Stonington Media
Nate FedermanOn this week’s #Scriptsky #Screenwriting thread, I’m talking STAKES.
What are stakes? Well, your protagonist should have a want - a tangible and/or emotional goal. Stakes are the consequences of success and/or failure for that goal. They’re also the reason your protagonist + the audience cares.
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For example, the Goonies’ want is to find One-Eyed Willy’s lost treasure. The stakes are that if they can find the rich stuff, they won’t lose their homes. Imagine the story if the Goonies were a bunch of rich kids who wanted to find treasure so they could get richer. Far less compelling, right?!
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In the Goonies, the stakes get raised when the Fratellis go after the kids and when they encounter Willy’s traps. Now, success = saving their homes. And failure = death.
Compelling stakes means the protagonist and audience understand the consequences of both success and failure. You want both.
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So another way to think about stakes is to ask the questions, “What happens if this character fails? What happens if they succeed?” If the answer is, “Not much,” or “I’m not sure,” then it’s hard to invest in the character’s journey. Audiences lose interest if they’re not invested in the goal.
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Stakes can be emotional, like disappointing a loved one. They can be material, like losing a valuable object. The best stakes are both. The emotional component is dramatic, while the material component is easier to visualize & understand. Like losing your step-dad’s baseball signed by Babe Ruth.
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Strong, clear stakes will motivate your character and tell us why they’re going through so much trouble to get what they want. If the audience doesn’t understand that why, they won’t buy in. If the protagonist doesn’t care, why should the audience?! And we need that answer by the end of Act 1.
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A common mistake I see in scripts is ambiguous stakes. The protagonist wants “to be happy.” Okay, but what does that actually mean? How will the audience concretely know if they’ve succeeded or failed? You have to give them goal posts. Something where the audience knows the story is over now.
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Another common mistake I see is that there are overall stakes but not every scene has stakes. There are rare exceptions, but generally, each scene needs stakes. If the Goonies stop to discuss what they call a 1/4 pounder w/ cheese in Amsterdam, that might be funny but it undermines the stakes.
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On Big City Greens, we did an episode called Steak Night. The physical stakes are Cricket losing steaks in the subway. The emotional stakes are how important steak night is for his family. Cricket sees their disappointment and vows to retrieve the steaks. Success and failure are easy to track.
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The stakes in Steak Night get raised when the steaks are confused with a bomb and Cricket must battle a bomb-destroying robot to save the steaks. Failure not only means disappointing the family, but possibly Cricket’s death! Stakes should build over the story so the audience stays invested.
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When you’re writing a scene, ask yourself:
1. Who wants what? (Protagonist/Want)
2. What happens if they don’t get it? (Stakes)
3. Why now?
The why now works hand in hand with stakes. We need to understand why this choice at this moment to buy into the stakes. If we don’t, we get frustrated!
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The Big City Greens room was working on a story recently that we were struggling to crack. There were positive stakes (getting rich) for the story’s protagonist but if she failed, it was just a return to the status quo (and in this case, stasis =\= death). So we needed consequences for failure.
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Our solve was to root the stakes in the protagonist’s relationship to another character. If she pulled off her want, she got rich! If she failed, she’d destroy a friendship and hurt someone she cared about.
Stakes don’t always have to be life or death. You can ground them in relationships!
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To recap: stakes are the positive/negative consequences of success/failure. They can be physical or emotional, but ideally both. The audience should be able to track them. Stakes should get raised as the story progresses. Every scene needs stakes.
If you found this helpful, give it a boost.
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PS - @[email protected] suggested this thread topic. If you have a topic you’d like to see me do a thread on, let me know. And as always, if you have questions or additional thoughts, drop a comment. Hopefully someone finds these useful.