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7 types of story stakes you may be overlooking

Stakes are one of the most crucial tools for creating tension, motivating your protagonist, and keeping your audience emotionally invested.

And yet... stakes are often underdeveloped, misunderstood, or overlooked entirely.

You've no doubt heard the importance of "raising the stakes". But how do you do that if you’re not even sure what “stakes” really are? Or how they’re showing up in your story?

So I want to demystify the concept of "stakes," and give you some practical tools you can use. Hopefully this will spark new ideas that you can implement in your scripts right away.

And because this is pretty big topic, we'll cover it in two parts:

This week we’ll talk about what stakes actually are and look at a list of possible story stakes you might not have considered. These examples can help you brainstorm stronger stakes for your own scripts — even if you’re not writing an action thriller or anything remotely life-or-death.

Next week, we’ll look at what it really means to “raise the stakes,” and how to do that effectively, even in character-driven or lower-stakes genres like romantic comedies.

What are we talking about when we talk about stakes?

Stakes are what’s hanging in the balance pending the outcome of your story. You can think of them as the negative consequences that will come to bear if the protagonist fails to achieve the story goal.

As in, the protagonist’s life is at stake, or the safety of her child is at stake, or the character’s family farm is at stake should he fail to get the money to the bank on time.

Establishing what’s at stake in the story helps provide motivation for your protagonist, to make what they’re about to do believable.

And stakes are important because they help get your audience to invest in the outcome of the story and root for the protagonist to succeed. Clear, strong stakes help make your audience care about what’s happening in your story and what the outcome will be (which is what keeps them reading or watching).

Still too intangible? Here are some examples

Most simply, stakes are what happens if the main character fails to achieve their story goal.

So, for example:

In The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice is trying to catch serial killer Buffalo Bill, and what’s at stake is Catherine Martin’s life — she’s the current victim — as well as the lives of all of his potential future victims.

Or, in Die Hard, John McClane must save the hostages from Hans Gruber’s band of criminals. The hostages’ lives are at stake. In other words, if John McClane fails to achieve his story goal, the hostages will die.

Those are nice, concrete examples. But not every movie has such obvious life-and-death stakes. And if you’re writing something that isn’t based on such extreme and obvious stakes, it can be a challenge to figure out what the stakes of your story actually are.

I’ve found that it’s useful to have a list of possibilities to use as a brainstorming tool. Run through the list when you’re developing a story, and see which of the different types of stakes could apply.

A list of stakes possibilities to brainstorm from

In movies, the most common types of story stakes tend to be:

• #1 The safety or fate of a group:
  • In Die Hard, it’s the lives of the hostages.
  • In Speed, it’s the lives of the people on the bus.
  • In Gladiator, it’s the fate of an empire.

You can think of this as:

• If the protagonist fails to achieve his story goal, a group of characters, and/or a particular location, will be damaged or destroyed.
• Or, alternatively, the group will fall under some kind of control or tyrannical rule.
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• #2 The safety or life of an individual who is either the protagonist or someone very important to them (as in Die Hard, The Ring, The Silence of the Lambs, Taken)
  • In Die Hard, because John McClane’s wife is among the hostages, we have this additional layer of stakes hanging in the balance.
  • In The Ring, Rachel’s own life is at stake after she watches the cursed tape.
  • In The Silence of the Lambs, it’s the life of latest victim Catherine Martin that’s hanging in the balance.

So this category is also about big, life-and-death stakes, but it revolves around a specific individual rather than a group or population of a certain place.

Those are the two kinds of stakes you're probably most familiar with seeing. And just because they’re common doesn’t mean they’re to be avoided — these are clear, external stakes and that can make them very effective.

But there are certainly other kinds of story stakes you can use, and once they’re on your radar you’ll probably start noticing these much more often:

• #3 A person’s livelihood (or financial survival, like in Hell or High Water). With this type of stakes, if the protagonist doesn’t achieve his goal, then he (or someone important to him) will lose gainful employment or their means of financial survival.
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• #4 A person’s freedom (either physical or mental, like in Get Out). If the hero fails to achieve his goal, he (or someone important to him) will lose his physical or mental freedom.
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• #5 Reputation (like in A Few Good Men). You can think of these stakes as involving someone’s good name, legacy, or honor.
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• #6 Happiness (like in Notting Hill and The Devil Wears Prada). These stakes are frequently seen in lighter stories like romcoms. Think of these as, “If the protagonist fails to achieve his story goal, he’ll lose his only or best chance at future happiness.”
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• #7 Sanity (like in Shutter Island). This type of stakes means that if the protagonist fails to achieve the story goal, it will result in an alteration to his consciousness (or that of someone important to him). They may lose their minds, their memories may be tampered with, etc.
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• #8 Access to something or someone very important or meaningful to the protagonist. This means if the protagonist fails to achieve her story goal, then she will lose access to someone important to her. Parent-child relationships show up a lot, but don’t limit yourself — we saw the “best friends” version of this type of stakes used very effectively in Bridesmaids.
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• #9 Sometimes what’s at stake is a sense of justice. As in, if the protagonist fails to achieve his goal, the negative consequence will be living with the knowledge that the scales are forever out of balance, that this particular injustice will continue to exist. Revenge stories often rely on this type of stakes.

And, as you can see, you don’t have to choose one thing that’s at stake in your story.

However, it’s good practice to establish in Act 1 one clear, defined consequence that’s motivating your protagonist to go through this story. That’s part of your Act 1 setup, and sends the protagonist believably into the Act 2 Adventure.

Then in Act 2 you can layer on other types of stakes in order to increase tension in the story.

All stories need stakes

No matter the tone or genre you're writing in, the bottom line is this: the audience needs to understand what your protagonist stands to lose if they fail to achieve their story goal.

If the audience can't grasp what's at stake, they will not invest in (or stick around for) the rest of the story.

Next week, we’ll explore what it actually looks like to raise the stakes in your story, and how to do it in a way that makes your script more emotionally compelling and harder to put down.

Until next time,

Naomi

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