What Pressing Buttons and #PitMad Taught Me About Stakes

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Moving on! #PitMad happened on March 11 just the other day, and before that I was pretty much stalking Ava Jae's critique forum. It was so incredibly reading other people's pitches and critiques, and suddenly I had writing thoughts.

But of course you're more interested in pressing buttons, because is it a self-destruct button? Does it give you infinite sodium and takeout? Sadly, no.

Edited from Death to the Stock Photo.

WillYouPressTheButton?.com is a site that gives you an imaginary amazing thing, but at the cost of other imaginary horrible thing. You get to press a big red button and accept this deal, or say "I will not!" and keep your integrity.

Sometimes, though, the choices end up like this.

That, dear readers, is not a bad thing. Not even if you just finished watching all the singing of Les Mis and do not want to hear singing ever again.

In a nutshell, stakes are the consequences of the MC's choice and actions; in other words, what they stand to lose if they fail to overcome the opposition. (For more details, here's, like, the most detailed pitch writing guide ever by Jami Gold.) One of the formulae for a pitch is "Character must [goal] or [consequences]."

After reading far too many pitches on Ava's critique forum than is healthy, I realised that the stakes were often not really stakes. I'll be honest, I'm guilty of this myself really often. So I decided to blog about my takeaway from this #PitMad as both a reminder to my future self and a way of keeping myself accountable. Anyways, examples of not-really stakes I often saw:

• The MC must give up a personal desire, or the world will be destroyed. (The MC's the good guy, right?)
• These two people who don't like each other must team up or die. (Most people want to live, even if they have to endure an insufferable person like me.)
• The MC must do this difficult thing; the fate of the world rests upon it. (Chances are, it will happen. Even if you have a downer ending, you can't say that in the pitch!)

(And the other day, Ava followed up her critique forum with an amazing post on why stakes need to be personal. So check that out for things to do instead of things not to do.)

I then discovered a really simple way to figure out if the stakes are effective. Use the WillYouPressTheButton idea and ask yourself, "The hero succeeds", BUT "this is the opposition." Do I press this button? If the answer is "That choice sucks" or "Argh, I don't knowwww", you are on the right track.

In fact, don't just start using this in the pitch or query. In my first ever ms, I didn't realise it had no clearly defined stakes until after I'd finished work on it. I simply couldn't figure out a good query or pitch, because the stakes weren't in the novel.

So start thinking about your big red button as you plan and put pen to the paper. Some people even write the query before they write the novel. Whatever works best, this red button is important — in all likelihood, it's part of the internal or even external conflict.

What are your thoughts on stakes? Did you join #PitMad? The comments are all yours!

Share this post to save the world, but you have to press a button:

• A simple way to test stakes: Will you press the button? (Click to Tweet)
• WillYouPressTheButton?.com taught @AlyssaC_HK how to write stakes. (Click to Tweet)

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