Hello, all.
Sorry again for the delay. I’ve been
beating myself near-senseless against this new draft, and tax stuff, and
prepping for a con (Texas Frightmare in Dallas/Fort Worth—one week from
now!). Plus I got selfish and decided to
sleep for three hours one night... I
think we’re going to be back for the next several weeks with no problem, though. I just focused a lot on the new book because
I feel like there’s a lot riding on it.
Speaking of
which...
If you
listen to writer-types a lot, one term you’ve probably heard a few times is the
stakes. What are the stakes? What’s
at stake? Something like that.
Every story
needs stakes. Simply put, the stakes are
the possible repercussions of failure or inaction. It’s what’s going to happen if my characters
don’t succeed in their various challenges.
This may
seem a little silly to say, but generally those repercussions are bad. A common thing we see at stake is someone’s
life—or maybe many people’s lives. Maybe it’s the protagonists, maybe it’s the
life of someone else. For a lot of
summer movies it can mean the fate of the whole world. The old school/orphanage/watering hole is
another common stake. Freedom’s one,
too. Secretes being revealed. And there’s always money (billions of dollars
at stake!). These are all great stakes
to have in a story. It’s also not
uncommon for a story to lead us in by claiming X is at stake, only to twist
things a bit and let us see we’re trying to prevent a much bigger Y from
happening.
Stakes can
also be internal, more about my story than my plot. Maybe Wakko’s sense of self-worth is at
stake. Or maybe his dream of being an
astronaut. Or of getting the girl.
(...although
let’s face it. If Beth is only interested in you because you can ski the K-12,
maybe she’s not really worth it. Have
you noticed that cute foreign exchange student across the street? She seems like a much better person
overall...)
Now, this
brings up a key point. You may notice a
lot of the stakes in that last paragraph are kind of small. Minor, you might even say. And it’s true, these are small-scale stakes—for
you and me. For Wakko, though, these stakes are huge! And in a
small, personal story that’s fine.
See, the
thing about stakes is they have to be high for my character. That’s what
matters. Yes, it’s horrible if a
husband/father might die in a taxi crash in New York, but stopping it from
happening is going to mean a lot more to his wife and kids than it does to me. If we were in the position, any of us would try
to stop it—we’re all decent people—but none of us is going to have that sheer need
to stop it that his wife and kids would.
For them, those stakes are much bigger.
So, hey, let’s
talk about this with a shameless Marvel movie reference...
In Ant-Man,
Hank Pym has a long talk with Scott Lang where he explains the whole situation
with his shrinking technology, the balance of power, and his old assistant
Darren Cross. Scott listens, then very
calmly says “I think our first move should be... calling the Avengers.” And we all laugh, because this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when
someone has what feels like a big problem.
The ugly truth
is, though, in a world where AI robots drop cities out of the sky and fish oil pills can bring destructive superpowers or death... Hank’s
problems are kind of small scale. No pun
intended. And when he busts Scott out of
jail and gets him involved so Scott will have a chance to repair things with
his ex-wife and daughter, well... it’s still pretty small. Keeping technology from falling into the
wrong hands, a jailbreak, stopping the crazy apprentice, fixing my life so I
can be with my daughter... these are all small stakes, in the big scheme of
things.
Thing is, that’s
exactly why they work. It’s completely
believable that Hank will be obsessed with how the technology he invented is
used. With all the problems in the
world, we wouldn’t buy it if the Black Widow or Thor showed up just to save
this one guy’s daughter—but it’s very believable that Scott would do anything
he could for his daughter.
Another
point, kind of related to the personal aspect. Stakes need to be believable. As I’ve said many, many times, storytelling
all comes down to characters. If I can’t believe in what my characters are experiencing or encountering, in
their motives or goals, it’s going to be really hard for me to believe in the
story as a whole. I believe in the
Infinity Gem creating some very high stakes in Guardians of the Galaxy—an entire story set against a cosmic, futuristic backdrop—but that kind of nigh-omnipotent power just wouldn’t fit in Ant-Man. The tone needs to be believable, too. Again, cosmic vs. small and personal, epic vs.
intimate. There’ve been numerous Muppet
movies with high stakes, but none where the goal is to stop a serial killer or prevent
a bioterror attack. These stakes are
high, no question, but they’re just not the right tone for a story starring the
Muppets.
There’s
also a time factor with stakes—there shouldn’t be enough of it. If Yakko has a deadly disease that kills
people in thirty years, bare minimum... well, that doesn’t seem that urgent. If Wakko’s daughter is kidnapped and they say
they’re not going to think of harming her for six months... well, this is bad,
but we’ve got time.
If my
stories have a threat, that threat has to happen now. Not in a year, not in a month—now. The window of opportunity for my characters
should be closing fast, because if it isn’t... well, human nature, right? Why put it off until tomorrow when I really
don’t need to worry about it until August.
August of
2068, just to be clear.
This brings
me to another small point (again, no pun intended). The butterfly effect doesn’t really work when
it comes to stakes. If you’re not
familiar, the butterfly effect is when very small actions lead to very large
repercussions. In the classic Ray Bradbury
story “A Sound of Thunder,” killing a butterfly millions of years in the past
changes a time traveler’s present from a progressive, Federation-esque world to
a harsh, neo-fascist one. It’s a common
idea. Changing A will result in B, which
will give us C, only one short step from D, and after D then E is inevitable. And nobody wants E to happen.
Nobody.
The catch
is that it can be very tough to convey that.
Stakes need to be a little more immediate and personal and not quite so
“long chain of events.” I’ve talked
before about keeping things close and personal for my characters—this
is that kind of thing.
Let’s look
at Ant-Man again. One of the plot
points is how much damage Hank’s technology could cause if everyone had
it. If Hydra or the Ten Rings got hold
of that tech, they could kill anyone with impunity. Armies of 1/16” assassins. Terrifying, right?
And yet...
the story kinda brushes over this. It’s
addressed, but after that it just becomes about stopping Cross from selling the
tech. We don’t need to deal with those
further-down-the-road repercussions, we just need to stop him right now. We put a face on it, because these are the
stakes that are big to Scott, Hope, and Hank.
So, my
stakes need to be big. More importantly,
big for my characters. They need to be
believable. They also need to be imminent. And they need to be very direct—the more separated
they are from the characters and their actions, the less impressive they’re
going to be.
Easy,
right?
Actually
let me toss out one last thought on this...
Hollywood’s
convinced a lot of people that everything needs to be huge. Epic-huge! WORLD-SHATTERING HUGE! If the stakes don’t involve at least five
billion deaths and/or seventy billion dollars, they’re not high enough. Producers push for this all the
time, so these days a lot of screenwriters (and novelists) tend to lean this
way automatically...
Thing is
though, those kind of stakes can be exhausting for everyone. The readers, the characters... even the
writer. That’s one of the other reasons
Ant-Man went over well with so many folks. After all the previous Marvel movies
had saved the United States from being overthrown (three times), saved mankind
from extinction (twice), and even saved the whole galaxy from a would-be god...
yeah, it was nice to deal with a story where the stakes were a bit smaller and
more personal. Hell, figure one of the
best- selling books of the past decade—Andy Weir’s The Martian—is about
saving one guy’s life. One. That’s it.
So make
sure you’ve got your stakes set.
Next
time... we’re going to talk about something we haven’t discussed in a while.
Using the rite words.
Until
then... go write.
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