How to Create Stakes in Your Fiction Novel That Hook Readers
Last week during group coaching, we were talking about how to set and raise story stakes. We laughed about how being mean to our characters can feel like a struggle. That conversation sparked great questions, which led me to write this article—because of course I did.
What Are Stakes and Why Do They Matter?
In a word, stakes equate to risk—the risk the character is willing to take to get what they want.
Stated another way, it’s what they stand to lose if they fail to reach their end goal, and what they stand to gain if they succeed.
The difference between the two endpoints is the story.
Stakes are what make a story compelling from the start, and as those stakes rise, they’re what keep us turning pages to see whether the character will succeed or fail.
When we put it that way, stakes sound pretty straightforward—but coming up with the right ones, and making readers care enough to keep turning the page, is a whole different challenge.
So, let’s look at two totally different story ideas and see how the stakes stack up—and then I’ll show you how to raise them so readers can’t stop turning the page.
What Low Stakes Look Like—and How to Raise Them
Charlie: A coming-of-age story
Imagine reading a coming-of-age story about a character named Charlie. Charlie is eighteen, lives at home, and is considering going to college in the fall, but Dad’s against it. Plus, Charlie really doesn't know what he wants to do anyway.
Dad, on the other hand, wants Charlie to take responsibility and start behaving like an adult.
Dad says if Charlie wants to live at home he needs a job so he can pay rent or move out on his own, which Charlie doesn’t want to do because he’s comfortable.
What is Charlie to do?
Are there stakes here?
Yes…I mean, they’re not sky high or anything. This isn’t life or death. Charlie is going to have to make an uncomfortable decision or face being kicked out.
Do you care?
Nope. Me neither. Honestly, I can’t understand Charlie at all, because I couldn’t wait to move out of my parents’ house. But to each their own.
Okay, now hold onto Charlie’s setup for a second and then let’s look at a completely different scenario.
Megan: A thriller
Now you’re diving into an action-packed thriller starring a character named Megan. Megan is a thirty-seven-year-old mother of two twin girls, who finds a cryptic note from her brother (a former NASA scientist who was recently committed to a mental institution) that says a massive asteroid will impact the earth in three days and end life as we know it.
What is Megan to do? Ignore the note or try to talk to the authorities or her brother’s former colleagues?
Are there stakes?
YES. Big ones. Far bigger than in Charlie’s setup.
There are personal stakes: Megan is a mother, and her life and her children's lives could be on the line. There are social stakes (public stakes): the world may be in imminent danger.
But do you care?
Maybe a little bit more than you did about Charlie. I mean, personally, I’ve always been a bit worried about being annihilated by a huge space rock—shhh, don’t tell.
But is there enough here to make you really care to read more about what will happen to Megan?
I’d bet no.
As you can see, it’s not enough to put a character in a precarious situation and just ask the reader to hang tight while you unfold the rest of the story. We have to make readers care about our characters. That’s our job.
So what could we do to make each of these stories more interesting? More compelling?
Building Stakes Into Your Story Starts With Your Characters
To me, the fastest way to discover or create the stakes of your story is to think about developing them in layers, starting with your character, expanding to the story world, then thinking about your reader and what it means to be a messy human.
Ask these questions to help create the stakes of your story:
Stakes for The Character (Personal Stakes):
Who is your main character?
What kind of person are they?
How do they feel about themselves?
Who or what do they care about and why?
What is their opening story goal and why do they value whatever this is?
What is your character afraid of and why?
What does the protagonist personally risk losing—love, identity, reputation, sanity, safety, belonging, money, fame, stability, etc.—by going after their story goal?
What does the protagonist personally risk losing—love, identity, reputation, sanity, safety, belonging, money, fame, stability, etc.—by NOT going after their story goal?
What will they gain if they achieve their goal and how does that factor into how they feel about themselves?
If they don’t stand to lose something they value in either direction—there’s no personal stake in them pursuing their goal. Sorry, but you need to go back to the drawing board.
If you know what matters to your characters and you put that on the line, then you have their personal stakes.
Example: Katniss, the provider of her family, loves her sister more than anything else in the world, so she’s willing to risk her own life to save her sister by volunteering for the Hunger Games. But she also values independence and is wildly suspicious of everyone's motives, and she’s thrust into a situation where she’ll have to work with others to survive. If she doesn’t, her family could perish.
Concrete stakes: her life, her family's life, and her self-reliance.
Stakes for The Story World (Public Stakes):
Keep in mind that a story world can be a physical place, a community, a culture, or a society, or a tangled web of family dynamics.
How does the conflict your character faces affect the world around them?
Where does your character live and what’s the vibe there?
What is your character’s place in this story world?
Who’s the leader in this story world? What do they want? What are they afraid to lose?
What does the community/society value as a whole?
What are the social, political, economic, or environmental concerns in this place? Aspirations? Fears?
What is the worst thing that could happen to this community in their eyes?
If you know what matters to your “story world” (the community/society, including family dynamics, social/political, and environmental issues) and you threaten those, then you have public stakes.
Now, obviously, not every story will lend itself perfectly to having both high personal stakes and high public stakes, but if you can bake them in there, do it.
Example: Frodo’s quest to destroy the ring isn’t just about him—the entire fate of Middle-earth rests on it. This is a big-stakes story. The conflict is both personal and global. Plus, this guy’s a cute, endearing little hobbit who we don’t want to see harmed, so there’s that.
Stakes for Theme (Moral Stakes):
What moral truth, belief, or worldview is on the line? Is there one?
If you know which human issues you care about (likely your reader does too) and you poke at them, you have thematic stakes.
Example: In Breaking Bad, Walter’s belief in his own power becomes the thing that destroys him. The idea here is that power can corrupt those who are vulnerable because of low self-worth.
How to Create Stakes That Make the Reader Care
Now, let’s go back to our story setup examples and add in some new details based on the questions above.
Charlie: Version 2
Remember, in our original version, Charlie’s dad told him to get a job and pay rent or get out, and Charlie didn’t really know what he wanted to do with his life, but he didn’t want to leave home.
But what if…
Charlie is an eighteen-year-old engineering genius who’s still living at home. His dad’s given him an ultimatum: get a job and start paying rent, or move out.
The problem is, Charlie can barely leave the house. He’s not lazy—though that’s what his dad thinks—but anxious. Crowds and new places make his chest tighten, something his father refuses to understand.
When Charlie learns he’s won an online design competition that comes with a scholarship to a local engineering school, he hesitates. His dad doesn’t believe in college or “paying someone to talk at you.” If Charlie accepts, he risks his home, his dad’s approval, and his anxiety getting worse. If he stays, he keeps the peace but gives up the one thing that might help him build a life of his own.
Either way, he’s going to lose something that matters.
Do you care now? Me too.
What are the stakes here?
Personal Stakes: Charlie must choose between facing his anxiety to chase his dream or staying stuck in the safety that’s holding him back.
Story World or Relational Stakes:
Going to college risks losing his dad’s approval; staying means betraying himself to keep the peace and succumbing to his anxiety.
Thematic Stakes:
Courage versus comfort—Do you choose comfort or change when both come at a cost?
Megan: Version 2
Remember in version 1 Megan, mother of two, gets a note from her mentally ill but brilliant brother that the world is ending in three days’ time. The public and personal stakes are sky high. This is life versus the potential for many deaths, but what could make it worse? What could make it even more interesting? What could make us care more?
So let’s try again.
What if …
Megan, thirty-seven and divorced, is a recovering alcoholic trying to rebuild her life after nearly losing custody of her twin daughters. She’s sober now—mostly—but walking a fine line with Child Protective Services, who does regular check-ins.
When her institutionalized brother—a former NASA scientist—sends her a note claiming an asteroid will hit Earth in three days, Megan doesn’t know what to believe. Reporting it could make her look unstable and cost her custody. Ignoring it could mean losing everything for real.
When strange astronomical readings start showing up on the news, Megan must decide: stay quiet to protect her tenuous relationship with her children, or risk her credibility, her freedom, and her family to save them.
Either way, she’s running out of time.
Do you care more about Megan than you did before?
I hope so.
What are the stakes?
Personal stakes:
Megan’s sobriety, credibility, and her daughters’ safety are all on the line.
Story World and Relational stakes:
The safety of the known world is potentially at risk plus Megan risks losing her children to her ex-husband and the fragile trust she’s worked to rebuild.
Thematic stakes:
Fear versus taking action on beliefs: Can we trust our instincts when doing so might cost us everything we’ve worked to rebuild?
Pressure Test Your Story Stakes
Here are two key questions that will help you decide if you’ve baked in enough stakes to make your story compelling—both a little painful, but necessary to ask.
First: What happens if your character fails to get what they want?
If the answer is “nothing really,” sorry, but you need to dig deeper, either make the conflict matter more or come up with something different altogether.
Second: If your character stands to lose something important, why should that loss matter to the reader?
This one’s harder because it ties directly into your story’s personal and thematic stakes.
If your character cares deeply about something—and you show us why—that emotion directs the reader’s attention and energy. We invest because the characters do, especially when you’ve made the character interesting, likable, or empathetically relatable.
How do you do that? Put their guts on the page. Show their messy inner workings. What confuses them, what fires them up, and why. That’s emotional context and it’s what makes readers care.
When it comes to thematic stakes, remember that every story says something about the human condition. For you, that theme usually comes from why you’re writing the story in the first place: what you value, what you believe, what you’re still trying to figure out.
You may not recognize your story’s deeper meaning in early drafts, but if you step back and ask, What does this story prove about the complexities of being alive?—the answer will be there.
Final Thoughts
Stakes aren’t about making your characters miserable for sport. They’re about making choices consequential.
When readers can see what your protagonist stands to lose, who else gets hurt, and which belief is on the line, they invest—because it suddenly matters.
So if a section of your novel feels flat, run the pressure test: What’s the character's goal here? What happens if they fail? Why will a reader care? How does this choice cost more than the last one?
Layer in the personal → world → theme stakes, get specific about the consequences, and keep raising the price of admission. Do that, and your readers won’t be able to look away.
