The Stakes

            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.

Looking For Something To Lean On?

             Wow.  This is so crazy overdue.  My sincere apologies, and many thanks to the six of you who’ve hung around this long waiting for a new post.

            Alas, I’m going to be touching on an old idea, and doing it with an old story.  But it’s all kind of relevant...

            So... true story time.

           As many of you know, I worked in the film industry for many years as a prop master. What some of you may not know is that about... wow, seventeen years ago I was working on an alien invasion film and messed up my knee.  Ruined it, really.  I was running up a staircase with a case of props for the alien autopsy scene and turned too fast on a stairwell landing.  Well, I turned.  My knee twisted.  It actually made a bubble-wrap noise.

            I spent about an hour that night in a quiet part of the set crying into my arm because the pain was so bad.

            After that, I spent two and a half months walking with a cane and dry-swallowing painkillers before I got in to have my meniscus rebuilt. 

            On my 30th birthday. 

            No, seriously.  Think of all the many things you could do/did on your 30th birthday.  Not for me.  No booze, no party, no sex, no presents.  I had a friend who drove me home from the outpatient clinic and dumped me on the floor of my apartment.  And then three months of rehab after that.

            I finally got back to full mobility, got back to work, and guess what happened?  Less than five months later, I damaged the other knee on a straight-to-DVD movie.  This time it was three months of waiting for workman’s comp to schedule surgery. 

            At least the cane was broken in by this point.

            After almost a year and a half of sitting around doing nothing... I’d put on some weight.  And when I say “some” I mean it in the same way some folks say “yeah, Jeb Bush could’ve done better in those early primaries.”  To be blunt, I’d packed on almost fifty extra pounds.  And I am not a tall guy, so fifty pounds really shows on me

            Fortunately, an actor I was working with knew I was trying to trim some fat and shared a few tips.  He also had a great personal trainer.  Jerzy—said trainer—showed me a few exercises, offered some diet tips, but for most of those first two hours we just talked.  And one thing became very clear.

            There would be no hand-holding, no prodding.  Jerzy wasn’t a “shout at you to do crunches” kind of trainer.  I would get the instruction book, the rules, and then I’d be left on my own for a month.  This was all my responsibility.  After all, if I was going to lose this weight, the only person that could really make it happen was me.  Jerzy gave me his home phone number, his cell, and his email.  “But,” he said with a shrug, “if you really need me to tell you ‘don’t eat the chocolate cake’... you can’t be that serious about losing the weight.”

            See where I’m going with this?

            With the Writer’s Coffeehouse, this ranty blog, random messages on Twitter or Facebook, I’d guess every three or four weeks I get asked something along the lines of “how do you do it?”  How I manage to sit down every day and pound out a few thousand words?  How do I exercise the self control to plant myself in front of my desk and write?

           The answer’s simple.  There’s no trick to sitting down and writing. None at all. 

           You just do it. 

           Y’see, Timmy, if I’m serious about this, I shouldn’t need to find some clever reason or inspiration to get myself in the chair every day.  I should want to be there.  The real problem should be getting me out of the chair.
             Which brings me back to Jerzey.  I lost sixty pounds in fourteen months working with him.  And in about two weeks I’ll be starting my tenth novel.   That’s tenth published novel, to be clear.  Published by someone else.  Who gave me money for the right to publish my work.

            I’m not saying that to brag or to disparage anyone else. I’m saying to make the point that one of the main reasons it happened is because I sit my butt in a chair and write.  Every day.

            And nobody needs to tell me to do it.

            Oh, while I’m thinking of it, this Sunday is the Los Angeles Writers Coffeehouse!  Noon to three at Dark Delicacies in Burbank.  We’re going to talk about mysteries and twists and reveals.  It’ll be fantastic, it’s free, and all you have to do is show up.

            Next time—and next time will be very soon, I promise—I think we need to talk about what’s at stake.

            Until then... go write.

All Purpose

            I’m sorry this is a bit late.  Well, four  weeks late.  That’s not a bit, that’s crazy-late.  I’m in the final weeks for this manuscript and I’m really trying to make it fantastic.  That’s pretty much been my main focus the past month or so, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

            Hey, speaking of which...

            One of the most common things that makes a character unbelievable is when they have no purpose for their actions.  We’ve all seen it.  The guy who decides to pick a fight over something petty in the middle of a crisis.  The person in charge who continues to ignore someone with key information.  The spouse who’s just a jerk.  The ninja who attacks for no reason.

            Nothing knocks a reader out of a story faster than people just randomly doing stuff.  There’s a simple reason for this.  In the real world, when people do things for no reason, they’re usually considered to be insane.  Not an interesting insane, either, but the “lame motivational excuse” insane.  If I run into a  burning house to save a baby or a dog, I’m going to be considered a hero whether I make it out or not.  If I run into the flaming house just because it’s there, I’m going to be considered an idiot.

           People need a reason to do things.  Real reasons.  Reasons that jibe with their background and their personality and with basic rules of behavior.  That’s why you’ve heard of people motivating horses with a carrot on a stick but not with a t-bone steak on a stick—horses like veggies, not meat.  In Raiders of the Lost Ark, it’s completely understandable that Belloq wants to open the Ark before taking it to Germany, and believable that the Nazi officers would feel uncomfortable about performing a “Jewish ceremony.”  This fits with Belloq’s smarmy background and it makes sense—historically, even—that the officers would be a bit by disturbed by what needs to be done to open the Ark.

            So here’s a challenge for you—try to picture that scene reversed.  Imagine if, at that point in the film, the Nazi colonel was insistent on performing the ceremony and Belloq said “no, no, I really think we should just take it to der Fuhrer and let him deal with it...”  It wouldn’t make any sense, would it?

            In the big scheme of things, most people’s motivations tend to be simple.  If you’ve ever seen a procedural show, they often talk about the common motives for murder.  Love, money, revenge—they’re very basic ideas.  The unspoken motive for the investigators on these shows is justice, or perhaps closure.  In Raiders, Belloq is looking for glory and maybe a bit of power (I think it’s safe to say he was secretly hoping he’d get all the benefits of that “hotline to God”).  Indy wants to stop the Nazis and save the Ark for a museum.  The Nazis want to obey the orders from their commander.

            In the book I’m working on right now, a major motive for the main character is infatuation.  It’s why he takes the actions he does that kick off the story.  But not very far in, fear and survival become big motivators for him.  His actions might not always be rational, mind you, but his actions fit who he is and what he thinks he can accomplish.

            Now, sometimes the story needs people to act a certain way.  It’s been plotted out and the characters need to do this now so that can happen later.  What some writers don’t seem to get is that this need doesn’t make a character’s actions more believable or forgivable.

            The reader has to be able to relate to my character’s purpose for doing things.  While characters might have very true and proper motivations within the context of their tale, those motivations still need to be interpreted by the chosen audience.  This is especially important for stories set in different cultures (Japan, for example, or India under the caste system) or perhaps in entirely fictitious ones (Barsoom, Diagon Alley, or the grim darkness of the future).  It’s common to hit this wall when the writer knows their chosen setting too well, or maybe had to build it from the ground up.  To me, it’s completely clear and understandable why a Thark warrior would act this way—why waste time going over it, right?  To you, though... this may not be so clear.

            Let me toss out one other thought about motivations.  Up top I gave a list of situations that many of us have probably dealt with.  The random aggressive person.  The jerk spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend.  The willfully ignorant boss.   These people really exist.  Hell, I had that higher-up boss for two years at one point.

            But...

            As I’ve said here many times, reality is not a story point.  It’s not part of a character sketch, either.  Once I put that boss into a story, my readers are going to expect there’s a purpose to him being there.  That there’s an actual reason for his behavior.  And if there isn’t... that’s on me as the writer.

            Look at the characters in your story.  Follow them for a few pages.  Can you explain their actions with one or two simple words?  Are they words most people will know?  Do these words relate to the character and not my outline?

            Then you’ve probably got some very driven characters.

            I’m not sure I’ll be able to post anything next week because I’m a “special guest” at WonderCon here in Los Angeles.  And I’ll be in the last two weeks before this new book is due.

            Or maybe I’ll just stop making excuses and write something.

            Until then... well, hopefully you feel motivated to go write.