Stakes

In practice

Stakes answer the audience's most basic question about a story: so what? A character can want something badly, but until we know what happens if they fail, the want is only information. Stakes turn a goal into suspense by attaching a consequence to the outcome, whether that's a life, a marriage, a reputation or a person's sense of who they are.

Writers usually describe stakes on two levels. External or public stakes are what the world loses if the hero fails, such as a town, a company or a planet. Personal stakes are what the hero loses, and they matter more, because an audience bonds with one person far more easily than with a crowd. The strongest stories tie the two together so that saving the world also means saving something the hero loves.

Stakes also have to move. A story that opens with the end of the world has nowhere to climb, while a story whose stakes rise with each act keeps tightening its grip. Raising the stakes means making failure cost more as the plot advances, by adding risk, taking away options or putting a deadline on the outcome, until the climax decides everything at once.

Stakes and a ticking clock

The scene states the cost of failure in one line and puts a time on it, so the audience understands the stakes without an explanation. A stranger's life is at stake, which is public; showing what Rosa herself could lose, such as her job or a promise she made, would make the scene personal as well.

Personal, public and internal stakes

Personal stakes are what the protagonist will lose: a child, a home, a career, a relationship or their own life. They're the most reliable kind, because the audience experiences the story through one person and feels that person's risk directly. Even a story about saving a city usually makes the danger personal by putting someone the hero loves inside it.

Public stakes, also called external or global stakes, are what other people lose if the hero fails. They widen the story's scale and can make an ending feel important, but on their own they tend to feel abstract. Millions of strangers in danger rarely move an audience as much as one character we know, which is why disaster films focus on a single family.

Internal stakes are what the character risks inside: self-respect, faith, a belief about themselves, the chance to become someone better. They connect the plot to the character arc. A hero who wins the fight but loses their integrity has met the external stakes and failed the internal ones, and many of the most memorable endings turn on exactly that trade.

Stakes in well-known films

In Jaws, the public stakes are clear from the start: a beach town's summer economy and its swimmers. Steven Spielberg makes them personal when Chief Brody's own son is in the water during a shark attack. From then on, Brody isn't only doing his job; he's protecting his family, and the audience's fear rises with his.

Die Hard shows how personal and public stakes can be fused. John McClane must stop the thieves to save every hostage in the building, but one of the hostages is his estranged wife, Holly. Each move against Hans Gruber is also an attempt to save his marriage, and the final confrontation puts both at risk in the same moment.

Stakes don't have to be about life and death. In Little Miss Sunshine, the goal is getting Olive to a children's beauty pageant in time, and the danger is only that she'll miss it. The film makes it matter by showing what each family member has already lost, so that reaching the pageant becomes the family's chance to keep one promise.

How to raise the stakes in a screenplay

Establish the stakes early and concretely. In the first act, show what the protagonist values and what they're afraid of losing, before the plot threatens it. A scene of a character with their daughter makes the later threat to her land harder than any line of dialogue about how much she matters. The audience must see what's at stake to fear for it.

Escalate in steps. Each act should make failure more costly than the one before, by raising the risk, making the problem more personal, taking away the hero's allies or tools, or adding a deadline. A ticking clock is the simplest version of this, because it shrinks the time left to act and makes every delay a cost in itself.

Make sure the stakes are believable and specific. Vague stakes, such as everything will be ruined, give the audience nothing to picture. Specific stakes, such as she'll lose custody at Friday's hearing, can be imagined and feared. Check that the hero's choices actually affect the outcome, too: stakes only create suspense when the character's actions decide what happens.

Common questions