Tag: conflict

Raising the Stakes

There’s a reason preseason football games are dull, and it’s not just because we’re compelled to watch backups play for three quarters (sorry backups). It’s because they have no stakes.

Now consider the Super Bowl, a game which has the highest stakes in American professional sports. Winning that game means everything. Losing it could be the biggest disappointment in an otherwise outstanding career. (The Super Bowl is also made greater by the weird Doritos commercials, but that’s neither here nor there.)

As writers, we should write stories about the Super Bowl, not the preseason. That’s because stories are often at their best when everything’s on the line. The question is, how do we do it?

Let’s start with The Fellowship of the Ring. The story begins without any stakes (unless you’re particularly concerned about the success of Bilbo’s birthday party). However, we soon discover that Bilbo’s magic ring is actually the One Ring, the most evil artifact in Middle-Earth. Now we understand the stakes: If Sauron gets his Ring back, Middle-Earth is screwed. And when Frodo volunteers to take the Ring, he raises the stakes even further. That’s because at this point, we like Frodo. If he fails, he dies, and then we’re very sad.

Takeaway: Raise the stakes incrementally. Each successive event should provide more to lose and more to gain.

The trick is learning to raise the stakes by showing rather than telling. For example, imagine a character in a book says, “Dude. The stakes have never been greater.” No no no. Too heavy handed.

What’s a good way to suggest stakes rather than outright say them? Kill some characters. The great J.K. Rowling did so zealously in Harry Potterstarting with The Goblet of Fire. When Cedric Diggory died in this book, the stakes were clear: If you mess with Voldemort, you die. Such stakes had never before existed in the series.

It’s difficult, but raising the stakes can breathe new life into our stories. I’m still working on it. I think it helps to ask yourself some questions before sitting down to write. For example: What does my character’s quest mean to him or her? What happens if my character fails? What’s motivating my character to succeed?

We want to show the answers to these questions without telling. If readers have a clear picture of the stakes in their minds, they’ll better understand the gravity of every situation.

So let’s skip the preseason and play for the Super Bowl. Raise those stakes!


Kyle A. Massa is a speculative fiction author living in New York (upstate, not the city). His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction. To stay current with Kyle’s work, subscribe to his monthly email newsletter. He promises not to spam you.

Subconflict, and Lots of It

ConflictNovels are cool, but they’re tough to write.

I’ve been working on manuscript about a rock and roll star who inexplicably rises from the dead. Think Mick Jagger meets Jesus Christ. I think the premise is interesting and I like the characters, but once I really got into it, I found that the story was slowing down. It just wasn’t interesting to me anymore.

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my story until some time later, while I was reading Lisey’s Story by Stephen King (all hail his majesty). I got about a hundred pages in and realized the key difference between King’s book and mine: he had tons of subconflict, and I didn’t.

Of course, conflict is one of the cornerstones of story. If people aren’t fighting about something, then you don’t have much of a plot. I don’t think I quite realized just how much conflict you really need to sustain a reader’s interest for three, four, or five hundred pages.

Let’s look at Lisey’s Story for a moment. As you might’ve guessed, it’s a story about Lisey Landon, wife of late author Scott Landon. As I mentioned before, there’s a lot going on in Lisey’s life. She’s still coming to terms with the loss of her husband, while also figuring out what to do with his estate. In addition, her sister Amanda is on suicide watch. Also, a mysterious whacko is after Scott’s supposed lost manuscripts. Oh, and Lisey’s also being stalked by some kind of cosmic monster which only appears in reflective surfaces.

I count five separate conflicts in there. And those are just the most prominent ones.

Managing all this conflict can be pretty tough. On the one hand, once you set up your dominos, you should probably give them a push, right?

But here’s the tricky part: oftentimes, some conflicts should go unanswered. When books resolve all their conflicts neatly, you might feel like everything was a bit too easy.

For example, at the end of Lisey’s Story (spoilers ahead!), Lisey never defeats the monster that plagued her late husband and has now set its sights on her. In fact, by the end of the book, the creature might very well still get her at any time.

That might sound like a loose knot, but it really isn’t. It works because some of the best fiction mirrors life, and in life, there are some conflicts you’re just never going to solve. (Although hopefully if you’re being stalked by a cosmic horror, you can figure that one out.) Plus, I think it’s a mistake to answer all your readers’ questions. Don’t leave them satisfied—leave them wanting more!

When it comes to conflict, the challenge is to balance resolution with open-endedness. I think you’ll like the results.

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