Taped on my computer is a scrap of paper with three words: RAISE THE STAKES. If you’ve read Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel or Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, these three words should be imbedded in your subconsciousness. (And if you haven’t, why not?)
I start raising the stakes from the beginning, which for me is creating characters and their backstories. This isn’t from one of my books, but what if your heroine’s father is a crook? Why not make him a Mafia chief, like Karin Tabke did in Skin? Raise the stakes.
Do you have a murderer in your book? Allison Brennan has serial killers. Her serial killers don’t murder homeless people. Although that would be horrible, her villains commit heinous crimes against people we’re likely to know–our neighbors, our friends, our daughters … us. She raises the stakes. I don’t think it’s an accident that Allison became a NYTimes bestselling writer with her fourth book.
Even if you’re a plotter, the stakes can be raised on your already outlined book. Disgruntlement with a boss turns into the character quitting. Or what if your character gets fired? “My whole book is derailed,” you say. Good. Then you’ve really raised the stakes. 
How’s your character going to get around that?
Relationship books don’t get a free pass. We’ve all had relationships go wrong–romances and friendships, fights with siblings, parents, children. People move, people get sick, people die. The washing machine breaks down, then the car, then your computer–the one time you forgot to back up your manuscript.
Crappy things happen. Make them crappier. Funny things happen. Make them funnier. Sad things happen. Make them sadder. Raise the stakes.
In Liz Kreger’s first chapter of FORGET ABOUT TOMORROW, the hero gets into a fight–with alien assassins. He defeats the aliens but gets a knife wound that doesn’t appear to be bad–but the blade is made of a poisonous material that will kill him if he doesn’t get an antidote. Liz knows how to raise the stakes.
I’ve been critiquing Michelle Diener’s WIP, and she raises the stakes with every scene. Maass says “A common failure in novels is that we can see the ending coming together. The author signals his preferred outcome, and guess what? That is how things turn out?” Not with Michelle’s books. She’s constantly surprising me.
A few ways Maass suggests to raise the stakes:
His books have many more ways to raise the stakes. I’m sure you’ve thought of some yourself. Can you share an example? Or think of one of your favorite authors. How has she raised the stakes?
I love your examples and this blog, Edie. As you know, in my WIP, the heroine becomes a spy. She’s from one country, but has been rescued by and integrated into another. When the two countries go to war, she spys for her new country on her old one. Those are high stakes, but I added another twist. While spying, she falls in love with someone from the country she is spying on. So now no matter what she does, she’s betraying someone she loves.
I really take my hat off to you in the way you raise the stakes from the get go. Maybe I’d save time if I did that . . .
Michelle, I only raised the stakes from the get go with my last novel, and it was all to do with you, reminding me to read Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook again for the revision of BOOBS. I had read it once, but needed that second read to get it in my subconsicousness. I think it’s a book I should at least skim through every six months, just to remind me.
And I think you subconsciously plotted the rising stakes. The same with Liz. It’s something she automatically does.
Great blog, Edie! I probably should buy this book, it’s crossed my radar a lot. And now with your mention, yep, must buy book. I don’t think I consciously do anything in my writing, so it must be all subconscious.
And that’s okay. But raising the stakes seems like a great way to start the ball rolling. In my upcoming book, I’ve done several things you mentioned so I guess it’s working. 
LaDonna, your book about Ruby starts off with her dead, so I think that’s a pretty high stakes beginning.
And, yes, either buy the books, or at least get it from the library. You won’t be sorry.
BTW, love your leopard. There is a great story by Herman Charles Bosman about a man sitting under a tree contemplating his life and the curve balls its thrown him, and all the while, unbeknown to him, there is a leopard lying in the tree above him, making all his perceived troubles very trivial in comparison. Talk about high stakes
.
Michelle, love that story! I wondered if anyone would say something about the leopard. You know how I often use cat pictures for my blogs? I decided the leopard would “raise the stakes”.
LOL, Edie! Yep, Ruby is deader than a doornail, but doesn’t let that stop her from causing havoc.
How soon we forget. hehe.
LaDonna, in my Dead People books, my characters don’t change after death either. They’re more fun that way.
I got one of the best compliment ever from my critique partners. One of them looked at me and shook her head with flabberghasted expression and asked “What more could you possibly do to this poor woman?” We’re only a third through my ms.
Marcia, that is a great compliment! I’m trying to do something in every scene. Sometimes it’s good to be evil.
Edie, get comment about Allison’s books. I told her that at the last booksigning I attended. I worry about all her characters, because with her you never know. No one is safe in her stories. That’s what makes them so intense.
I’m trying this as well in my current WIP. The h/h make love and he thinks he has found true love and she isn’t buying it. So what does my shapeshifter heroine do? Most women would distant themselves from the hero. My heroine shapeshifts into a man to put the ultimate distance between them. He is not happy, let me tell you.
Thought provoking blog, Edie, and thanks for suggesting another book for me to purchase. At this point, I should have stock in Borders.
I can think of two books where a favorite character unexpectedly dies – Meek, beloved Beth in Little Women – that killed me! And in My Sisters Keeper, Jodi Picoult comes up with the totally unexpected in the second to last chapter. (That killed me, too, and I won’t reveal it in case someone here is in the middle of reading it.)
Edie’s privy to one of my mss where I’ve come up with the unexpected to an endearing character. I didn’t realize I was raising the stakes, but I think it caught Edie’s eye.
Jill, I LOVE that she shape-shifts into a man! How original and sneaky.
Allison goes high stakes right from the beginning, and they just get worse. She’s a very smart woman. I like what you say that “no one is safe.” Now you have me wondering how to incorporate that into my story. Even though I don’t write RS, there’s has to be a way I can write so “no one is safe”, even if it’s emotional safety.
OMG Kath, I felt the same way about Beth. Did you ever see the “Friends” episode where Joey is reading Little Women and Jennifer Aniston’s character lets drop that Beth will be killed? That’s my favorite “Friends” episode.
You definitely did raise the stakes in your book! I think most of us do it instinctively. The thing I want to do is learn to raise them even more, in every area of the book possible.
Oops, Beth in Little Women “dies”, she isn’t “killed”. But I’m sure you all knew that. LOL
Edie, in REDEMPTION the stakes start off as high as they can be and then go up from there. My poor characters.
Edie,
What a great reminder for me as I head into revisions on TCM. This book is so much lighter than what I normally write, that i tend to forget about craft techniques like raising the stakes, or ending each scene with a hook, or–well, you get the picture.
But you are so right. Just because a book is light doesn’t mean you can forget the elements that will make it stand out.
I’m going to print off a RAISE THE STAKES reminder and tape it next to my computer in my office.
Karin, your characters are always in trouble, lol. That’s the way to do it!
Theresa, glad I could help you. I’ve been trying to think of a way to raise the stakes in my next scene. I want to torture my characters.
I never go into a WIP with the thought of making life totally miserable for my characters. That just happens.
Great blog and I’m with Michelle … love the leopard.
I think we’ve all read novels where the build up is so good, the h/h are in such deep doo-doo that you cannot imagine how they can possibly escape and then … simple resolution. I always feel cheated when that happens. Don’t take a great build up and then make it a simple fix.
Other than the examples you just gave, I’m drawing a blank with naming a novel that torments the characters to a great extent, although anything by Sherrilyn Kenyon comes to mind.
Liz, when I gave the example of your book, I was thinking of how it gets even worse for your h/h in the following scenes. That’s the way it should be.
I hope I can do that with my books. Funny that you do it without thinking of it. I guess that means you’re instinctively a sadist.