If you want your story to keep a reader up way past their bedtime turning pages, you need to set up stakes that feel real. STAKES are what's at risk in your story, what your characters stand to lose.

Stakes can be external. Your character might be in danger of losing their job, or losing their child to cancer, or up against a world-ending zombie apocalypse. Or you could make us care just as much about smaller stakes, like whether or not a letter arrives to a loved one, or whether or not their football team secures a spot in the play offs.

Stakes can be internal (or emotional). Your character might need to grow up, or your character's mental health is at risk, or your character is at risk of breaking their heart.

Stakes can be relational. In the romance genre, relational stakes naturally have to do with the two main love interests--will they get together, will it work out or suck for one or both of them, will they break up? (And you can see the obvious tie between the relational and emotional stakes here: who's going to be devastated, who's going to be relieved when the relationship is over?) But relational stakes could also exist between your MC and their parents, or their friends, or their trusted mentor.

A full-length novel should include all three kinds of stakes, that you carefully build into a bomb packed with everything the MC could lose, before you light the fuse and blow it all up in the climax!

@Hinchwood's chick-lit project, 'GIRLS WHO PLAY GUITARS' is a great example of complex relationship stakes. The set up introduces three unique, bad-ass women in a nineties punk rock band who have been friends since high school. As the action rises, lead singer-songwriter, ELLIE, loses her head for dreamy Brit popstar, DANIEL, and this distracting romantic relationship puts her friendship with her best friend and non-nonsense band-mate KIM at risk. You can see how all three kinds of stakes are woven together in this set up--Ellie will be emotionally devastated if either relationship ends (emotional stakes). If Ellie and Kim can't resolve their conflict, their up and coming band, Slider, might break up and end their music careers (external stakes). As a reader, I was turning the pages as fast as I could to find out whether Ellie could figure out how to keep her lovely romance with Daniel and her vital friendship with Kim!

(Read it, obviously, and give my legendary friend Suse Hinchwood a follow <3 Gorgeous Australian beaches; packed, throbbing concert venues; warm, complex relationships with a diverse cast of characters...'Girls Who Play Guitars' is a perfect escape read.)

Your stakes should be noticeably present in Chapter One. The details don't need to be filled out yet, but you should be hinting at and showing us what the risks might be for your main character. Typically you'll spend the first third of your novel layering up the stakes, getting the reader more and more invested in your story because they're worried about what's going to happen to these characters. As the action of your novel rises, the threat-level of your stakes should ratchet up notch by notch, until your characters face the worst-case scenario in the climax.

☆ Questions for your project ☆

👉 Re-read your opening chapters. What are the external, internal and relational stakes?

👉 What do you feel your characters stand to lose over the course of this story?

Before we tackle editing to raise the stakes, let's talk about SETTING UP THE STAKES. You probably started writing your project because you had a high-stakes 'What if' idea and a couple characters you wanted to spend time with. You spun a daydream about possible events and outcomes, and then you started to write as fast as you could! When you go back to edit your opening chapters it's vitally important to make that set up rock solid, because the rest of your story is built on top of it.

First, make us believe the stakes are real.

You'll need to use a number of writing tools to create a setting and characters that are so believable we feel what they're feeling and are worried about all they have to lose. These tools include research, description, and insight into human nature.

1. Create stakes with a believable setting.

Whether you're writing a fantastical world or a realistic contemporary setting, the setting details you include should sketch out possible obstacles, and illustrate the good things your characters don't want to lose. We don't need to know every detail of the MC's coffee shop workplace, or dragon breeding program, but we do need to be shown what they would make sacrifices to keep, and what about their setting puts them at risk.

Is it a creatively stimulating job your MC loves but also forces them to work with a b*tchy popular girl? Is it an oppressive cultural context that limits your MC's outspoken personality or minority identity, while simultaneously providing a close-knit, colourful family life? The introduction of your setting should build the stakes for your character(s), showing us what good things they have to lose and what threats already exist in their world.

For example, in a previous post I wrote about editing 'For Us' to make Jon's work setting more clear. Setting up River House mattered, not just so the reader has enough information to picture the place more clearly, but also because the loss of Jon's job is one of the BIG STAKES of my story. My readers need to understand Jon's work setting so they believe he genuinely could lose his job because of the culture of that organization and they need to feel that would be a bad thing because of Jon's connection with the kids in his home.

I did research into Christian not-for-profits and the Canadian foster system to strengthen the plausibility of Jon's situation. Then I made some pacing decisions about when to reveal layers of information about Jon's job. I alternated between scenes of Jon and Kurt's growing relationship, and scenes of Jon at River House. As readers get more invested in Jon and Kurt getting together, I have to keep pulling them back to River House to show how Jon is making a real difference for these at-risk kids, Dusty and Jordin. I can't make it easy for Jon to leave his job to be with Kurt, or there's no story.

☆Questions for your project☆

👉 Are the threats inherent in your setting?

👉 What are the good things your character wouldn't want to lose? (and of course these are exactly the things threatened by the bomb of your climax!)

👉 Where did you show that to the reader in your opening chapters, through description and dialogue?

👉 How's the pacing of your set up? Just check that you didn't info-dump everything in Chapter One. If you spread out the reveal of those setting stakes over a couple opening chapters, you'll keep me turning the pages to learn the rest.

2. Create stakes using believable character action.

Inevitably, your characters are going to play the biggest role in raising the stakes of your story with the decisions they make as they swagger across the page. Your job is to create the kind of characters who would believably make troublesome decisions! We've all read that story where the main character decides to keep a big secret, or starts a big fight with her daughter because...ummmm reasons. If you stop and think for one second you realize the plot had stalled out a bit and the author needed to create some conflict to liven it up, and so they just made their character do something stupid to cause conflict.

This is a BIG turn off for me. It takes NO writing craft to make conflict with implausible character action. The author simply manipulates their characters to serve the plot, and manipulates their readers by extension. I hate being manipulated. Character action should be supported by the SET UP of who the character is--their personality, their history, their state of mind in the moment.

Does this mean your characters should only make wise, well-thought-out decisions? AbsoLUTEly not! It just means you need to DO THE SET UP WORK to create the kind of character who blows up a pair of dirty socks left on the bed wayyyy out of proportion, or lights that Molotov cocktail and chucks it into their boyfriend's sports car. (Hmmm, maybe these two decisions were related...)

Your opening chapters introduce the baseline of who your character is--their starting place. If you're an author worth your salt, your characters are going to grow and change by the end of your story. But already, your character has made decisions that add to the stakes of your story.

In the opening chapters of 'Girls Who Play Guitars', Ellie adamantly tells her friend Kim that she won't get romantically involved with another musician. Obviously this resolution is going to create conflict in the near future, as she catches feelings for Daniel. If you're paying attention, you realize the author needs Ellie to feel strongly about this in order to create plot tension. As an attentive writer-reader, I'm asking--why does Ellie make that statement, and why does she feel so strongly about it?

As an author well worth her salt ;) Suse Hinchwood gradually reveals Ellie's layered motivations for this important decision. Ellie's personality is focused and ambitious; Ellie's backstory includes a painful previous relationship; Ellie's head space in the moment is to placate her closest friend, who's a little ruffled up about previous band members' disastrous relationship decisions. Ellie's stated decision not to date a musician feels organic to who she is, and creates serious problems for her! Exactly what we want for a roller-coaster ride of a story.

In 'For Us', Jon's decision to keep his sexuality a secret drives plot conflict over and over. He won't stay to share a drink with Kurt when they re-connect; he won't agree to a real relationship with Kurt; he can't be recognized in public as Kurt's boyfriend, and finally, in the climax, the presence of Jon's clueless workmates at Kurt's concert prompts Kurt to put himself at risk to keep Jon's secret. As the author, I need to set up rock-solid reasons for why Jon has made this decision to stay closeted, or I'm just manipulating my reader's feelings with a tough story.

IMHO the set up of the stakes in your setting should happen quickly, in the first 3-5 chapters, so your readers can orientate themselves. The stakes related to your characters' complex motivations can unfold more slowly, over the whole story. In the opening chapters YOU need to know why your character is acting the way they are, and HINT to the reader that there are good reasons, but you don't need to reveal the depth of those reasons until you're deep in the story.

Back to the example of Jon White: when the story opens, I know Jon is a highly responsible person who takes his job very seriously (motivation grounded in his personality). I know Jon struggled with self-hatred and self-harm related to his sexuality in high school, and I know that Jon's previous experiences with guys were not positive (motivation grounded in his backstory). All I SHOW are HINTS: what Cary thinks about Jon when he bails on the concert, what Cary says about Jon's job to Kurt, the tattoo Kurt sees on Jon's upper arm, the heat of Jon's response to Kurt's suggestion that their dating arrangement is like a hook-up.

My WHOLE PLOT hangs on Jon's decision to stay closeted, so I had to build up complex, rock-solid reasons for Jon to make this decision, then I kept nudging the readers with hints that there's more, still more, still more, to keep them turning the pages to find out the next layer of Jon's secrets.

3. Start at neutral or happy place before heading downhill.

When you set up your stakes in the opening chapters, leave yourself plenty of room for things to go to sh*t. I don't love stories where the MC is already miserable in Chapter One. I'm find myself asking...well where are we going from here? Are we ever going to see this character at rest in their natural habitat? This could be my personal preference, but I like a few peaceful moments to get to know characters before they're completely stressed out and breaking.

Honestly, this is something I dislike now about my first novel 'Hiding--every scar has a story'--teenaged Jon and Cary are stressed out and unhappy already on page one. In 'For Us' I wanted to do better, so I worked at sprinkling happy moments throughout. The moment in Chapter Two, where Cary comes home and finds Jon standing on his head in their peaceful, candle-lit living room, was an important baseline for who Jon is at rest, and who we'd like him to allow himself to be full-time.

What I learned, writing 'For Us', is that by allowing your characters to be happy sometimes, you raise the stakes in a different way, because you make your readers want to see them happy more! And silly scenes like Kurt and Cary pretending to be boyfriends at the zoo are just a joy to write as well as to read. If your story is going to dark places, these little glimpses of light provide relief for your readers.

☆ Questions for your project ☆

👉 What decisions does your character make in the opening chapters that drive plot action?

👉 Do you know why they made those decisions? How did you show your readers?

👉 What does your character look like 'in their natural habitat' at the start of your story? Do you give us a glimpse at all of them happy or at peace?

I hope this helps inspire your writing and editing, lovelies! Until next time ♡ Rae.