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mbarkerWriting Excuses 20.08: Identity 3 - Stakes & Fears
Key points: Stakes and fears. Relationships? What will make the character feel less about themselves? A friend might die? Your parent will be disappointed? Stakes often are what will I lose, rather than what will I gain. Sometimes stakes are small. Low stakes sometimes become important. What is the worst thing that could happen? Sometimes big stakes aren't as important as small ones. What fears do you give a character? There's a hole, an absence in the character. Do we fear the unknown, or do we fear knowing it? Be obvious. Courage is picking up a flashlight and looking in the dark corner. Trauma points, along axes of safety, connection, and empowerment.
[Season 20, Episode 08]
[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.
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[Season 20, Episode 08]
[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.
[DongWon] Character stakes and fears.
[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.
[DongWon] I'm DongWon.
[Dan] I'm Dan.
[Erin] I'm Erin.
[Howard] And I'm Howard.
[DongWon] This week, we're continuijng our conversation about sort of the lenses of who, talking about character. The thing that I wanted to focus on this week is talking about how the fears that a character has and the stakes that a character faces help move them through the story, and help create the story that exists around them. Right? So, last time, we talked a lot about motivation and goals. The way I think about motivation and goals is very internal. Right? That is how the character's relating to themselves. When it comes to stakes, now we are getting to the parts where we're starting to feel tension, where the audience is relating to the character, we understand what their goals are, but now are feeling the pressure that they're facing and how that's moving them through the world. So when I think about stakes, I don't necessarily think necessarily about failure or danger, because we are all… Your readers are all people. As people, we tend to care about other people. So, what we care about are relationships more than we care about physical danger. Right? So, starting in an action scene can sometimes feel a little flat. But if you put a relationship under pressure in that, that's where a little bit more of that juice can come from. So, how do you guys think about creating stakes, especially initially when you're jumping into a story?
[Mary Robinette] I usually think about something that makes… Will make the character feel like less of themselves. So I find that early on, and then I say this with early career writers, that I would say, well, this… The goal is to have the eight gems of Rovisla…
[Laughter]
[Erin] We got a C in it.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] Sorry. I do pronounce…
[Howard] That letter's supposed to be an apostrophe.
[Mary Robinette] I do pronounce the apostrophes. It's a regional variation. So… If they fail, then they don't have the eight gems. An inverse of the goal is not… Like, that's not compelling. Or they're like… And then they might die, which is actually, like, the least compelling…
[DongWon] Exactly.
[Mary Robinette] Thing. I think, then, a friend might die. But that's…
[DongWon] Or your parent will think you're a failure because you didn't bring the eight gems back.
[Mary Robinette] Yep. That's significantly worse for most people.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] You do not want someone to be disappointed in you.
[Dan] Yeah. I think a lot of stakes often come down to what do I stand to lose rather than what do I stand to gain. It's not so much about gaining those gems. This is how the D&D movie starts, is look at this great life that I had before everything went wrong. We see him throughout the movie trying to get back to zero. Just trying to struggle back to regain the things that he lost in the first place.
[Mary Robinette] Sometimes the stake can be really kind of small. Like, when you look at… Back at, This Is How You Lose the Timewar, that initial stake was if I don't check this, I'm going to be curious for the rest of my immortal life. Just that, oh, what am I going to miss? It's a small thing, but it is the thing that also is the catalyst.
[DongWon] Then, the stakes of that so quickly become what does this other person think of me? They might think I'm not a worthy competitor. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Not think I'm a worthy companion by the end of it. The evolution of that stake is the thing that gives so much of the tension to that little novel.
[Erin] One thing I really like is when something feels low stakes, and then it turns out that it was worse than you thought. When the thing…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] Like, oh, I'm just, like, trying to, like, get my cup of coffee so that I can make it through the day. But actually it turns out that there's something about… I cannot think what that would be… About getting that cup of coffee that is, like, suddenly the most important thing. Because when you're doing something low stakes, like, if you're doing a low stakes mission in life, you're not super prepared, you're just, like, I need to do this one thing. I'm only bringing what I need to get this small thing done. If that small thing becomes huge, then, all of a sudden, you are unprepared, you're afraid that you will fail, you feel like you have not brought your best self maybe to the table. Then it taps into those deeper fears about who am I, what will people think of me. It's sort of the same thing that gets people to often… When I go to karaoke, people will talk about how bad their voice is today. You don't want people to think that you're doing your best and you failed. You're either…
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Erin] It's like, I could have done better if things had been set up differently for me.
[Mary Robinette] I see this in critique groups. I actually have my critique or's do a ritual apology before we begin where everybody apologizes all at the same time. Because all of them are afraid that people will think that they're not a good writer, and that they are lesser. I… When I'm sometimes talking to a student who's having a little bit of a meltdown, I'm like, okay, but what is actually the worst thing that could go wrong if someone doesn't like your story? They're like, it doesn't get published. I'm like, and what's the worst thing that can go wrong if it doesn't get published? I write a new story? I'm like, great.
[DongWon] Yeah.
[Mary Robinette] Is that a bad outcome? No?
[DongWon] Exactly.
[Dan] Yeah.
[[DongWon] For an example, I'm going back to your sort of coffee thing becoming bigger stakes. One of my favorite escalation of stakes scenes in a movie is in The Devil Wears Prada. Where, early on, and he goes to get coffee for her boss and brings it back, and, kind of like is in a meeting about… I can't remember exactly what it's about… And she kind of snickers at something. There's this incredible speech that Miranda goes through about the color of the sweater that Andy is wearing in this scene, the periwinkle blue speech, and it's like this thing that goes from the stakes of my job are absurd, I'm getting coffee for someone who runs a fashion magazine, to understanding the perspective of the people who run this magazine and why clothes and fashion and aesthetics matter in the world and the context of that, and her realizing that, oh, no, I want the positive regard of this woman who is now yelling at me because I didn't take this seriously enough. So that slow escalation as we understand the terms of the movie and the stakes of everything that's going to come in the rest of the movie is just a masterfully done scene.
[Dan] At the same time, one of my favorite tropes is the complete opposite of this. Where we realize that what we thought were the big big stakes really aren't as important as the small stakes.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Dan] The Perdiem Chronicles does this really well.
[DongWon] Oh, yeah.
[Dan] Throughout, where… For the several books, they don't need him to be a hero. They need him to be an assistant pig keeper.
[Chuckles]
[Dan] Because the pig's the hero, and they need him to do that. In book 4, this kind of comes to ahead with one of my favorite lines where he's trying to work with the witches, and they say, "Any hero can soar with the eagles. But let's see him scratch for his own worms." Like, learning how to be a person, learning how to fend for yourself, how to survive in the world is so much more important than one or two acts of heroism.
[Howard] I got to thinking about the stakes and the fears in the very first Iron Man movie. Because the movie begins and Tony Stark wants for nothing. He can afford to blow the deal, he can afford to… He can afford to screw up because he's so rich. It just doesn't matter. Then the very first set of stakes he's presented with are now you might die. Now you need to invent or die. Those aren't the big stakes. He invents, he saves his life, and then he puts the whole company at risk. Now it is… Now he might not have money. Then we find out what was really happening here is someone's trying to take the company from you, and they're going to find another way to kill you. The final battle in the movie is because Tony doesn't want them to hurt Pepper. It comes back to a personal thing. It is not I need to where the Iron Man suit to save the world or to save the company or to save my life. It is because my friend might die.
[DongWon] So, while we all contemplate what we're all afraid of enough to make us a hero, let's take a break.
[DongWon] Welcome back. So we've been talking sort of about character stakes and how that relates to relationships. Right? One of the things that comes into that idea of stakes is the concept of fear. Right? We often have seen fear in stories as a negative to be overcome. But when you're thinking of how you're constructing character arc, how you're constructing a character, how are you thinking of what do I want to make this character afraid of? What fears are you putting into your characters that will help move them forward through the story?
[Mary Robinette] So this is why we wanted to tie these episodes together, because I will often look at their goals and motivations. What I find is that there's something that the character… There's a hole, there is an absence in the character, there's something. They are either rushing towards things, which are their goals, to try to fill it, or they are running away from the goal. So the… Having to confront, oh, this is a lack in myself is something that a lot of people are afraid of. Like, no one wants to confront their failings, their… No one wants to confront the fact that they're vain. Or no one wants to confront the fact that they're insecure. No one wants to confront, like, people want to be self-sufficient. So if I can create a fear and a reason to trigger that fear in them, that causes them to have to confront that or, to, like, flee from it. It's like I don't want to believe that I'm selfish, so I'm going to help these people. But they're constantly, like, but maybe I don't help them…
[Howard] We talk a lot about how people tend to fear the unknown. I don't think were actually afraid of the unknown. I think were afraid of knowing it. I… There's a thing out there that I don't know anything about and I would prefer not to. It may be a truth about me. It may be the fact that layoffs are coming. But there is a dark corner out there that I don't want to peer into, because it has information in it that is going to force me onto a new path, and I would rather continue to live with ignorance as bliss. Ignorance isn't actually bliss. But it's not the fear of the unknown, it's the fear of learning a thing that will now force me to change.
[DongWon] I would say it's even more than that. It's the fear of how other people see you changing.
[Mary Robinette] Yes.
[DongWon] Right? That in encountering the unknown, you will be forced to change in some way through that encounter and what your partner thinks or what your children think of you, what your friends think of you, what your boss thinks of you, all these will change when that layoff comes. The thing you're afraid of is how do I survive that? Is that a survivable encounter? So I think that tapping into that fear is going to be the thing that will drive your characters forward. The thing I want to emphasize about when we talk about character fears like this, there's an instruction in the game dialect that's a player instruction that I love a lot. The instruction is very simple, it just says be obvious. As a player, when you're making choices, make really obvious choices. That will lead to complexity through the interaction of everyone at the table making obvious choices. Not overthinking it. So leaning into what your character's afraid of in a Broadway will lead to specificity because of all the other stuff we've talked about in this section when were talking about the lens of who as they bounce off the other characters in your plot. But don't be afraid of them being afraid of a really broad thing, of, oh, my partner's not going to like me, my parents won't love me anymore. My sister will hate me now. Right? Like, those are really juicy, really powerful motivators that I think drive most people as they move through the world.
[Dan] Well, it's not just those choices that can be really obvious. But the resolutions, the ways of dealing with them, can be really blunt and obvious as well. Going back to a previous episode, we talked about Toy Story… Or I talked about Toy Story…
[Laughter]
[Dan] His… What he really fears there is that he has no value. Unless he… And he… Once again, he misinterprets that by saying, I will have value if I am the favorite toy. That all comes to a head when he gives the huge speech to Buzz. You're a cool toy. That is not only the moment where he convinces Buzz that it's okay to be a toy instead of an actual spaceman, that is very clearly and obviously the moment where Woody is convincing himself, being a cool toy is awesome even if I'm not the favorite toy. I don't need to find external validation. I can just love me for who I am. Whether I'm the favorite toy or not.
[Mary Robinette] It's occurring to me that what we're talking about here is basically give your character imposter syndrome.
[Laughter]
[Howard] One of the thoughts that I had just a moment ago, after talking about the fear of the unknown, the fear of knowing the unknown. Courage, to me, has always been defined as moving forward despite fear. Not an absence of fear, it's moving forward despite fear. I love the idea that if were not afraid of the unknown, we're afraid of knowing what's there, then courage is picking up the flashlight and looking at what's in the corner. That, just as a metaphor for me feels like an easy sort of litmus test, lens if you will, for looking at what my character's doing and deciding, well, in act one, they're staying away from the corner. They're not peering into the shadows, and things are coming out of the shadows and they are reacting. In act two, Act III, they're picking up the flashlight and they are staring at what they were afraid to stare at before.
[Mary Robinette] I sometimes look at really primal fears as a thing to give a character. But I was having… I was talking to my therapist and she started talking about trauma points. I'm like, I'm sorry, sorry, can you repeat those? I'm just going to start taking notes right now…
[Chuckles]
[Mary Robinette] I'm like, stop doing a therapy session and started being a… This is really useful.
[Howard] I no longer need therapy, I have a professional interest in the information you're providing.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So she said that most people have these trauma points where something bad happened in childhood. Most of the time, you are not actually aware of what that is, because it happened when you were fairly young. But it was a long one of three axes, safety, connection, and empowerment. When we are looking at our Tony Stark example, the thing for him, his trauma point was connection, because of his damaged relationship with his mom… With his dad. You can see that. It's, like, how does he handle that? He makes Jeeves, who's in artificial intelligence… Boo, hiss… Artificial intelligence connection. He buys friends, essentially. Then when he realizes he has genuine friends, that then becomes the most vulnerable thing for him, because it's something he absolutely cannot lose.
[Erin] I think that doesn't necessarily mean that every… I mean, we can traumatize every character, and we should…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] But we don't have to actually, because sometimes I think some of that is based on traumatic experiences, but also some of it's just a staying alive lizard brain, like, human response. Like… Safety, like, every creature has a desire to stay alive. Like, as a species, like, they do things that will help to keep them alive.
[Howard] Whether you're a mother or whether you're a brother…
[Erin] Exactly.
[Howard] Staying alive…
[Oo, oo, oo…]
[Laughter]
[Erin] Like, I think of, like, my cat… Like every… Cats want to get high. Like when I…
[Laughter]
[Erin] There's a tornado warning… Yes, they do, in every sense. No, but whenever… When there's a tornado warning…
[DongWon] I've lost many a spider plant to cats, so, yes.
[Erin] Yeah, like you're like… I'll be like, no, we have to, like, get it in a lower part of the house.
[DongWon] Yep.
[Erin] Because there's a tornado. But the cats, just, like, something is weird in the air and the best way to get away from weird things is to get as high as possible where I cannot possibly care anymore. No, to get to like a higher elevation where I can keep an eye on everything. It's just kind of baked in. We have our own thing with that. We are also safer in numbers. Humans as a species have, like, not very good, like, actual personal defenses. Like we don't have, like, really tough hides or really sharp teeth. We've got these opposable thumbs and the ability to come together in a group and build tools that help to keep us safe. So all of these things are things that are very baked in, I think, is very primal fears.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] Empowerment, being able to take action to change the environment around you, because we don't necessarily physically adapt to our environments the way that, like, a reptile might.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[Erin] So I think it's really nice to think about, like, those primal fears. I also just wanted to say that… I love to write, like, horrible people as characters. So I'm, like, they don't do that, like, when they… They let their fears get the best of them. So, a lot of times, I love thinking about what happens if the character does not overcome their fears. What if they do the thing… They're like I'm afraid that no one will love me so I won't let anyone, or, I will put up a wall. That's just going to be my character arc is becoming a worse version of myself. So it can be something that drives your characters positively or negatively.
[Mary Robinette] Yeah. That's something that, like, as you were talking, was making me think about Sour Milk Girls, and how, like, the fear absolutely takes over that character. For listeners who are just joining us, you can hear a deep dive about that in season 18.
[DongWon] Yeah. It's what makes a truly relatable villain pop off the page…
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] Is understanding where they're coming from, understanding where what their fears are rooted in. It's also what allows you to give a hero a truly believable low point. Right?
[Mary Robinette] Yeah.
[DongWon] The low point of them giving into a fear that you've seen them grapple with and understand intimately over the course of the series, that let you buy into the moment where the hero does fail. Because so often we see those moments and they fall flat, because it's not connected to anything. There was nothing actually at stake for the hero when things went off the rails. So, giving them things to care about, giving them goals and motivation, but then giving them fears that go alongside those, that is the thing that I think really can juice your story and get it to that next level.
[Mary Robinette] I will say also that going back to the idea of the traumas, the trauma does not have to be a big trauma.
[DongWon] Oh, yeah.
[Mary Robinette] Like, my… I don't know what some of… Like, what my trauma triggers are. But knowing the axes that it's on can really help clarify how a character reacts to things. Which again can help you shape the plot when you apply that lens to your story.
[DongWon] Exactly. On that note, I think we should go to some homework.
[Mary Robinette] I think that sounds like a great idea.
[Dan] Absolutely.
[DongWon] To traumatize our listeners a little bit more.
[Laughter]
[DongWon] So the first thing I want you to do is to make a note of all the major things that your main character is afraid of. List out those things, the fears that they have. Then, take your MC and draw a little map of all the characters that there connected to, and describe their connections to these other characters in one sentence or less. Now compare the list of relationships you've made to the list of fears that you've made for that character, and see if those two lists are in conversation with each other. Are they supporting each other, or are they completely disconnected? If they are disconnected, start thinking about how do I bring these two closer together to sort of get that feedback loop between relationship and fear?
[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.
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