Post History

Raising the stakes is a gambling term. It refers to betting more and more on a game as time goes on, often in the hopes of redeeming past losses. It is not hard to understand why gamblers raise the stakes. What is hard is to understand why they gamble. 

This seems to apply to fiction as well. Why does the gambler gamble? Because they want something. A character is a person with a desire. Without desire we do not act, and if we do not act, we are not actors and if we are not actors were are not, for any useful dramatic purpose, characters. 

A simple character is a person with one desire, and some impediment in realizing it. (If a millionaire wants a sandwich, they go out and buy a sandwich. There is no drama in that. If a bum wants a sandwich, there is an impediment to his desire, and therefore the possibility of drama. 

But the drama is not particularly compelling yet. The bum begs on the street until someone gives him enough to buy a sandwich. Desire met. The end. The bum is not putting anything at risk to achieve their desire. They are not raising the stakes. 

But suppose the bum is too proud to beg. Now the bum has to put his pride at risk if he wants a sandwich. If he begs and gets nothing, he may lose his pride and still go hungry. That is stakes. 

Stakes is simply something the character values that will have to be put at risk to achieve something he desires. To create stakes for your character, first decide what their desire is going to be, then ask yourself, what else to they value that will have to be put at risk if they are to achieve their desire. And that is your stakes. 

The development of the story follows the attempts of the hero to attain their desire while taking the fewest risks -- betting with the lowest stakes. As the story continues and their losses mount, they are forced to keep raising the stakes by putting more of what they value at risk, until they finally go all in, at which point they may win their desire and get back what they put at risk, or gain their desire but lose their stakes (a bittersweet or even futile ending) or lose both their stakes and their desire (a tragic ending).