I watched a movie this weekend, one of the best thrillers out there for continually raising stakes and forcing the viewer at the end of her seat: Cellular. In a nutshell, it’s a movie about a woman who is kidnapped. She uses a demolished phone to call for help and gets a hold of a young man whose girlfriend has broken up with him because of his irresponsibility. A deadline of sorts hangs over their conversation (and we’ll talk about deadlines in an upcoming book therapy), because at any moment, they could get cut off, and she may never be able to dial out again. She must convince this guy to help her and eventually get involved to the point where he begins to break the law and risk his life.

Why does he do all this for someone he doesn’t know? It’s certainly not to prove he’s responsible…he actually doesn’t agree with the accusation by his girlfriend. So what makes this free-living guy care enough about a stranger to help her?

We all know that every story has to have stakes – -something at risk in the story…whether public (i.e. the world erupting on global war (Sum of All Fears), an alien nation wiping out the human race (Independence Day),) or private (i.e fighting for true love (While you were sleeping)). Stakes drive the movie, yet, they must be in proportion to the challenges before the hero. The harder a character has to fight to win the day, and the more he has to fight for, the stronger the reader will stay hooked to the story.

For example, in the beginning of Cellular, only the life of the wife is at risk – but our hero doesn’t believe her. He takes his cell phone to the police rather dubiously, until he hears her being attacked. Suddenly, the stakes are raised…the woman’s life really could be in danger. Now what? The author raises the stakes to a new level…her son is threatened. The hero must then race to the school to find the boy…only to have school let out a sea of khaki and blue shirt clad ten year old boys. When the kid is then nabbed, our hero must race after the bad guys, all the while dodging traffic. When the author throws in the challenge of a dying cell phone battery (not long after he loses the bad guys), our hero makes a pivotal choice to hold up a cell phone store for a battery charger, crossing the line to a point of no return.

Why?

Because the stakes have been raised. His belief that now two lives are at stake, and that only he can help trumps the challenges before him. If he’d, say, grabbed the plate number, and called it into the police, or believed that the victim might call someone else for help, he might not have had sufficient motivation or belief in the stakes to confront the challenges before him.

Now that the challenges have been raised to meet the stakes, the author goes back to the stakes, and raises them yet again, threatening the husband. And after our hero has conquered the challenge of saving the husband…the author raises them again with a final stake – good against evil.

Keeping those stakes believable yet ever rising is the key to propelling your character through a story, over obstacles and challenges and even to the point of them risking it all for a stranger.

Donald Maas has a great chapter on Stakes in his book, “Writing the Breakout Novel.” Next week we’ll be talking about peripheral stakes…or finding those ways to hurt your character in ways you never realized!

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