Viewing Assignment: The Avengers (and Avengers: Age of Ultron (kind of...you don't really have to watch that one.))

Let's get philosophical for a moment.

What are the things that really matter in life? Sure, big answers pop in sometimes, like world peace or universal harmony. But those answers are the ones that also slip easily out of our minds. When we really dig into the question, personal answers are the ones that stick in our minds: friends, family, relationships, health, eating your favorite pizza every now and then, wearing shoes that feel good, doing what you love...things like that. It's things that are actually important to you, to your life that are the most fundamental way to answer that question.

Now let's dive in a little deeper...which of the things you listed would you fight for, struggle to keep if someone wanted to take them from you? Did some things drop off the list? I bet you would fight for your life, or for the people you love. But maybe a few items didn't seem as important. Did the comfy shoes stay on the list? Me, I love fresh chocolate chip cookies, but if someone wants the last one on the plate, I'm not going to throw down over it. They can have the cookie.

With these questions asked it's time to move our pondering back to the task at hand. How do we use this philosophical wisdom in our writing? When we put these things that we would or would not fight for into story terms, they are basically what is at stake for our characters. If it's the cookie that your protagonist can let go of when someone else wants it, then the stakes are low, but if that same villain is threatening to take your character's life by dropping her off a cliff, then the stakes are high.

And...it's this struggle between the two characters that is the conflict in your story. And conflict is one of the best ways to keep your readers interested in the story. Conflict gets them addicted. If I just let you have the cookie, no one is going to read about it. But if we fight over it (especially on top of a mountain)...the readers will soon NEED to know who gets the cookie and who goes over the cliff.

Before we get into more of how stakes and conflict can help your writing, let's ponder a few more deep thoughts. Imagine a story with two characters. And...they want the same thing. You can make the stakes anything you like, big or small, the point to the exercise is simply that they both have the same goal. Now, and here's the crazy part...the protagonist and antagonist in this story actually agree on how to get that goal. So, they work together and achieve it. How does this story work out in the end?

Here's a word for you...boring! A number of people cooperating to achieve a goal is what we aim for in real life when we want to get things done. But that's not why we read stories!

In this case it doesn't matter what the stakes are. It could be our aforementioned cookie, or maybe the characters are working together to save the world from giant monsters, or the protagonist and antagonist might be a team of matchmakers finding true love for people. Any kind of stakes are wasted in this situation. If your two characters want that same goal and work together, then you've got a perfect recipe for a boring story that people will snooze through.

But...if your two characters disagree, if they want the same goal but disagree on how to get it, or especially on who should win it...then you've got real conflict; conflict that matters. And this kind of conflict makes the world of stories go 'round.

So, let's reverse the situation. If you've decided that your two characters are going to be in conflict, but they are struggling for something that you yourself wouldn't put much effort into getting...something like struggling over a good parking space or who is in line next at the coffee shop, then things still don't work and you are guaranteed to have more story troubles. Even if you have brilliant characters who clash with each other in fun and inventive ways, if the stakes in your story are low, then readers will quickly lose interest. To keep your readers involved, you have to make the stakes big, and that leaves you only a few main options.

When writing instructors talk about stakes, they generally distill them down to two things, love and death. They say that you must have stakes that involve one or both of these fundamental desires in order to be high enough to keep your audience interested. But, most of those instructors miss a few key points. First, there is another big item that can make for huge stakes in your stories...a sense of meaning in the character's life. This last fundamental stake can give us stories not only about fighting for life and love, but also about struggling against oppression, or to establish or keep the character's sense of self. A lot of coming-of-age stories use this as their big stake. Think of Catcher in the Rye. The only person Holden Caulfield really loves in the book is his little sister, Phoebe, and that relationship's not in any jeopardy. Yeah (Spoiler Alert), he gets sick toward the end, but we know he isn't going to die. The thing that's at stake throughout the whole book is Holden's sense of self. He wants to live without being a phony. And getting to live the life he wants is damned important to him.

Sadly, when those writing instructors leave the list of high stakes at just love and death, forgetting this sense of meaning, they've only made their first mistake. Their bigger problem is that they forget to return it all to a personal level. They don't take it back to that fundamental question we asked at the beginning of this chapter...what are the things that matter to you. This question is so important because it is what makes your story both personally yours and relatable to the reader.

If you leave your story in big terms like Death, Love or Meaning, then you don't have anything real to write about. You are left with abstract concepts that are hard for you to grasp and build a story around, let alone be compelling enough to attract readers. But, if you take one (or more) of those big ideas and distill it back into something that is personal for you, then it will keep you passionate about your writing and your story will appeal to readers who feel the same way. Remember, readers love detail and having detail in your stakes and conflict will hook in your target audience in a big way.

Here's how it really works. You take one of those things that you would fight for, an idea that has some kind of inner meaning for you, and you attach some of the big, fundamental stakes to it. Maybe you are really interested in a story about the importance of family, or loyalty. Take that concept and as you are working out your story, attach some big stakes to it. Make it a story that's not just about family but about family where someone could die...or not love each other anymore if things go badly for the hero. That's personal with big stakes. And it comes from taking your passion and making it just a bit bigger for your readers.

But, you have to be careful. Some of our personal interests are a little...particular. If you are fascinated by something like injustice in history, you've probably got some potential stories inside that readers will really get pulled into. But if you have an obsession with keeping the top of the stove clean at all times...then you might want to dig around for something that a few more people might also be interested in.

This is what I call the Who Gives a **** Test (insert whatever word you want there). It begins with the ideas that you personally hold close to your heart. Then, you ask yourself if other people are going to care about it as well. Is it something so particular to your mind that no one else will be interested in it, or does the idea have to do with something that is just a little more universal? This involves some serious self-reflection and honesty, but it pays off when readers respond to your work.

Take the clean stove top for instance. Are there other people out there with an obsession for cooking cleanliness? Sure...but not that many. Most of us are willing to let a little grime build up before we get out the scouring pads. Now, if we want to take this a bit further, could the gunk growing on the stove turn into some lethal mold that would kill your main character? Yeah...that could be plausible, which means it could have high stakes. But, with so few people invested in the clean stove issue to begin with, this probably doesn't pass the Who Gives a **** Test. You'd be writing for a very small obsessive compulsive audience.

Here's an example from my work. When I was starting Schism and Voodootown I was feeling a little short on friends and help in my writing career. I realized that a fundamental part of these stories was about how we are not really alone, how we do have allies. I thought about this and decided that this feeling of being alone was a pretty common thing that a lot of people went through. It's a fairly universal emotion. So, with it passing the Who Gives a **** Test, I wrapped up the idea of allies with big stakes of love, death and meaning and came out with two novels that a lot of people really seem to identify with.

There's an amazing synergy when you work to put these two parts together. The small, personal element makes for a story that your audience can relate to personally, and the big stakes hold their interest, make the story seem important. You miss either the personal element or the big, life-altering aspect and you are asking for trouble, but line them both up and you have a shot at a great story.

But, sadly, it's not quite so easy. We can't just figure out that we need conflict and high stakes at the beginning and leave it at that. How you present these issues is what will really make or break your story for your readers.

Much of how you reveal your conflict and stakes will vary according to the genre you are writing, but some similarities in how you approach conflict and stakes appear in just about every type of story.

First, a quick note before we dive in...have you started to notice how conflict and stakes are really closely related, how they feel tied together? I hope so, because they are. In fact, what you are really going to find out soon is that so many of the elements of a great story are all wrapped together in one complicated knot or web. This becomes very important...very quickly.

So, do you remember that chapter on showing instead of telling? If not, go read it. Trust me. This is important in every stage of writing, and especially in how you let your reader know about the big conflict and what's at stake.

Imagine just telling your readers, right off the bat, that the story is about two characters, A and B, who are fighting because they both want X and whoever doesn't get it will suffer Y horrible fate.

Was that a terrible sentence? Who wanted to read that? Who skimmed it because it just obviously looked awful? I sure did, and I wrote it.

Do you want to do that to your reader? Of course not! So, give them things a bit at a time. Let them meet one of the characters and either get attached or hate that person's guts. Then, reveal that both characters are after, and are competing for, the same goal.

This is the big secret with the stakes...don't give it all away at once. Instead, lay out the stakes at first as pretty serious...but not all the way serious. Then, partway through the story, amp it up. And towards the end, crank up the stakes even more. This increase is the heart of a huge story element...rising action. And how do you fuel rising action? Conflict, lots of conflict.

Rising action is another thing that writing theorists love to talk about. And it's another subject that many of them get wrong. When they talk about rising action, they tend to say that the protagonist has to overcome increasingly bigger obstacles or maybe bigger threats. Basically, they just say that the action needs to keep getting bigger as the story goes along.

How's that for a lame and vague explanation? Yes, as the story progresses, things do need to get tougher for the hero and bigger throughout the story as the stakes increase. If they don't, the reader feels very let down. Duh. How is that news to anyone? That's what the climax of the story is all about...building to the big ending. But, if you just do that and approach your writing in a it-just-needs-to-be-bigger manner, then you are really letting your readers down.

Take the two Avengers movies for instance (and big spoilers in the next few paragraphs, sorry!). In the first one, things build to the giant battle in New York City. Loki has clashed with all the Avengers team and keeps pushing things further and further. He wants to rule the whole planet like a god, but not just because he's into that sort of thing. It's for personal reasons. He's pissed at his brother and keeps escalating the violence because he thinks he deserves to rule Asgard more than Thor does. This is one of the things that makes this movie so great. Loki doesn't have some abstract desire to rule. He wants it because he's sick of his brother. How many viewers can relate to that? How many viewers can understand being stuck in the shadow of someone who seems awesome and wanting some attention for themselves?

And, do you remember in the middle of the film where Tony and Captain America were arguing? Cap accused Tony of being selfish and of not being willing to put the team before himself. Well, what happens in the big battle? Iron Man grabs the nuclear missile and flies it through the worm hole, assuming he won't make it back. Talk about the sacrifice move...and one that was done for personal reasons.

Then in the second film, we build to a huge battle between the killer Ultron Robots and an even bigger team of Avengers. There was the requisite mid-film argument about Tony acting alone, but guess what? He acts mostly alone again and creates The Vision with Banner's help. Then we have a huge climactic battle and Quicksilver bites the dust...because why? Because they needed someone to die to show how dangerous it all was? Heck, they should have just put the poor guy in a red Star Trek uniform (And I think I should get double the geek points for the Marvel/Star Trek crossover). As for the bad guy, Ultron is mad because...oh, wait. He was just born and he already hates Tony Stark and the Avengers. He's an angry baby. And then he's defeated by a much less moody baby, The Vision.

Avengers 2 misses the mark because it goes for big but it forgets the why. Remember how all the story elements are tied up in that big web? In good stories, the conflict and action get bigger because the characters' tension with each other continues to grow. It all comes from the decisions that they continue to make as they try to reach that one shared goal. The protagonist and antagonist push each other further and further and the action escalates because of their decisions and actions. They decide to make things bigger because the goal is worth it to them. Conflict, stakes and character development all grow together, giving us more of everything during the climax in a way that feels natural and satisfying, not just bigger because it's supposed to be.

So, when you are first planning your story, think about these things together instead of separately. Circle around from stakes to conflict to characters, adding in little bits to each element over and over. Let the ideas feed off of each other and tie in together as they all grow.

And, it doesn't matter where you start. You may be inspired by an idea for a character. If so, then put down a quick note about the character, and what would she would hold dear. With that at stake, what kind of conflict would start with the antagonist? Or, maybe you are starting with stakes that are important to you...what kind of character would find these worth fighting for? Who would this protagonist be up against and how would they clash? Then, how do the stakes go up? Keep going around with these ideas until things are all fleshed out.

This is a great way to let your story grow into a unified whole. When characters and their personal stakes drive conflict, then things naturally progress and build to a climax that feels unavoidable and engrossing and spellbinding. Your readers will be invested because they feel more tied to your characters.

Like everything else about writing great stories, this complicated web/knot takes a lot of work. It's so big and mixed up that Alexander the Great couldn't cut it in half. But, like a good philosopher, you can think your way through it to untangle it. The good news is that when you nail one part of it, it shines a light on the other parts and makes them easier to figure out. Soon, the whole picture comes together and you have a story readers will tell all their friends about.

Chapter 5 Questions/Homework:

Write/draw out a web/knot of one of your favorite movies or books. Show how the characters, stakes and conflict grow together.