Raising the Stakes

By Kasie Whitener

We binge-watched three episodes of one of our favorite shows yesterday. Blindspot is an NBC program based on the premise that a tattooed amnesiac is helping the FBI rid the government of corruption. It’s super fake.

What I love most about Blindspot is how they continually raise the stakes. It’s a specific strategy TV writers use to keep you tuned in through the commercial break.

Dismantling a bomb? Great. But what if the clock jumps forward by half because you cut the wrong wire?

Hostage crisis? No problem. But what if there’s also a gas leak in the building?

Raising the stakes means forcing the characters to make a choice they may have otherwise waited out. In everyday life, we wait out choices. We don’t respond to invitations, ignore phone calls, and “wait and see” on just about everything.

Characters can’t afford to wait it out. The reader will put the book down and never pick it back up again. Characters need to move the plot forward to reach its conclusion.

To force the character to make a choice, the writer must raise the stakes. Make it impossible for the character to do nothing. Create the kind of urgency that forces the character to do something, anything, that pushes the plot arc.

One of the easiest ways to raise the stakes is to provide a time limit. Sports are great at this: the clock ticks down, the innings run out, there’s only so much time to make a play.

Another way to raise the stakes is to reveal information that complicates the choice. For example: the main character is refusing to surrender to the villain until the villain shows he’s got someone hostage; now the main character must do whatever she must to keep the hostage safe. In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen is expecting to become tribute; instead, her sister is selected and Katniss is forced to act in order to save Primrose.

A third way to raise the stakes is to challenge the hero with something he or she cannot do. Have the main character confronted with a puzzle, a challenge, or a seemingly impossible task. The Flash on the CW network does a great job with this. Everything is declared impossible until Barry finds a way to do it.

The best stakes involve the character compromising a bit of herself to get where she’s going. Every time she makes an exception to her values or morals, the audience is primed for her to make it up to them in another scene. She might have to team up with a known enemy, forgive a trespass, or even part with a valuable item. Raise the stakes by having the character put more skin in the game and the payoff will be twice as great when she finally triumphs.

Raising the stakes builds tension in your story, keeps the reader engaged, and shows what lengths your character is willing to go to in pursuit of her goal.

The Secret to Selling a Book? Meet People.

By Rex Hurst

Having now sold two books and a number of short stories, I can honestly tell you that having the perfectly crafted cover letters and hunting for an agent to pass your work onto the “big publisher” is no strategic match for actually meeting people in the flesh, having a few drinks, and making a couple of jokes.

Networking! Networking! It’s all down to that.

Everything I sold is because I knew someone. Another author gave me a tip. A guy I knew became an editor. Another author gave me a recommendation. Like the mafia, you have to be vouched for before they let you in. If they can put a face to that name, get a sense that you’re a human, they’ll unconsciously associate your work with those good vibrations. It’s natural. 

It’s human.

The old cliché once again rings true, “it’s not what you know blah blah blah.”

At this point some may be thinking, “It shouldn’t be like this. I just want to write.”

With ten thousand other people in the same room, all screaming to get their work published, this is how you stand out. Go to the conventions, to the meetings, to the writer’s groups. Schmooze.

I’m not saying suck up, you’ll come across as desperate.

Ask advice of those writers attending the event. People love to expound and be the sage. And if you’re still having trouble, brush up your skills with a reread of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. It might seem phony, but it works. 

Describing Pain

By Olga Agafonova

Earlier this week I wrote a script for a five-minute film that I need to shoot by myself. Because of technical and financial limitations, almost everything associated with a movie set is absent – I am lucky to have found someone who has graciously agreed to play the main character.  

The script is a monologue by a woman that heard a voice in her head during a difficult time in her life. I didn’t want this film to be about someone’s descent into madness: a five-minute experimental short by a newbie film-maker is not the place to tackle that. What I did want to get across is the depth of the woman’s pain as she remembers how her marriage fell apart. 

About a year ago, I had an experience that I struggle to describe in the script: in response to someone’s words, I felt searing pain in my heart. I remember it taking my breath away and thinking that all that language about broken hearts might stem from the physical sensation of pain.  It was strange – the sounds in the room faded away and all I could focus on was the physiological response. There was a heaviness and a weakness, almost a dizziness even. I don’t know if the blood drained away from my face but I felt like it had. This range of symptoms is not in the script of course and I worry that the few words I have in there do not convey the intensity of the emotional experience my character is having.

I’ve read a fair number of depressing books over the years but I can’t say that I’ve picked up on the techniques that make it easier to portray emotional distress. My character is not hysterical or furious; she doesn’t implode or whimper or curl up in a ball of grief. I don’t have hundreds of pages of backstory to help me out either. All I would like to capture is a moment where time stops and the bad news sinks in. 

Having never worked with actors, I don’t know how much I need to say – I just hope that the person can somehow feel what I’ve just described and that she can re-enact it vividly.

           

The Struggle Is Fiction

By Shaun McCoy

I wanted to take a brief time out to come clean here. Think of this as an intervention. You’ve invited all my close friends, family, and Aunt Sally (God knows why you invited her, but you did) to sit my lily butt down and have a talk with me. We’ve gotten past the introductions, the denials, the brief shouting matches,l and then I break down in tears and admit the truth:

I’ve been Writing While Happy.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t do it. Writing is supposed to be tough. The worse the pain, the better the writing. All you have to do is go to a typewriter and open up a vein, yadda yadda.

Well [expletive deleted] that, I say. I haven’t been miserable in nearly two years, and I’m not going back to fulfill some crappy Bohemian-writer stereotype.

I know, I know. I’ve betrayed the fundamental tenant of our craft. Let’s move on from this together.

PLOT TWIST: This is actually an intervention for you! Well, probably not you, you seem like a good reader. It’s for some other person reading this blog. Imagine them for a second. Try to make them vaguely unlikable.

Now, I get why people have this idea that wounds equal words. Just a couple years ago, my life was so utterly depressing I listened to the blues for a pick-me-up. If I got bad luck, I was happy I’d gotten any luck at all! When you’re hurting, you desperately need to reach out. You need to make meaningful connections in this world—even if those connections are only one way. Sometimes, especially when they’re one way. So yes, it was easy to write then. But guess what people? It’s easy to write now!

Communicating is something you should want to do even when you’re happy. Actually, you should want to do that especially when you’re happy. It’s passion that makes a writer write, whether they’re happy or sad, empty or fulfilled, lonely or awash in companionship (Quick aside here to the English language, can we please get a good antonym for lonely? That would be great, thanks. Sincerely, All of Us Writers). It’s those great extremes that make a work compelling. If a sad person can imagine being happy, then a happy person can imagine being sad. It does NOT mean you have to go there.

So this is to you, all you silly movies and stories with your suffering writers. You can shove it. I might write one of you, but I’m not living through you!

And this is for you, you-imaginary-hipster-would-be-writer-sitting-in-your-coffee-shop-clutching-desperately-to-the-small-town-malaise-which-once-invaded-your-life-and-filled-you-with-the-need-to-write—you’re being dramatic. Let it go. Get your dank emotions on the page there, muffin fluff, not on your life.

It’s the need to communicate that helps a person write, not the pain.

And you’re probably wondering (I can tell cause I’m psychic) “Shaun, now that your life’s not a repository of abject suffering, does that mean we’ll finally get a happy ending in one of your stories?”

No.