by Beth K. Vogt, @bethvogt
Certain writing techniques change your writing forever.
A mentor shares a tip with you that upped their writing game. Or a conference speaker teaches a skill with the caveat, “You’re going to want to remember this …”
You listen. You learn. You try the recommendation and voila! Your writing is strengthened. Oftentimes it takes a while before we’re comfortable with a new skill, so it’s not always “Voila!” But with time and repeated effort, we improve our craft.
One technique that transformed my writing was layering stakes into my stories.
After learning about the three different kinds of stakes at a My Book Therapy retreat, I looked for them whenever I watched a movie with my family. Yes, they got tired of me shouting, “Stakes! Did you see that? ”during family movie nights. I also searched for stakes when I read books. But more importantly, I worked on ensuring I had stakes in my novels.
There are three types of stakes. While you don’t need to have all three in your novel, you should have at least one:
- Public Stakes are things we care about as a culture. World War II novels are very popular with readers, such as novels by award-winning authors Sarah Sundin or Kristy Cambron. Defending our freedom is something we all care about. Or think about the popularity of movies like Independence Day, where the world is threatened by an alien attack, or Sahara, where the earth’s water supply is threatened.
- Personal Stakes are things that touch the heart of your heroine or hero in some way. In my destination wedding novel, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, my hero still loves his ex-wife and may miss a second chance with her because she’s getting married again. In one of my all-time-favorite Susan May Warren novels, You Don’t Know Me, the heroine’s family is put at risk when the secret she’s been hiding for years is revealed. Think about this: From Superman to Iron Man, isn’t the superhero’s love interest always put at risk?
- Private Stakes are things that force your main characters to choose between two competing values. By insisting your heroine or hero choose, you create inner dissonance (tension) for both your characters and your readers. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo the Hobbit ultimately has to choose between what he wants – the ring – and what is best for the Shire, which symbolizes the entire world. The values: self versus selflessness. Author Jill Lynn also does this in her novel Falling for Texas, which won a 2019 ACFW Carol Award. As the guardian for his younger sister, the hero vows he’s only going to focus on her. But then he falls in love and he wants the freedom to live his own life. Again: self versus selflessness.
Consider your work in progress (WIP) or the last book you wrote: What stakes did you include?
How can you choose what is right for you when your decision will break the heart of someone you love? Having abandoned her childhood dream years ago, Johanna Thatcher knows what she wants from life. Discovering that her fiancé was cheating on her only convinces Johanna it’s best to maintain control and protect her heart.
Despite years of distance and friction, Johanna and her sisters, Jillian and Payton, have moved from a truce toward a fragile friendship. But then Johanna reveals she has the one thing Jillian wants most and may never have—and Johanna doesn’t want it. As Johanna wrestles with a choice that will change her life and her relationships with her sisters forever, the cracks in Jillian’s marriage and faith deepen. Through it all, the Thatcher sisters must decide once and for all what it means to be family.
Beth K. Vogt is a non-fiction author and editor who said she’d never write fiction. She’s the wife of an Air Force family physician (now in solo practice) who said she’d never marry a doctor—or anyone in the military. She’s a mom of four who said she’d never have kids. Now Beth believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” The Best We’ve Been, the final book in Beth’s Thatcher Sisters Series with Tyndale House Publishers, releases May 2020. Other books in the series include Things I Never Told You, which one the 2019 AWSA Award for Contemporary Novel of the Year, and Moments We Forget.
Beth is a 2016 Christy Award winner, a 2016 ACFW Carol Award winner, and a 2015 RITA® finalist. Her 2014 novel, Somebody Like You, was one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. A November Bride was part of the Year of Wedding Series by Zondervan. Having authored nine contemporary romance novels or novellas, Beth believes there’s more to happily-ever-after than the fairy tales tell us.
An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International, Beth blogs for Learn How to Write a Novel and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers group and mentoring other writers. She lives in Colorado with her husband Rob, who has adjusted to discussing the lives of imaginary people. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com.