How To Raise The Stakes In Your Novel
In an earlier post , I mentioned that to improve a scene or entire novel, one question to ask is, Can I raise the stakes? Maybe the answer is Yes. Great! How? The principle is simple--any activity that differentiates a living being from a rock raises the stakes. Yes, yes, rocks don't have midlife crisis about whether their spouse is leaving them or whether their Art is Truly Great, but that's not what I'm talking about. High stakes have to touch a basic need of living things. Put yourself in the shoes of your main character and imagine one of these needs is at risk: 1. Your life. The most obvious thing to put at risk is the character's life. Escape a predator, a hired killer, a band of orcs. Don't crash the plane, survive on the island, be the winner in the televised fight to the death against other human contestants. 2. The life of someone you love. Humans are social so there may be goals even more important than our own lives. The lives of our...