The highest stakes of all aren’t always the right ones for your story, but when they work, they WORK.

If anyone is going to pull a tarot card to see if she should travel solo around the world with nothing but a laptop, a passport, and a backpack full of underwear, it’s your girl. Will we die? Probably not. The stakes of life and death have to very real and present in order to freak me out. In life, and especially in fiction.

Want to learn about the 10 other narrative stakes, and get extra recommendations for the books that absolutely nail it? We’re leading our first workshop – What’s At Stake: How Unputdownable Novels Keep You Hooked– July 30th! RSVP now.

In historical fiction, we see these stakes crop up all the time. And I blame the glut of WWII Hist Fic for this because most of those stories are about spies, escaping a camp, an occupying regime, or a small town overrun by the enemy who is equal parts a handsome soldier and a muhfu*kin killer in a crow’s nest training his Mauser at me.

Escape is a big theme in Hist Fic and not just WWII. Characters Women are trying to escape orphanages, a slave patrol, the patriarchy. If your narrative involves escape in any way, life and death stakes are almost a given, but they aren’t required. Let’s break down when these stakes work and when they don’t.

Before we dive in, if you’re wondering what the difference is between stakes and plot, you’re not alone. It’s a common question and once you understand the difference, you’ll take your story to a whole new level.

When the Stakes of Life and Death Work

In order for the stakes of life and death to work, the reader has to not only be invested in the character, but also their situation and story. They have to feel some kind of solidarity with this character, which is a good thing to create regardless, but here it’s essential. The reader must think that if this character does die in the end, that it would be heroic or valiant, or worth erecting a statue in their likeness in the town square. More than anything, this character’s death should mean something. Either way, they’ll be devastated or outraged if it happens.

A great example: A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles*

You didn’t really think we were going to get through a post like this without talking about this book did you? I use it as an example of how get through your novel’s saggy middle, and again when we’re using maps to make our book come alive. It’s a banger.

In AGIM, our protagonist is facing life or death. Take one step out of the Metropol Hotel, Count Rostov, and it’s curtains for you. Now, in order for us to become invested in these stakes, we must already be very invested in Count Rostov, his situation, and how we’d feel if he was to meet the firing squad. We’re introduced to him at his trial, which at first glance might put us at odds with him, but no. We see very clearly that Rostov is right to mock this sham Bolshevik tribunal, where he’s been charged with being an unrepentant aristocrat. A social parasite of the new order! The. Nerve. And it’s all because of a subversive poem that’s been attributed to him.

This whole farce puts us instantly at odds with the antagonists. We see how ridiculous their display of power is, and how desperately the regime is trying to make this offense important. But no matter how absurd we might find this whole charade, we also know that Rostov is up against a government that absolutely has the power to follow through. His world and situation, no matter how eye-roll inducing, supports these stakes.

Rostov’s stakes are levied in 1922, decades before WWII, but when we think of life and death stakes in these terms, it’s easy to see why they’re used so often in WWII historical fiction. Most of the characters are facing a regime that will absolutely cut them down. They’re in the middle of a war, where that’s the standard operating procedure, and so it makes these stakes low hanging fruit. They’re devastating consequences that don’t ask the reader to make a huge leap in order to believe them.

A great example: The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer*

Set in both Paris and Budapest, we follow a Jewish-Hungarian architecture student as he falls in love in Paris, and returns to Hungary to help his family in the middle of WWII. The story pulls on the threads of life and death as we watch the horrors of the war unfold, and the devastating impact of the holocaust and the camps, play out in the second half of the book. When every paragraph has the power to erase characters from the narrative altogether, we sit up and take note.

Here it works because not only do we like our main character and his family, the reader also has internal motivation to cheer him on. Moral outrage over the whole war, the genocide, and the destruction of an entire people, is a strong engine that propels us through. If this character survives, the reader also gets to experience good prevailing over evil, and a small part of them feels that redemptive middle finger as they stick it to the N*zis. Plus we also see what this character stands to lose. Love. And ugh, we can’t bear to witness that one.

*This is an affiliate link with Bookshop.org, which means we may receive compensation if you click on it to make a purchase. This comes at no additional cost to you, and no financial support to Jeff Bezos which is the REAL win here.

Want to learn about the 10 other narrative stakes, and get extra recommendations for the books that absolutely nail it? We’re leading our first workshop – What’s At Stake: How Unputdownable Novels Keep You Hooked– at the end of July! RSVP now.

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When Life or Death doesn’t work

When the story would be far more interesting if the character was banished or exiled, or hauled into court and charged for the crimes they’ve been named in over a million times in a tranche of files that have been kept from the proletariat for an ever changing number of reasons, and the character was then found guilty of treason, and their entire cabinet was removed and a new government was installed. Just spitballing here.

We also must believe that the antagonist has the capability and conviction to see their death threat through, and their reasons for doing so are believable. We don’t have to understand those reasons or even agree with them, but we have to believe that the villain does and that they’ll absolutely pull the trigger. The world must support this threat and do it credibly.

If the character dies, and it doesn’t fundamentally alter the direction of the story or the lives of the other characters, these aren’t the correct stakes. These are the highest stakes of all, and if they’re going to be in play then nothing can ever be the same if they’re met.

If Rostov lives, it’s because he’s trapped in a hotel for the rest of his life OR he’ll have to chance death on the streets of Moscow in an attempt to defect. (A Gentleman in Moscow)

If Andras dies in the camps, he’ll leave his wife and family behind. His personal dreams, and those of his brothers, are so delicate and human it would shatter his family. Not to mention the reader’s heart. (The Invisible Bridge)

At the start of their books, neither of these characters have a viable alternative to their current course of action. The stakes work because no matter how doomed their lives seem, they must carry on.

Resolving Life and Death

Let them live for crying out loud! While that would be the easiest and most straightforward answer through this, adding a second element always sweetens the outcome when the character lives. The sweetest of all is justice, revenge, or a lil comeuppance to our antagonists. That can take the form of a trial in a court room epilogue, or by heaving the villain off a bridge by their lapels. But it can also be that our protagonist not only survives, but thrives in the aftermath. They find love where they should’ve never found it. Success, freedom, or peace.

Life or death is the kind of punishment that’s doled out by a character who wants to erase or fundamentally harm another character. They want them to suffer mental and physical anguish, and enjoy breaking someone spiritually. So when that character survives and also flourishes a little? Well, that’s a big thumb in the eye to the bad guys and leaves the reader satisfied that order has been restored. After all we’ve been through with this character we want to see them come out the other side and land on top for once.

A word of warning: Your characters can receive help along the way, but they’ve got to be the one to give themselves life over death. If someone swoops in at the last minute to save them from it all, it’s disappointing for the reader. They’ll be left thinking, why did we just go through all of that for it to be resolved by a character I don’t know, or some force that was latent and lingering in the background? It’s the emotional connection that readers have with the characters that makes the resolution satisfying or not. So if at all possible, let your protagonist pull themselves out of the situation they’ve found themselves in, or be the one that made their own survival possible.