USE PERSONAL STAKES!

Last week in Prescriptions we talked about finding the Public Stakes for your story to build a hook for your reader. But, what if my story doesn’t have Public Stakes? What if Ben Affleck isn’t saving the world from a terrorist’s bomb, but is just about a prairie girl who wants to win a horse race? There’s no public stakes there…

Who remembers the story of Laura Ingalls Wilder where she rides her horse Bunny in a race against evil Nellie? Why does this story matter? Well, of course, evil Nellie hates that Laura has a horse, and persuades her mother to buy her a fancy horse from Mankato. Laura doesn’t have a chance. What’s worse, Mrs. Olsen mocks Caroline for being poor, and refuses to sell her shoes for her children until she has cash. If Laura wins the race, she’ll receive a prize that she can use to pay for the shoes. So, she trains Bunny and is ready for the big race when…Willie get sick. No one is around to fetch the doctor, so Laura has to make a choice…Ride Bunny and risk her being too tired to run the race, or let Willie die. What will she do?

See, underneath this story are two competing values: Family honor and Compassion, both which Laura has big doses of.

Which value will win? This is what we call Personal Stakes.

Personal stakes can be found in the root of our values. The things that drive us, or the things we long for. Laura longed to show up Nellie, and to help her parents. She also knew that to be true to who she was, she had to be compassionate. When we pit values against each other in a story, it not only makes for great conflict, but it touches the heart of your reader in a way that makes the story stick.

I’ll never forget the day I saw Somersby. I sat in the theater and sobbed. And I’m talking big, sweeping, my husband was embarrassed kind of sobs. I just couldn’t resign myself to the ending…why? Because my values were assaulted. Remember the story? Two men in the civil war meet in prison – they look alike. The one dies – and he’s an evil man, but before he dies, he tells the other of his plantation in the south. The other man, wanting to start a new life, heads to the plantation, impersonating the first man. He doesn’t expect to find a wife, and to fall in love with her, to have a family with her, and to invest himself into the lives of the town. He gives away a great portion of his land to the emancipated slaves, and seemingly all is good….until a posse shows up, hunting the deceased man for crimes he committed. Suddenly, our hero is imprisoned, and is going to hang for the crimes of the previous man. Does he tell the truth? If he does, then he will have committed adultery, his child is illegitimate, and most importantly, the land he’s given away will no longer belong to the freed slaves. But, if he lies, he dies.

It’s a horrible dilemma, and I was a mess…and it was at that moment that I realized that my value of honesty was not as strong as my value of family. It’s a powerful story. Why? Not because of any global issue, but because it touched the heart of my own values.

How do you find those personal values of your character? I talk a lot about finding the identity of your character and following that down to his values…but here are some simple questions.

What matters most to him in life?
What would he avoid at all costs, and why?
What defining incident in his past has molded him to the person he is today?
What are his goals, and why?

Find two different values, and then ask yourself: in what situation will these values be pitted against each other? That’s how you find your personal stakes.

Stop by next Thursday when we talk about Hero/Heroine Identification – or creating reader sympathy for your characters!