(Quick one today, because I have to vomit forth some robust word count lest shame overwhelm me and drag my sorry ass into the fetid pits of burping disappointment.)

We know already that the meat-and-potatoes of fiction is conflict: life without conflict would be gooey and grand, while fiction without conflict would be redundant and dull. Conflict is the food that feeds the reader, and, if you permit me to get a little disgusting here (what else is new?), what the reader then, erm, regurgitates is tension. Tension is born out of conflict.

But where does conflict come from?

If you want to find one easy and necessary landmark on the road to conflict in your fiction, then it’s necessary early on to establish the stakes. You need to slap the stakes onto the table so that the reader knows them.

Every character has something at stake. Every character wants something that you can take away or prevent him from achieving. Every character fears something that you can force him to encounter.

What can be gained? What can be lost? What are the roadblocks, the pitfalls, the snares? Who are the enemies who will attempt to prevent the stakes, or claim the stakes for themselves?

We know what Neo wants in the beginning of The Matrix: he wants to find Morpheus and answer the question — “What Is The Matrix?” But the stakes go beyond mere desire. The stakes incorporate all the things that a character believes about himself: Neo has a life as a hacker and as an office-worker. These are things he can lose. Neo also has a reality — the last thing he thinks is that his very understanding of the world in which he lives can be taken from him, yanked from beneath his feet, but it can. And so these go into the pot and help further answer that most critical question: What Are The Stakes?

The stakes can change, too. What they are in the beginning needn’t be what they are in the middle, or at the end. As a character evolves, she may realize that what she held dear before was nothing compared to [fill-in-the-blank]. The love of her father. The spaceship she stole from her nemesis. Her freedom. Her vengeance. Whatever. In Star Wars, Han Solo sees the stakes change: his world goes from selfish and personal to a galactic one. Once concerned about himself and his lifestyle, he soon grows to fight for the Rebellion and he falls in love with Chewbacca Princess Leia and all these things represent the stakes on the table. So, when Han gets dropped into a hole and frozen into a hunk of carbonite, we know why that matters and share the anguish: he can no longer fight for the Rebellion, he cannot help new friend Luke, and he’s leaving his nascent love for Chewbacca the Princess behind.

A story with muddy, uncertain stakes confers upon the world a story about which nobody gives two shabby shits. With stakes, you gain character information, you see character motivation, you know what you can give and what you can take away, you find conflict born and tension forged. A story empty of such stakes — or with stakes that feel hard to define — and you run the risk of losing all of that.

Be clear about the stakes, and put them on the table early.

Literally ask it of yourself as you write: “What are the stakes? And is the audience aware?”

Don’t be shy about asserting their presence. Sometime in the first act, the stakes must be clearly and presently established. Be bold. State them outright if you have to. You can soften — make it organic — later.