Everyone loves a high-stakes story, right? Of course we do. I sure do. I want to be on the edge of my seat, crying about whatever is happening, anxious and worried that my faves might not pull through.
However, like everything in writing, we need balance in our stakes. If things are too high-stakes, then it feels over the top and melodramatic. If we’re promised high stakes but the author chickens out, then we’re frustrated.
I don’t know what story you are writing, so some of the things I say may not apply. The key to good writing is finding advice, deciding what works for you (and what doesn’t), and then integrating it into your own story. Take what you like and leave the rest. Let’s get into it.
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Kill someone important.
Not in real life! And not “in Minecraft,” either! I am a fiction writer and there are no dead bodies in my basement. Prommie.
Anyway, the best method to up the stakes is to kill or severely incapacitate someone important. Usually you don’t kill the MC, though it would be awesome if you disabled them and then explored how their new disability impacts their life.
Why slaughter? Because it shows us that there is true danger in the world. There is genuine risk to everyone involved, including the main cast.
Choosing exactly who to kill or maim can be challenging. It needs to be someone sympathetic who has been established to have a strong personality and good traits, even if they aren’t the main focus of any of the stories. A recurring, second-tier cast character is a good option.
You don’t want to pick The Ultimate Fan Favorite because, well, fans will be mad. But Second or Third Favorite? Put ’em on the chopping block.
Remember that the fan favorite may not be your MC (or not your MC in every story if this is a series). By this point in the Eirenic Verses, I have established that Orrinir Relickim is everybody’s itty bitty cinnamon roll. As such, he is Marked Safe From Murder. I can traumatize him to hell and back, but everyone would be angry if I killed him. Alas.
There must be ramifications for this person’s death. They cannot just be memoryholed. The MC and other cast members must mourn them, be sad and angry about it. There has to be grief. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter, and their death was for nothing.
Let them haunt the narrative. Have them be referenced. Do a funeral scene. This not only makes the main characters more empathetic, but it reinforces that the loss mattered and that said person is never coming back.
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Combine more than one dilemma.
We generally know that the MC isn’t going to die, as I will discuss later on. So we need to have more than just “oh no, everyone can die!” to get people invested. Here are a few other options.
Interpersonal conflict. Two loved ones may have opposing ideas for how to solve the problem. They may disagree with whether the Big Bad is a problem at all.
Legal conflict. One person may not be authorized to fight the Big Bad. There may be political power plays related to the issue.
Moral conflict. Fighting the Big Bad is not an immediate black or white issue. It may challenge someone’s worldview.
Conflicts of interest. Someone may find themselves switching allegiances or questioning their loyalty to a person/group.
Intrapersonal conflict. The MC may struggle with self-doubt, prejudice, trauma, or their ideals.
The best stories will seamlessly blend multiple of these with physical danger to make a richer and more compelling story. We have to wonder how all of these will be resolved, how the character will grow through their experiences, and what lasting changes will occur as a result of the disaster.
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Include plot twists without adding new primary conflicts.
Some writers, particularly in adventure and fantasy, erroneously believe that the only way to raise the stakes is to throw a brand new capital-b Big Bad at the characters before the primary Big Bad has been defeated.
For example, they may be fighting a villain, but suddenly there’s a nuclear holocaust looming on the horizon that has absolutely nothing to do with the villain. Or a second evil person shows up out of nowhere and now they are fighting both. Or an ancient curse has been unearthed and now the villain wants it too.
This is lazy writing. It’s the literary equivalent of distracting a child from a cookie by jingling some keys. You’re demonstrating that you’re not capable of raising the stakes without just throwing everything away and adding in something completely different.
As I’ve discussed before, I use the Plot Mountain method, primarily because it reminds me that we have an end goal and a return trip (more on that later). We know what the goal is, and we always have known what the goal is: to get to the top of the mountain. There are things that could cause the characters to turn back or make their victory uncertain. But we don’t just suddenly skip-hop to a completely different mountain and start over.
Every plot point in your story should be directly or tangentially related to that ultimate goal. Of course you can have downtime; I built my plot method to ensure that. But you cannot let the characters forget what they want and how they want to achieve it.
A good story explores a few key concepts in enough detail and shows the journey to that goal. Readers prefer this over fractalizing into a dozen side quests or abruptly pulling a U-turn and going, “You know what? Actually that Big Bad didn’t matter. Now we have this Big Bad to worry about. Forget about the first one.”
So, in raising the stakes, you are revealing ever-more danger pertaining to the original Big Bad. You uncover scarier things. There are obstacles that make it seem like your heroes won’t get to their goal. They may be injured in a fight and be unsure of if they can actually get to where they need to.
Particularly frustrating series will completely reverse everything the characters have fought for and start over again with a new Big Bad. For example, think about how bullshit it was when the Thanos “Snap” was reversed and suddenly everyone was back and happy in the MCU series. Don’t do that. If something happens, commit to it. Don’t go back on your word. Everyone will despise you for it.
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Show the fear of other cast members.
In most cases, we know that the MC is going to make it out alive. It’s pretty rare for an author to kill off their MC, especially in the middle of a series. Yes, MC may be banged up and bruised and in pain; they may be traumatized. But we do know, for the most part, that they’re going to pull through somehow.
However, the other characters don’t know that, because … well … they don’t know that the main character is the MC. They are blissfully unaware that their friend, partner, schoolmate, dog, whatever, is Chosen by the Plot to Survive and Cannot Die.
It is so, so very important to remember this. Your story needs to feel like a real thing that happened, which means that the people around your MC need to have blind spots – particularly about how special the MC is.
This is part of the reason that some stories feel fake and, therefore, don’t have high stakes. It appears that everyone around the MC is aware that they are the most important in the narrative, so they treat them differently. They don’t get mad at the MC, they forgive them all the time, they defer to them when they have no reason to.
And they don’t show fear when something bad happens to the MC because it seems like they subconsciously know the MC won’t die.
So when something bad happens, make sure that everyone is in fear for their lives – and for the MC’s, too.
There’s a part in my fifth book, Absent All Light, when Cerie (one of the two MCs) is sucked into a whirlpool. Obviously, because she is the MC, we know she’s going to make it out somehow – she kinda has to.
But her brother Uileac, who is there with her, is losing his goddamn mind about it. He’s utterly terrified, screaming, performing Ye Olde CPR, yelling at her.
This reminds us that Uileac is perfectly unaware of his sister’s OP status and that he genuinely believes she could die. Even though she does survive, it warns us that there are consequences in this world – and reminds us that other characters aren’t always safe either.
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Ensure that everything has a price.
Our stories, even if they take place in another world, should align with the basic concepts our readers know from our real normal world. That includes the idea that everything has an equal and opposite reaction.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch in the real world. No free lunches in your world, either.
While a character getting hurt and being scarred forever is one of the most obvious prices you can choose, there are many others. Mixing and matching these can provide higher stakes and help us feel there are real consequences for what the characters do. Here are some options (not an exhaustive list):
MC is physically injured and must be healed. Even if they are healed, they may be weak and not at full strength.
MC is traumatized by what happened and suffers from psychological injuries requiring treatment – or are ignored and cause more problems later.
A secondary character dies, or a large number of people die and everyone is pointing fingers at one another.
Secondary characters are injured and must live with the physical consequences of helping MC. Even if they remain loyal to MC, the MC will face guilt and remorse for hurting someone they care about.
MC loses their optimism or hope in a just world.
MC and their loved ones disagree with one another and their relationship is damaged by this argument.
MC faces legal consequences for what they have done, like being jailed or tortured.
MC loses the trust and respect of others because of what they have done. (Bonus points if some people revere them and others hate them for supposedly “saving the world.”)
MC loses trust in themselves and their abilities.
MC has career consequences for what they did, especially if they “go rogue” and disobey orders. They may be fired, demoted, put on probation.
Others exploit MC’s actions for their own gain, such as lauding them to make themselves look better or allying themselves with MC in hopes of usurping them. MC is now suspicious of former allies.
MC has a crisis of conscience, particularly if their actions harmed others for the greater good.
MC loses hope in a higher power and wonders why a loving god would let horrible things happen to them.
Cities or the earth itself is damaged by their actions and must be painstakingly repaired, with all the expenses and anger this may cause.
Relationships between political factions, government agencies, or international governments are damaged and must be repaired. The consequence may be a civil war, international war, or simply bureaucratic strife.
MC loses economic stability because of what they have done and needs to take a second job, borrow from family, etc.
MC’s allies face consequences and resent MC for putting them in that position. These allies may change sides, or they may stubbornly stick by MC to their own peril.
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Move the climax up so you can explore the ramifications.
One of the problems I have with a lot of stories is that there’s the climax and then … nothing. Everything all neatly wrapped up and everyone’s happy. There are no lingering ramifications, no questions; the characters frolic off into the sunset.
This is fine for low-stakes stories. Pride Before a Fall, the second in my series, has the climax pretty close to the end because there’s not much else to do. We already knew that whatever the climax was, it wasn’t going to be world-changing. But if I had sold that as a high-stakes story and then just left the dolls on the table after the Big Bad, everyone would be furious with me.
With my fifth book, Absent All Light (coming June 23, 2026), the climax is in Chapter 18, but the book has 30 chapters. Those remaining 12 chapters aren’t filler; they are all about exploring the consequences of the climax. There is physical, emotional, and political fallout from what happens for all the characters. We get to see how things aren’t tied up neatly in a bow; there are lingering questions that continue to be explored multiple books later.
I built my Plot Mountain method specifically to remind authors that you cannot just let everything peter out after the climax. The return trip from the peak can be equally perilous to the climb up, and it deserves attention too.
If you intend to write a one-book, high-stakes story, but the climax is two chapters from the end, that is simply not enough. It does not feel earned if there aren’t consequences.
Again, those consequences could come in a different book if you have a series; that’s perfectly okay. But those last chapters should be priming us to want more. To wonder what’s going to happen now.
I found that was a problem with my sixth book, Poesy, which is in revisions. Readers already know that there’s going to be another book, but I didn’t signpost that enough, so I need to go cut some boring stuff out and add more to the end so we feel like there are lingering questions.
And that, my friends, is why we write ahead and let things sit before revisions. If I hadn’t let that book sit for nigh-on three years now, I wouldn’t have thought of that.
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High stakes does not necessarily mean adding more and more ridiculous plots to disorient readers. This is called “jumping the shark,” and it often happens when you have not planned out your whole series before getting started. You run out of ideas and aren’t sure what to do next because there is no overarching goal.
This sort of fish-hopping happens when someone intends to only write a one-off, but then is pressured into adding more books. Yonder Tradpub is very notorious for either refusing to commission another book or demanding a sequel even though the story doesn’t really need one.
You can avoid the “second book slump” by simply not publishing before you’ve planned everything, determined the stakes, and added your mini-climaxes. That’s much easier in self-publishing of course, but if you intend to go tradpub, you should do this too.
So, in addition to sticking with one primary conflict that threads throughout everything, I encourage you to start writing the next books in your series before you have published anything. You may even be insane, like me, and just write the middle book before going back and writing everything else before and after that middle book.
Oh no! That’s a lot of delayed gratification! How are you supposed to become The Most Famous Author Ever Right Now if you write something you’re not going to publish for years?!
If this book series really matters to you, then the publishing timeline doesn’t. I wouldn’t have written the first five books if I hadn’t written the sixth one first, because I wouldn’t have realized there was more story to tell.
I’m in this for the long haul, baby. The entire series isn’t going to be complete until 2028. That’s four years of publishing two books a year. And that’s okay to me, because I care about what I’m doing and I don’t care how long it takes to get me there. I have strong intrinsic motivation – exactly what you need to succeed.
Time, patience, and good planning is crucial to ensuring your stakes are high, your stories are consistent, and victories feel earned. Don’t rush your writing; let it unfold naturally and see how much better things can be.
