chapters. Lately I’ve seen requests for comparable books, target audience, and the dreaded one sentence pitch. I saw one that offered a small reprieve in the form of the one paragraph pitch. Some will give you very specific guidance on what they want to see in each section, which is always helpful, and you ignore this guidance at your own peril. So here was the question:Subscribed

What’s at stake for your main character?

Should I have had a ready answer for this question? Short answer is yes.

But here’s the thing. It never crossed my mind. Never. Not once in writing this book and the next and halfway through the third in this trilogy.

The development of this story took a lot of turns to get even started. I pantsed the beginning of this story a long time ago. The protagonist kind of emerged fully formed, like Swamp Thing oozing up out the bog. He did grow organically after his emergence into what I needed him to be.

I did some soul searching for the right answer to this simple question and not only did I find an answer, but it added some clarity that will shape some rewrites that I plan anyway. I should be getting documents back from my editor at any moment. (this is the second professional editor to have a go at it, kind of accidently, but you really can’t get enough eyes on your manuscript.)

But was that the best way to go about it?

It was certainly one way, and a very long way to do it.

So, what would be better?

I don’t know how you develop your stories, whether you start with an idea then develop characters to populate it, or whether you start with some interesting characters and give them a problem to solve. Whichever way you do it you will need characters to drive the plot train.

There are a lot of worksheet ideas to build your characters, if you need that, but at the end of the day you will need to give them something they want. And maybe there is something that they need, and maybe those are not the same things. Those will drive the character, but they won’t necessarily answer the question of what is at stake for that character.

Figure that out at the beginning.

Do it for the protagonist and the antagonist. A strong antagonist can really take your story to the next level.

Knowing what is at stake for both characters will add a lot of gut level drive that will make it easier to plot the story. It will add clarity.

One of these days I will take my own advice and save myself a lot of editing.

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