How can I create deep personal stakes?
Note: This question deals exclusively with personal stakes (what the character could lose). It does not deal with public stakes (what the world of the novel could lose).
In my mind, there are two levels of stakes (not to be confused with the kinds of stakes): basic and deep.
Example: In the first season of 24, you have basic personal stakes. Jack needs to stop the terrorists to rescue his daughter. In LotR, you have deep personal stakes. Frodo needs to destroy the Ring, otherwise it will consume and destroy him. The difference is that if Frodo fails, he will, in some form, be incomplete and be unable to continue (again, in some form). In 24, we can assume that if Jack fails to rescue his daughter, he will be seriously messed up, but we can also assume that he will eventually continue. There's nothing saying or even suggesting that he won't.
While I recognize that basic stakes can work in certain scenarios, they always only seem to be enough. Call me a perfectionist, but I don't want enough. I want the maximum.
Background: I am an outliner, meaning I develop and plan every aspect of my writing before actually writing it. I operate almost entirely off of formulas and step-by-step processes. I cannot sit down and 'simply write'. That approach does not work for me.
Problem: I am currently trying to create a process by which I can generate deep personal stakes in my characters. Deep personal stakes boil down to a need without which a character is incomplete in some form, and cannot continue in some form (due to being incomplete).
I have tried looking up examples of stakes, but surprisingly, I couldn't find any. Just lots of information on how to make basic stakes and raise them. No one seems to even know about deep personal stakes. For this reason, LotR is the best example of deep personal stakes which comes to mind.
Question: Can you show me a process by which I can create deep personal stakes for my characters?
I will be glad to provide more details if necessary.
1 answer
There is a scene in Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver which, I believe, holds the answer to your question:
I didn't mean to say no to him that day. I had never said no to him before, because I knew if we did he would hurt us, and he hurt us anyway already, and so I knew he would hurt us even worse if we said no. I would not have even thought of saying no to him no matter what he did, because he could always do something worse. And when Wanda said no to him, I said no too, but I didn't really decide to say no, I just said it. But now, I thought, I had said it because there wasn't anything worse he could do to me than hit Wanda with that poker over and over and make her dead while I was there just watching. If he was going to do that then I could be dead too, and that would not be as bad as just standing there. (Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver, chapter 19)
You have to find what it is that your character would not, could not, give up - that whatever you did to them, giving this up would be worse. That is your character's core. The core of their identity, as much as anything else. That is the thing that is most fundamental to them. That is as deep as stakes could go for them.
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