The screenwriting journey for both your main characters and your audience should be filled with twists and turns; ups and downs.
Screenwriters are taught to raise the stakes for their characters to create excitement, tension, intrigue and anxiety. This is more than simply putting multiple obstacles in the path of the main characters in your screenplay to stop them achieving their goals. There must be serious consequences for failure.
Stakes explore the POTENTIAL for things to go wrong for your main characters. Stakes must be substantial, not merely an inconvenience. They literally should be a matter of life and death.
Writers must explain how not achieving their goals will affect the characters, not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually too. It needs to be deeply personal.
Let’s look at some ways to raise the stakes for your main characters by examining the repercussions if they fail:
- They lose the respect of their close family and friends
- They lose respect for themselves
- They lose the respect of those who depend on them
- They damage a professional relationship that relies on the success of the mission
- They will lose a bet
- An embarrassing misunderstanding will occur
- Deep emotional pain and turmoil will result
- They will be forced to confront their biggest fear
- Their belief sand moral compass are challenged
- A meeting or deeply wanted connection will be missed
- A closely-held secret is revealed
- A lie will prevail while the truth will be hidden
- A war or deep conflict will start
- Someone will die or be seriously injured
- They must sacrifice an innocent person
- They cause harm to somebody else
- They will be banished from their homeland
- They are forced to give up something valuable
- They underestimate the cost of their goal
- They take an unnecessary risk
- They are forced to change their plan or their goal
- A meeting or deeply wanted connection will be missed
- Their plan will be severely set back
- A villain will escape or be be set free
- Justice will be miscarried
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thank you for this helpful list of stake-raisers. Question: is # 19, “leave out something important?”
Ha. It’s actually what they see if they get hit by the train.