How to Raise the Stakes in Your Story (Without Gimmicks)

Free Video Tutorial for Screenwriting

What makes the stakes in a story truly matter?

In this episode of The Storyteller’s Mission, Zena Dell Lowe explains how to raise the stakes in your story without relying on gimmicks, artificial tension, or repetitive plot devices. This episode explores why high stakes are always tied to character, relationship, and consequence—and how meaningful escalation creates pressure that drives transformation.

From moral weight to relational cost to progressively harder choices, this conversation reframes how writers should think about stakes at every level of storytelling. Whether you’re working on a novel, screenplay, or short story, this episode provides a practical and timeless approach to making your story resonate more deeply with an audience.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] How do you raise the stakes in your story? Well, what makes stakes high in real life, first and foremost. Is when it matters to the character, right? It's important to the character themselves and when not getting something that they want or something that they need has devastating consequences.

[00:00:20] Right now, this is a tricky thing because did you ever see a film called Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle? Okay, so that is a movie about two guys that are high who want to go get burgers at White Castle. That is their big goal. Okay. That would seem to be pretty low stakes because what are the consequences?

[00:00:45] Right now I have been told that if you are a pothead, the suddenly that seems very important and that, you know, you can kind of get behind it. But for most of us, that just is like, well, what does that really matter? So even in Harold and Kumar. There's something else at stake that actually does matter to us because we don't care if they get hamburgers at White Castle.

[00:01:09] We think that's pretty silly. But you know what? We do care about? We care about the fact that Harold, I think, is being bullied, kind of and look down at at work. And being handed all this extra work, and he hasn't had the wherewithal to be able to stand up for himself and to know his own value and self-worth.

[00:01:29] So he's constantly being passed work that the other people in his business don't wanna do, and he doesn't know how to have boundaries and to stand up for himself. So. Saddled with all this extra workload. We care about that because it's an issue of justice, and so that tells us there's something at stake.

[00:01:50] Then when it becomes a matter that is bigger than the people involved also. If it's a matter of justice, it's if it's a matter of, you know, we see an injustice in the world, we tend to want that to be corrected, so it doesn't have to just be a ticking time bomb. You make sure that it's an issue that actually matters in some way.

[00:02:11] To us, the audience where we don't like to see people get picked on, we wanna see people get their comeuppance. We don't wanna see people who are insecure and unable to defend or stand up for themselves. So therefore we become invested in their journey to see them transform and be able to stand up and become the person that we would love for them to be.

[00:02:37] So in a way, we're tying into the dignity that we know that mankind has inherently, and we are attaching meaning to that on us. Subconscious level because we know it actually matters. So when you're tying it to something universal that matters, some sort of moral truth, that's going to help us, the audience, to automatically believe it matters more.

[00:03:02] And then if you tie it to something that the character themselves, even if it doesn't seem important to us. So let's go to, uh, do you guys remember the film Footloose? Footloose. What did he want? Dance to Dance. That's right. I mean, I mean, talk about like, okay, do we really care? About dancing, but the way they put it in the context of the dancing, it's not just the dancing, it is a fight against oppression.

[00:03:30] It is a fight against freedom of expression. It is a fight against narrow-minded legalism and fear. It is a fight against. Fear like it's been WR onto this community because of legitimate tragedy that has happened, but it's an overcorrection from an event that happened in the past that is now left to town being oppressed and being unable to enjoy.

[00:03:59] Certain things that don't have to be evil, that are innocuous in and of themselves, but they've been deemed evil. So now it's couched in a bigger moral schematic, a a bigger argument, a bigger issue that we can get behind because we don't actually care about the dancing per se. Now, having said that, it is super important to the characters.

[00:04:23] They wanna dance. But they want to dance because it's an expression of freedom of that particular age. They don't even wanna do anything bad with the dancing. They just love to dance. And it shouldn't be wrong to dance. So do you see how we're, we're doing two things. We're making it important to the character, but we're putting it in some sort of existential framework that allows it to be important to your audience.

[00:04:51] Now, with that, then it brings us back to the third component of both of those. What happens if. They fail. And by the way, you can break this down to the scene level. I mean, I'm talking about the meta goal right now. The meta goal of I wanna dance, or the meta goal of, I want hamburgers. Because I'm high and I want to go to White Castle.

[00:05:17] That's the meta goal of the story. But you can break it down into scenes because every single scene there is an objective that has to be accomplished. Your character is after something, information reconciliation, persuading the other person, seducing the other person, keeping the peace. I mean anything.

[00:05:41] We're always in negotiation. Human relationships are like that. Everybody is always after something. So you can break it down to the scene level too, where it's not even the meta goal. It's a mini goal that they're trying to accomplish. But then you have to ask what happens if they fail? And the more painful the outcome, the higher the stakes.

[00:06:05] So if you have a character like in the film, as good as it gets, who, his goal, his meta goal is to be able to connect to human beings to actually be able to connect. Have human connection. He's isolated, he's alone, he's sick, he's got OCD. As a result of that, he is completely cut off from any sort of human empathy or connection with other human beings.

[00:06:32] So he desperately wants connection, particularly with Carol, the waitress, the love interest. What happens if he fails? Well, he's going to lose his soul. I mean, metaphorically, it is a matter of life and death. Every single stake is a matter of life and death in some way. So if my goal is to dance, but right now the scene is about a character, you know, standing up to a parent.

[00:07:04] And trying to persuade the parent that they weren't out doing something bad, that they're just late getting home or something like that. The potential death is the severing of relationship between the parent and the child, but it might become a breach of intimacy that causes permanent separation and damage, and that is a type of death.

[00:07:27] So you're always looking at what is the death that might manifest? And I have kind of a follow up. So how do you make sure that what you're doing. Is not just episodic, like, with the ticking clock, the time gets shorter and shorter and shorter. That creates pressure. I mean, to say, you know, you're, you're not allowed to go buy the shoes to go dancing, and then in the next scene you're not allowed to go buy the pants to go dancing. That's the same stakes. It's not revving up. How do you measure that? It's. Good. That's great. Thank you for the clarification on that. It becomes, it revs up as it has consequences.

[00:08:04] It might be that the same thing is, no, you can't do this. No, you can't do this. No, you can't do this. But as each of those happen, it causes further and further division the potential for permanent separation. You know, she even says that in the movie Footloose. She says to the, she says to her husband, you are going to lose her forever If you keep down this track, right, you're going to lose her.

[00:08:28] And that's where it's headed. It's going to lead to, she's gonna leave and never come home. You will never have a relationship with your daughter. You love her. So much, but you are losing her. And so you've got to change what you're doing. And so every step he takes, which is to protect her, drives a further wedge in between it, and at some point that's gonna be a permanent thing.

[00:08:48] We won't feel like that is repetitive if it is progressive. And it feels real and organic to the genuine relationship dynamic at play. Can I throw something in maybe that might help? Sure. Steve. Yes, please. So if, if you can't just say that she can't get the shoes, the next step was, you know, if you keep pushing this way, you're gonna get grounded for the next.

[00:09:12] You know, whatever for some important thing. And where, so it kind of steps it up a little bit that way there's a consequence that not necessarily tied into the shoes, but a consequence that she keeps pursuing this, this thing that she's not supposed to get. I, I don't know if that helps, but that's kind of what came to my mind is like, there's another consequence, but it could be a restriction to, you know, some activity that's important to her if, if they kept up with that.

[00:09:36] Good. I like where you're going with that. And what I would say is that the withholding of that particular activity is really symbolic of the deterioration of relationship. It always comes back to relationship. So no matter what the consequence, it comes back to the relationships, the dynamics, what's at stake between people.

[00:10:00] Now, this is true even with say, some big action adventure thing where the bad guy has a bomb and he is gonna blow up the Empire State Building. The wife has been kidnapped and being held to try to get this other guy to do the bidding or whatever, right? It's about the relationships. You know, the stakes are high.

[00:10:20] Because the death of that literal death of the woman that's going to kill all of his happiness, all his dreams, all his, his relationship with his wife. So it always somehow comes back to the relationship. So even though withholding that is a consequence, and that's great, but that consequence is going to cause bitterness and resentfulness on the part of the daughter, which drives a further wedge between her and her dad or whatever, unless or until she has a change of heart.

[00:10:48] And she can see his point of view or whatever, but it probably, it might even drive her to sneak out, like make RA more and more radical choices, which then upped the stakes right before she was gonna go to the dance, now she's gonna sneak out and she's in rebellion. And if she's in rebellion anyway, maybe she's gonna make a worse choice.

[00:11:05] She's gonna just. Steal a car. Why not screw it? I'm just gonna drink now. The consequence, whatever it is, causes even more radical action that has the further possibility of having worse and worse consequences. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So what I'm hearing is measure it in in cost to relationships, kind of, and that cost has to go higher and higher.

[00:11:30] Yes. But I like what Steve is saying. There can be a cost in something else, but ultimately whatever that cost is, like, okay, you can't go to the dance. But that still touches on what happens in the relationship Look at it this way. What if you've got a character who's been wounded in some sort of shootout and now he's trying to get the character, you know, another character and himself to safety, but he's wounded, you know, and the bullet was dipped in some sort of poison.

[00:12:01] So now they're getting all loopy and you know that they're trying not to pass out. There's several threats at once. First of all, there's the threat of literal death to that character. They might die because they've been shot and there's poison in it. So that's pretty high stakes. In addition to that. Is the threat of even if they just pass out and they don't die, are they now exposed?

[00:12:24] Will the character that they're trying to protect, will that character be taken from them? And so that's a relationship now. So it's not that there's a breach between their relationship, but there's still a threat to the relationship. Does that make sense? It might even be that the character alone is alone and doesn't have somebody else they're protecting.

[00:12:40] But if they are incapacitated, something else bad is gonna happen. People that they care about or even. Strangers that they are sworn to protect are going to be in trouble because this character has been shot and is unable to perform their duties or whatever the case may be. So it always points to relationship, even if it's a stranger type situation, they can't do something or whatever.

[00:13:03] I think that's helpful to just keep the relationships in mind and, and just check on what this next thing would do to the various relationships amongst the various characters. I think that's a good, that's a good basic way to try to judge it. Yes. And so again, we're talking about making it important to the character and then making it important to the.

[00:13:23] And I wanna say one more thing about that, and that is once the audience cares about your character, as your character makes more and more radical choices to get what he or she wants, that in and of itself, the bigger choices. That's another way to raise the stake. The choices have to get bigger. They have to be harder choices to make.

[00:13:48] There has to be greater pressure on the character when they're making those choices. And the way you put, and what does that mean greater pressure? Well, it means the stakes are bigger. I mean, it's kind of this circular thing, but it means the potential outcome is worse. So that's why by the time you get to the end of act two, that is the point of no return because the character.

[00:14:10] Now can no longer hang out in no man's land. They have to face the music. The showdown is coming and it's all or nothing. It has finally gotten to a point where it's all or nothing. So, but we get there because of the progressively more difficult. Stakes, things that have happened that make it impossible for them to avoid the showdown anymore, it's time to face the music.

[00:14:36]