What are stakes?
and how to put them in a query letter and the manuscript itself
Hi, I’m Kate. Ask an Author is an advice column for authors at all stages of writing, publishing, and hand-wringing. Have a question? Fill out this form and I’ll answer it in a future response!
I run Ask an Author entirely on donations, to keep information about writing and publishing free and available to all. THANK YOU to my paid monthly and yearly subscribers who make this possible!! If you benefit from reading Ask an Author and are able to make a contribution, please consider supporting the work that I do! <3
Hi all!
Sometimes I get questions via Ask an Author, or questions come my way when I’m editing manuscripts or queries, and I answer the question as best I can but I start to feel like there’s a question behind the question, or like if we dug around a little more, or tilted our perspective just enough, we might find another, deeper angle on the issue.
I haven’t specifically gotten a question about stakes in my inbox (which is open to all subscribers, free or paid!) and yet I started to feel like when we’re talking about what makes a query letter work, or what makes our writing work, how can we NOT talk about stakes???
Agents talk about stakes all. the. time. If your query is feeling like it’s allllllmost there but not quite, or there’s something missing you can’t totally put your finger on, or it kinda summarizes your story but it also feels kinda flat in some way — it may be that what you’re missing are clear enough stakes, or big enough stakes, or specific enough stakes, or active enough stakes, or some combination of all of the above.
What are stakes?
What’s at stake in your novel is a way of asking, “What’s on the line?” What’s important for your character(s)?
Something meaningful should happen in your story. “Meaningful” can be broadly defined. The point is that you don’t want your reader to put down your brilliant, beautiful book and say, “Okay, but so what?”
Stakes can be save-the-world big, but they can also be quieter and closer to home. This isn’t one of those things where commercial books with sticky hooks have clear stakes and erudite lit fic turns away from them. Every story has stakes, regardless of genre or style or age or audience or approach. An introspective, character-driven novel has stakes. A suspenseful mystery has stakes. The stakes aren’t just what a character wants to do, but why. The more the stakes matter to your character, the more they’re likely to matter to your reader, too.
"What matters" is connected to your character’s goals (what does your character want?), your character's motivation (why does your character want it?) and the thing standing in their way (the conflict). If your character doesn’t want anything, there’s not a whole lot of story to build. If your character wants something but has no reason for wanting it, readers will be left scratching their heads. And if your character automatically reaches their goal with no conflict, then the book will start and end on page 1, which doesn’t make for much of a story.1
The stakes don’t have to be about saving lives or rescuing kittens or solving crimes (or getting away with a crime. . .) to be important. They’re important as long as they matter personally to your character.
Which brings us to. . .
Internal vs. External
Stakes can be internal or external, which is also to say private or public. The outer thing the character is experiencing is the external problem. But there should also be an internal struggle they’re facing as well.
Often early novels are imbalanced between public and private. The hero has something he wants (blow up the space ship, get a date with the cute barista, find out what the mystery aliens are really after, etc.) but there needs to be something internal going on, too (he has to prove himself, he needs to feel worthy of love, he’s got a long-lost daughter he’s hoping will finally forgive him. . .).
On the flip side, sometimes a draft of a novel will have the emotional components in place, but then it feels like there’s nothing really happening to move the book along. This can sometimes be because there aren’t any external stakes — the storyline is overly internal. Some books will lean more internal or more external than others — the point isn’t to be 50/50. But in basically everything you read or watch, there’s never just the world outside the character or just the world inside the character. Your work is to make some kind of tapestry of the two.
This is true for nonfiction as well. Something needs to make your reader care about your topic and invested in reading your book and finding out what you have to say. Why does this matter?? is a question that comes up over and over in book proposals for nonfiction manuscripts. Having reasons that are big enough, but also concrete and feel applicable to your reader, can make the difference between a book that sells and a book that hears a lot of “This is an important topic, but. . .”
“Raise the Stakes"
One phrase agents and editors say a lot is “raise the stakes.” This may sound like it means “make the stakes bigger,” and yeah, sometimes it does. But what it really means is “make the reader care more.”
And I think there are, in general, two ways to coax that kind of investment from your ideal audience: make the stakes more active, and make them more specific.
Active Stakes:
I’ve been working on a manuscript for [redacted] years and have rewritten (not revised, REWRITTEN) it more times than I can count, and in it my main character wants to not get caught for something he did, because he wants to not go to jail. This, I once thought, was an entirely reasonable thing to aim for. How could “Stay out of jail” not be a specific and meaningful stake??
But.
The thing is that it’s kind of passive. My character isn’t doing anything to get it. I mean, he’s dodging and manipulating and trying not to blurt out all his dirty laundry, but in the earliest drafts where I was feeling my way through how to write a novel in the first place, even once I got to a version where I liked the plotting and the writing and the characters and the story, it still felt like there was something missing. And I came to see over time that because my character’s goal was so passive, this made my character passive, which made the stakes — will he be caught? — feel less compelling or immediate or pressing or IMPORTANT. Because it was all about what my avoidant character would avoid, and not what he’d actually do to avoid it. Or, more importantly, what he might strive for instead.
It’s something I see a lot of when I’m editing queries and manuscripts. A character doesn’t want a bad thing to happen to them. This is human and understandable and universal and makes total sense! But it’s not a substitute for explaining what your character does want, instead or in addition or in a way that complements the Big Bad they’re desperate to avoid.
Say your character is in a war and wants to not get killed. Staying alive is a worthy goal! But can you reframe that goal in a more active and positive light? (Not positive as in better but positive as in characterized by presence rather than by lack.) Say your character has to stay alive because her sister was killed in battle and her parents will never survive if she shares the same fate. Or, say your character is a reluctant romantic who doesn’t want to fall in love. Again, that goal is articulated in terms of what the character doesn’t want and doesn’t do. What happens if you re-frame that goal to be about something your character desires — not about something they don’t? He could be committed to staying independent so he never has to rely on anyone again (and then your backstory has to answer the question of why this is). She could be focused on running her business and certain the cute barista who’s moved in next door is going to be nothing but an irritating distraction (and, again, your backstory digs into why.
In these examples, the general goal is still the same: don’t die, don’t fall in love, don’t lose your head. But now it’s being described as something the characters want: to make it home to her family, to keep his independence, to see her business thrive. And that wanting opens the door for all sorts of important questions about who your character is. It’s those answers that will provide the dynamic richness your book needs to feel three-dimensional and alive.
Specific Stakes:
Another thing about stakes is that they need to be specific enough to feel tangible and real, even as they’re universal enough that readers can understand and relate to them regardless of whether or not they, too, have ever felt that way.
If we only “raise the stakes” by making things bigger, there’s danger in making things too big, so that the stakes become nebulous and hard to hold onto. Stakes don’t get much higher than trying to stay alive, and yet a book where the only goal is “the main character doesn’t want to die” isn’t always the slam-dunk that it seems. Those stakes can start to feel vague without more emotional layers to boost them up. Think about your favorite books and the characters you root for. What’s something they want that feels deeper and more personal and more specific than the big universal truths like Love or Survival? Those universal truths are important, and you should still have them! But our brains often crave something more concrete to help us feel connected to such large and abstract concepts.
If you’re feeling like your query is solid but not getting you requests, or your manuscript seems to have all the key elements so why isn’t it getting more traction, one thing you could look at is whether your stakes are clear enough, concrete enough, and are doing enough work throughout the story. Is there another layer of depth or dimension you can add? Is there more your character might want, and more that’s standing in their way? Does their desire feel tangible and specific and in line with who they are?
You can always keep asking yourself why. Why does my character do ______? Why does my character want ______? Why does my character leave their safe home to travel the world, why does my character fall in with the dangerous crowd, why does my character start this fight, end this relationship, steal this diamond, spread this gossip, start this conversation, take this risk, make this bad decision. . .
Of course there’s a point at which the answer “why” isn’t relevant to your story anymore. But the more you can push yourself to ask these types of questions and nail down who they are, specifically, the clearer and more personal—and personalized—your stakes will be, and the more they’ll emerge on the page. Some of these things might not even make it directly into the story, and yet when you’ve thought these things through for your character, it can change your writing in subtle but significant ways.
If your stakes aren’t in your manuscript, they won’t wind up in your query. And if you’re editing your query to clarify the stakes, make sure you’re doing the same edits in your manuscript. The whole point is that the book you send to agents or publishers or put out into the world meets the promises you’ve set out in your blurb!
Keep writing!
Kate
Got a question? Click here and I’ll answer it in a future response! Want to work one-on-one? Find me at Broad Editorial for query consultations, manuscript editing, and book coaching. Thank you for sharing, subscribing, and supporting Ask an Author!
I know conflict-based narrative is a reductive and particularly Western form of storytelling! I’m definitely not saying this is the only way to construct a book or even the best way or that other forms of narrative structure don’t exist. But it’s a general form that I assume most of us are familiar with as both readers and writers, and it’s a valuable starting point, and understanding stakes will help no matter what kind of writing you’re doing, because every kind of writing in every genre and form asks for reader investment.