Alternative sources of drama/tension when the setting is low-violence
So, I think I might just have turned my fantasy setting into a Saturday morning cartoon. I just, don't want people to die within the world. There are monsters, with unlimited reserves of course: zombies, skeletons, creepers...
...Until we learn that they are all vegetables, and can't climb walls, so Is real is safe (for now).
It's just isn't an "adventure-friendly world" sure, you can kill the veggies, but for FIVE level 17-19 characters, it's closer to gardening.
But what about dragons? They're at around the size of a marsh deer (127 cm at the shoulder and 2 meters long, plus a 1 m long tail), and ever since Mephistopheles ended the human-dragon war with the help of magical STDs from the past century, they're more concerned with BUSINESS and the POLITICS of their domains. If live streams from the parliament were so interesting, I would be watching them instead of this site, which I'm evidently not doing.
So, there are conflict sources, but with no real stakes. If we took the focus away from Mephisto's overly-sad backstory, the mystery of Sunny Hills and the Dark Barrier, we would have nothing.
So, considering that death in this setting is not as much of a commonplace, how can I still raise the stakes in a meaningful way for the reader?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/36176. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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There are other stakes than death. From all of Jane Austen to some of Asimov, sometimes the world isn't about to end, and nobody is about to die. So what else is there?
First, your story can be small: will the guy get the girl? That's Jane Austen. Will things work out financially for the MC? Hector Malot and Charles Dickens. Will a criminal be caught (and order restored)? Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Asimov's Robot series. (Yes, those are simplifications - there's more to the writing of each.)
If those stakes are not enough, and you do want a world-shaping plot, maybe there's something threatening the peace of the world. Maybe the vegetables are demanding equal rights. Maybe some corrupt human is interfering in dragon politics, attempting to instigate a coup. Maybe an asteroid is coming towards earth, and the humans, veggies and dragons have to work together to deflect it.
The possibilities are endless. Anything one has, one can lose - not just one's life, but one's property, relationships, hopes, aspirations. One can want things and struggle to gain them. All of those are stakes.
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