When I ask an author, “What’s at stake for you here?” I usually think I’m asking a straightforward question. It never fails to surprise me when an author can’t quite articulate an answer. I mean, you wrote it, didn’t you? Don’t you know why this is important to you?
I guess I figure most people understand their motivations better than I do.
Motivation, after all, is rarely simple and rarely fully conscious. Writing can have a way of drawing out what’s down deep, though.
At least, if you want other people to read it.
But I also understand that not all my authors are writers—that’s why you’re hiring me as your editor. We may not always be on the same page or speaking the same language, even. Which means you may have trouble acting on my recommendations.
So what’s the talk of stakes about, anyway? Isn’t it enough to want to write a story or share an idea with someone?
What We Mean by “Stakes”
The short answer to the question is: No, it’s not enough to just want to write a story or share an idea. Unless you’re not planning on having a lot of readers. If you only want to have something to hand out to friends and family, by all means write whatever you want.
If you’re paying me to be your editor, though, you probably have some aspirations for people who do not know you to want to read it. You probably hope to at least earn back whatever you put into it. If that’s true, there are going to need to be stakes.
When your editor asks what’s at stake for you, they’re asking why this book is important enough to put in the time, energy, money, and emotion that producing a book entails. They’re asking why you feel it’s necessary to speak up, as yourself, in this moment, with this particular monograph.
They’re asking what you have to lose if you don’t see this book all the way into print.
Why Stakes Matter
Stakes matter because they help establish the connection between you and your reader. Without that connection, your reader will wonder why they should bother with what you have to say. Their time is valuable, after all.
The good news is that readers want to spend their time on good books. Despite all the challenges facing print, it’s still the most popular format in the U.S. and the industry is still strong. If you can convince your reader your book is important, they’ll gladly read it.
Your book must be important to you, of course. Now, most authors will say, “Of course my book is important to me!” What they sometimes mean, however, is that they want to think of themselves as an author, or they want to become famous for writing a great book, or they want to prove something to themselves or to someone else.
Most readers won’t find those compelling reasons to read your book.
Ask What’s at Stake for Your Reader
The stakes, then, must be in great part about your audience.
My authors know I think incessantly about their audiences. I am obsessed with what the target reader may or may not get from every paragraph and sentence.
Your readers, after all, will make or break you. You don’t get to become any kind of author if you don’t have readers, and you won’t have readers if you don’t have something of value to offer them.
So, your answer to the question of stakes should take some form like this:
- I want to give my readers _____________.
- Most people don’t know _____________.
- If people only knew _____________, they’d be _____________.
- I want to make my readers feel _____________.
You get the idea, I hope.
Every Book Has Stakes
The stakes may feel more obvious for nonfiction, where there is a main idea at the heart of the book. You write fiction, however, for the sake of a story, not for the audience, right?
I’m attracted to the idea of art for art’s sake as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day I can’t affirm that if it means “art without regard for an audience.” However personal or conceptual or nonfunctional a work of art might become, it can never extract itself from the rhetorical situation of a sender, a message, and a receiver. Moreover, I cannot accept that anyone would pour themselves into something that they did not want other people to receive in some way.
People like to say Stanley Kubrick was a misanthrope, meaning his movies tend to take a cynical attitude toward human possibility. Okay, but he also believed there was such a thing as craft in cinema, and he excelled at it, and you don’t bother to excel at a craft if you don’t want to connect with the people for whom that craft is made.
Stakes in Fiction
That said, we do tend to think of stakes in fiction as a feature of the story itself. In other words, we ask, “What’s at stake for the main character?” The central conflict usually embodies the stakes as a problem or question, and the climax generally brings the tensions of the plot to a head and “answers” the question. We call this “answer” the theme.
The same logic holds, then. If you want your readers to be engaged with your story, you have to give your main character real stakes. In David Copperfield, the title character must try to become a good person in a world that has its values all mixed up. In Beloved, Sethe and her daughter Denver struggle to find real freedom when their past in slavery literally haunts them.
Thus, we can express what’s at stake in fiction as the question raised by the conflict or as the theme of the story. I tend to like thinking in terms of the main protagonist:
- What happens when _____________ and _____________ come into contact with one another?
- How can my protagonist live in light of _____________?
- What might it have been like for my protagonist to live through _____________?
- My protagonist must _____________ or else he or she will _____________.
- My protagonist is on a quest for _____________.
Please don’t treat that list as exhaustive.
That said, it’s also still true that there are stakes for you as the author, the kind of stakes that have your audience in mind:
- I want to show my readers _____________.
- I want to take readers on a journey of _____________.
- I want to consider _____________ in light of _____________ current event or situation.
Finding out What’s at Stake
So, to review, the following are not stakes:
- I think I have lots of good ideas.
- Everyone’s always saying I should write a book.
- I want to be a coach or speaker.
- I just want to write a story.
They may, however, be places to start looking for stakes. Good stakes matter to your readers. This probably means that they entail some kind of consequence.
In other words, good stakes imply both success and failure. What happens if someone reads your book and implements your ideas? What happens if they do not? What happens if your protagonist achieves her aim? What if she fails?
The Craft of Stakes
To get at stakes that really matter, you have two avenues. First, you can employ certain techniques of craft.
For instance, you can create urgency for a character by setting a time limit, or you can amplify the consequences of making one or another choice. (Some fiction editors like to structure problems in terms of the “least worst choice.”)
There are several others you can find in writing manuals, or maybe I’ll make that an article of its own at some point. Prior to craft comes a different question, though…
The Ethos of Stakes
Second, you can reflect on what’s at stake for you.
You may be thinking, Wut? Didn’t you just spend all that time saying stakes were about audience?
Well, yes, but I only harp on audience because so many authors get caught up in their own minds and forget that there are human beings on the other side of this process. Remember, stakes are about connection. Stakes are like the glue that holds together the ethos, logos, and pathos of the rhetorical triangle.
Sometimes the reader connects primarily through the work itself. Sometimes the speaker connects primarily through some relationship with or knowledge about you. But rarely will a reader connect at all if you are not connected to your own work.
Thus, I often ask my authors to explain why their book is important to them, why they care so much about writing it and getting it out there. This is as important a question after the first or second draft as it is before you start writing. It’s an important question at the editing stage because you can become easily discouraged when you get that file back with all the changes marked.
If you want to get over the finish line with the best manuscript possible, you must stay connected to what’s at stake in writing your book.
Reflect on the Value You Can Offer
If you’re not clear about what’s at stake for you, or if you feel like you’re sitting there with one of the “bad” reasons above, never fear. It may take some work, but you can find the stakes if you look for them.
To begin, ask yourself: What will happen if I just forget this book and walk away?
In the grand scheme of things, chances are the world will go on just fine, but we’re looking for what will happen for you. What will it mean for your life, your self-concept, your business, your family, whatever, if you don’t write your book?
Chances are there will be some niggling sense deep down that this isn’t an option. Follow that. You might find yourself thinking something like, I want my voice to be heard or I want to leave a mark/make something tangible. Okay, that’s a start. Now ask why those things are important to you.
You’ll soon be scratching at some existential questions, and those are good places to draw inspiration from because everyone faces the same set of questions about their own significance, purpose, and mortality.
It may feel silly to connect your book about building tiny houses to the question of why we’re here, but you don’t need to put that part in the book itself. Rather, you need to believe that teaching people to build tiny houses offers them some real value, for instance, the experience of building their own home or of learning to live with less. You probably like tiny houses because you believe learning to build and live in them somehow leads to living a good life. Perhaps people living in McMansions and commuting two hours each way to work horrifies and saddens you.
Care, or Do Not Care. There is No “Meh.”
Okay, not the most felicitous appropriation, but you get the idea. If you want to write a book that makes an impact, you’re going to have to care about what’s in it, however seemingly mundane. You cannot see your book as merely some passive income stream or a “business card” to hand to someone to convince them to work with you. You must believe it will in some way contribute to human wellbeing, whether health, financial, cultural, spiritual, etc.
This is where I sometimes wind up playing therapist or coach, because sometimes I have to work to draw it out of you. I can tell you to think about it in a developmental edit, but I’m getting in the habit of asking authors on the phone. When you’re confronted with the question, it can be disarming, uncomfortable, even embarrassing. Hey, this is a safe space; I’m not here to judge. But I can’t help you write a great book if you can’t find what’s at stake in it, so we may have to get deep for a minute.
This is actually some of my favorite work in editing. I love looking at a draft and discovering its potential and coming back to the author to say, “Hey, there’s some great stuff here. Here’s how we can really make it land.” If you’d like that kind of help, let me know.
Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash
