Staking Out Your Story, Part 1: Signaling the Heart of Character Motivation

What constitutes a narrative stake?

Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

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Stakes show why characters are engaged in the story’s central conflict, and why readers should care. If nothing of any emotional consequence is at risk in your story, no one will care. Not your characters, not your readers, and probably not even you.

Hello Loreates,

As I pondered what to offer you this week, I recalled how my writer’s mind was blown long ago by the concept of stakes, which I first encountered in Robert McKee’s story seminar. Before then, I thought of stories as self-expression, swirls of feeling, strings of potent, beautiful memories and images, events that mattered simply because they’d happened to me or because I’d thought of them. I had no idea how to discover or develop their meaning for myself, much less how to make anyone else care about them. Learning about the stakes that drive character motivation changed all that.

Later, when teaching, I made sure every one of my MFA students understood stakes before I was through with them. Yet somehow, I haven’t shared this essential lesson with you here. Today I’ll begin to change that.

This is not a quick topic, though. It requires multiple workshops. As I reviewed my teaching notes, I decided to break them down for you into two parts. Today’s Part 1 drills into the emotional constitution of a story’s stakes—the drivers of motivation. Next week’s Part 2 will offer some strategies for raising the stakes throughout your story.

P.S. This week I took the domain plunge, officially changing the URL of this stack to www.mfalore.com . I hope this makes the publication easier to find and remember, but the tech process rattled my nerves. All seems to be working smoothly, but please do let me know if you notice any worrisome wiggles or waggles.

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Stakes Signal What Matters and Why

“STAKE”:

1. Something staked for gain or loss

2. The prize in a contest

3. An interest or share in an undertaking or enterprise

“AT STAKE”:

1. In question, in play, or at issue

2. To be won or lost; at risk

3. In danger, hazarded

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Simply put, stakes give meaning to your story. Whether literal or symbolic, they represent the reasons why your principal characters are suffering, struggling, competing: what they have to lose if they don’t succeed, and what they have to gain if they win. In other words, meaningful consequences.