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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47162
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47162
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> Is it uncompelling to continue the story with lower stakes?

### It depends on the type of story you are telling.

If you are telling a **character-driven** story, one in which the reader becomes heavily invested in the MC (for convenience, that can stand for "Main Character" or "Main Crew"), their emotional journey in life, then an event which lowers the stakes can be great.

But that seldom completes the emotional journey of the MC. the story isn't done until the reader is satisfied the MC is firmly back in their New Normal.

The Story begins in the MC's Normal World, that gets disrupted, and in dealing with the disruption the MC either returns to their Normal World or finds a New Normal.

But for character stories, the disruption can create emotional consequences or re-open old wounds that aren't healed by the fact of the climax, and the audience wants to see those issues put to rest, for better or worse.

Most thrillers are not character stories, the MC doesn't have emotional issues, or they are superficial and lame, not life changing.

So, depending on how much your readers care about your MC as a person and their emotional life, you may well continue with lower stakes, because they want to see the MC find closure, and be satisfied _all_ the evil got defeated.

But if you mostly talk about what the MC **does** and not very much about what they think and feel, then you should probably leave the biggest bad for the last, and use the smaller bads as a way to get to him, trap him, deceive him, etc.

This is also the way of escaping the Escalation Trap, of requiring ever larger stakes. If you look at most Detective Series, you will notice we become very invested in the detective: They are **character** stories, we want to see our guy solve the mystery, and it doesn't have to be a bigger mystery every time. Columbo runs the same stakes basically every time, one victim, one murderer, for whatever reason.

Sometimes they escalate; Sherlock Holmes escalated with Moriarty. But as the dozens of Sherlock-like hyper-observant detective series prove, we are perfectly happy with hyper-observant detectives continually running the same "small" stakes again and again, they can keep going to the well of one victim, one killer, and we're perfectly happy. Until the **character** stops being interesting.

The same thing goes for adventures, if we like the **characters** we don't mind if the stakes stay basically the same. That is how series like MASH and The Big Bang Theory (TBBT) run for many seasons, and only "escalate" by introducing _character_ disruptions when they start running out of existing character gas.

So TBBT let Koothrapalli find his voice with women; Penny and Leonard get together and break up but finally marry; Walowitz finds and marries Bernadette; Sheldon finds and marries Amy; all to explore new fun and interesting dimensions of these characters because the show was in danger of getting stale with the original crew of nerds. But outside their developing relationships, the stakes are always small potatoes (until the final season).

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