Danger: 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.