Make Story Interesting by Establishing Stakes

A short craft post from an editing service’s blog. Bignell’s claim is that a story holds a reader when the protagonist has something at stake, and that the stakes should be set early and then reinforced through the rising action. He boils it down to two questions: what does the protagonist want, and what happens if they fail to get it? In his framing, virtually every story is a want with a disaster attached, and the plot is little more than the obstacles between the character and the want.

His worked example is Salvor Hardin in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. Hardin wants Terminus, the planet holding the Encyclopedia Foundation’s store of knowledge, to survive the collapse of the Galactic Empire. If he fails, the warlike kingdoms breaking away at the edge of the Empire take it over, and humanity falls into a longer dark age. In the novel those are the Four Kingdoms led by Anacreon, and the dark age is the one Hari Seldon’s plan is meant to cut from 30,000 years to 1,000.

Most of the page is a pitch. It closes by selling Bignell’s Storytelling 101 guidebooks, 7 Minutes to Your Bestseller, and his editing service.