Bri CastelliniJuly 23, 2026

Use Stakes of Livelihood in Romance and Your Readers Will Feel Another Level of Tension

Capitalism corrupts absolutely, but it makes for a hell of a narrative stake for your protagonists to duke it out with. Despite its prevalence in our daily lives, though, it’s not always the simplest thing to plot, so let’s talk about the ways in which you can ensure your readers feel the heat without having to give them an economics lecture.

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.

When livelihood works

Destitution consequences

The natural place to start with livelihood is establishing a situation wherein which the character’s quality of life is at stake. In practical terms, how will the events of the story threaten this character’s ability to eat and have a safe place to sleep? Losing this job or failing to secure this marriage should directly result in a worse way of life than their status quo at the start of the story, and cannot be easily remedied.

A good example: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood*

The status quo for our heroine, recent STEM grad Elsie, is pretty bleak. That she’s adjuncting full-time is bad enough (IYKYK), but she’s also had to supplement her income by offering herself as a fake girlfriend. Things get even worse when the (hot) brother of her current client is also on the hiring committee for her dream job (but also, the only job in her field in the area that can offer actual benefits and stability), and he thinks she’s lying to his brother about her identity. And she can’t immediately reveal the fact that she’s his brother’s fake girlfriend because of the reasons she was hired to be his fake girlfriend in the first place!

Though it doesn’t matter to her at first that the (hot, I cannot stress this enough) older brother of her fake dating client hates her, it matters a LOT when that hatred (and then the subsequent un-hating) might mean the difference between health insurance and burning out from another year in adjunct hell. Navigating this relationship might mean the difference between her affording her insulin (let’s add another log to the fire: she’s also diabetic!) or not.

Consequences outside the self

Like we talked about with reputation stakes, the easiest way to up the stakes of a situation is to add a dependent or five into the mix. When it’s not just the livelihood of your protagonist being risked by their actions, but the livelihood of others. Bonus points if the others are unable to fend for themselves, because of age, ability, or societal circumstance.

A good example: Duchess by Design by Maya Rodale*

Adeline Black, a broke aspiring dressmaker in Gilded Age NYC, accidentally knocks the broke English Duke of Kingston off his course. Kingston has arrived in NYC to woo an American heiress to save his crumbling dukedom and his mother and sister, who because they’re women in an elevated social class can’t really make money for themselves.

What really works about this book is that in order to save his family, not to mention his tenants, from destitution (because running a dukedom is expensive, even if they’re thrifty!), he can’t pursue the girl of his dreams. Does he choose love… or livelihood? HIs journey in pursuing one and falling into another is our compelling narrative engine.

Dream job consequences

Livelihood doesn’t have to have utter financial destitution as a consequence to have meaning, though, because while capitalism corrupts absolutely, work we care about still matters. It still means something to have a job at stake when the character truly cares about their job, or they’ve wanted it forever, or they’re incredibly talented, and this might be their only shot.

When livelihood doesn’t work

When the security itself isn’t comprehensive, or there isn’t enough hinging on their income or their ability to provide security, livelihood stakes fall flat on their face. Basically: when there seems like an obvious (and favorable) alternative to their current plight. Another job, a whirlwind inheritance not mired in debt, or a free room to crash in. It has to be more than their pride that hurts to fail; we’re looking for empty stomachs, loss of shelter, loss of opportunity and future as far as consequences go.

If Elsie doesn’t get the job she’s going for, she’ll either have to stay in Burnout Central (aka Adjunct Hell) to the possible detriment of her health, or move away from her community (which she can’t really afford). (Love, Theoretically)

If Kingston doesn’t marry a rich heiress instead of Adeline, his ancestral home he can’t sell because of nonsensical British peerage will literally fall to ruin, his mother and sister will be out on the street, and he might end up in debtor’s jail. (Duchess by Design)

At the start of their books, none of these characters have a viable alternative to their current course of action. The stakes work because no matter how doomed their adventures seem, they must pursue them anyways, because what other choice to they have?

Resolving livelihood

The most successful and satisfying conclusion to a romance with livelihood stakes is often the secret third thing. As in: the characters begin with a false binary- unhappiness but stable, or unstable but happy (for now). The story is about opening up their eyes to the secret third option, where they can find stability (though it may be more difficult than their original plan) and lasting happiness. I won’t spoil Duchess by Design, but that’s a great example of this resolution.

Otherwise, it’s a straightforward successful venture. The satisfaction is attained with a plan coming together- it’s the journey that makes the destination worthwhile.

A word of warning: don’t pull the financial equivalent of the accidental pregnancy trope, because you don’t have a better idea to resolve everything than to provide a convenient deus ex machina inheritance or rule change, with brand new information delivered in the eleventh hour that didn’t exist prior to that. Watching characters struggle and fail to find new ways out, only to bring Prosperity Batman into things in the denouement, will not leave your readers sated.

Learn more about The Rogue MFA and our community here. When you’re ready to rock, join our Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel (which meets every other Thursday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST), where we’ll be building routine and community with YOU. Subscribe to get notified.

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

Bri CastelliniJuly 9, 2026

The Most Insidious Villain in Romance Writing: Stakes of Reputation

When “I’m rubber and you’re glue” isn’t a winning strategy

Reputation is a tricky thing. It’s intangible, but also vital in frequently tangible ways. So how do the stakes of reputation work in romance, and how can you test if you’ve gone far enough for the intangibility to feel pressing rather than an abstract concept?

When reputation works

Consequences outside the self

One of the easiest ways to ensure that reputation loss has the legs to carry you through an entire, satisfying story is to externalize their consequences. It’s easy enough to tell a character to have a stiff upper lip about gossip and speculation when it’s only hurting themselves, and that hurt is primarily emotional. But what happens when the harm to your protagonist’s reputation has radiating effects on their ambitions, their family, their friends, their community at large?

A good example: Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas*

Early on in this book, the eccentric, independent Pandora is caught in a “it’s not what it looks like!!” compromising position with social powerhouse Gabriel, the heir to a title. Her reputation, and his by extension (though to a lesser extent, Because Patriarchy) is in danger if they do not marry at once and “make things right.”

We’re used to this sort of set up in historical romance- ruined into marriage is a trope in and of itself. But Pandora doesn’t really care about her own reputation for its own sake. She didn’t really have plans to get married, ever, so being a worse prospect is kind of fine? But there are two complicating factors outside of her own growing attraction to Gabriel:

She wants to start a board game company, and to get the credit for her creations as she’s always dreamed, she can’t be ruined. Eccentric spinster was going to be trial enough as a marketing angle
Her beloved twin sister Cassandra is also currently unmarried, and will weather the consequences of the reputation ruination alongside her

Pandora might not care about the loss of reputation for her own self esteem like many historical heroines before her… but there are consequences beyond her own feelings that make the stakes of her deciding whether or not to marry Gabriel far more complex and interesting. The tension of making an irreversible decision like marriage (in a world where divorce is impossible) and ceding her entire legal identity and protection to a stranger is where we get the engine for this story.

Consequences of identity

That’s not to say you have to have tangible negative results for a loss of reputation to feel powerful and motivating. Our ability to see ourselves a certain way without the nasty effects of cognitive dissonance is what allows most of us to keep getting up in the morning, and the potential of losing that has existential implications. When the character is otherwise doing good by their community or family, and we see them as a pillar of society (or they see themselves this way), reputation stakes can really turn up the temperature for the narrative. Who are we if we can’t live up to our own reputation?

A good example: The High Dive by Chelsea Fagan*

This is a second chance contemporary romance (yes, reputation stakes work outside of historical contexts!) about two college friends-turned-something-more-turned-enemies being forced to reunite on the super yacht of mutual friends ahead of a wedding. Alex, our heroine, works for a leftist political party and is a public-enough figure (even just within her office, but certainly she is a representative of her party), while Danial, our hero, is in private equity. The only two scholarship kids in their friend group, they’ve gone in very different directions post-graduation with regards to professionally and socially aligning with or against wealth.

Much of the internal conflict for Alex in joining her friends in the first place, let alone letting herself enjoy her time with them, has to do with her internal sense of ethics and wealth politics. Her reputation as an anti-capitalist is vital to her job, yes, but also to her sense of self. She’s taken her bitterness at her working class upbringing and her inability to fit in with her wealthy peers and constructed an identity in opposition to all the pain that capitalism has wrought in her life. The tension in this book has roots in how her participation in this opulent social gathering, and her growing renewed relationship with Danial (who she considers a traitor for taking the opposite path in regards to capitalism), will have irreversible implications for her reputation externally and internally. Who is she if she’s not drawing a hard line about capitalism? Who is she if she isn’t defined the way she’s been for so many years? Who wants to ask those kinds of questions just by attending a friend’s wedding??

So what about when reputation doesn’t work… and what should you consider when resolving a reputation stakes story? That’s for our paid subscribers, so if you’re not one yet…

*these links are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, and if you purchase the book via them, The Rogue MFA gets a small cut

When it doesn’t work and how to fix/resolve

When reputation doesn’t work

As with most stakes, reputation fails as a compelling narrative device if failure to uphold it does not feel like it matters. For instance, when it doesn’t start a chain reaction of consequences, or there isn’t any fall out aside from their own pride. If Pandora’s loss of reputation in Devil in Spring was solely about her own ability to attend ton events, a thing she doesn’t care about, we wouldn’t care about her reputation either. If Alex’s loss of reputation in The High Dive meant that her coworkers thought her trip was a little gauche but had no further implications about who she was or how she fits into the organization, then the displays of awesome opulence would be words on a page rather than a story.

Devil in Spring works because a loss of Pandora’s reputation means:

Cassandra (her twin) will be rejected by society and live unhappily ever after
Her career dreams are caput

And her only option to protect her reputation is an irreversible decision (marriage) that has its own stakes (livelihood and life & death, in particular).

The High Dive works because a loss of Alex’s reputation means:

Her career dreams are caput
Her sense of self is so altered she will have to change everything about her life for the worse

And her only option to protect her reputation means severing ties with the man she loves.

Resolving Reputation

Sometimes, the resolution of reputational stakes is submitting to or accepting the consequences of the loss and finding a new way forward that’s harder, but ultimately more true to the characters and their journeys.

Other times, the resolution comes down to the fact that no one wants to be the source of pain for the people they love and/or their ambitions, or be forced to live a miserable life. So the story becomes mitigating the miserable life you chose to stave off your reputational damage. Finding common ground with an unwanted spouse, prioritizing new ambitions, or rising so far in power that nothing can ever take your reputation away from you ever again.

Bri CastelliniJune 25, 2026

How to Use Pinterest For World Building Before You Write a Single Word

It’s like tracing a drawing but with words

Last week, Kelly walked you through using Pinterest as a tool for designing and keeping track of characters. This week, I’m doing the same, but for world-building. Need we say more?

Exterior References

Half of my search terms for new projects are things like “parts of a house” or “kinds of shelf mushrooms” because I need the component vocabulary when describing my version of something. But even with those component parts labeled, a lot of times even finding a place to start can be totally overwhelming.

If you’ve got major location centerpieces with real-world equivalents, like a particular construction of house, a famous landmark or biome, or even a kind of clothing, that’s one of the first things I’d mine Pinterest for. Then, you can use it as a direct reference, first to literally capture what you see without having to invent a thing. From there, armed with your component parts diagrams, you can make adjustments to your own taste and the needs of your narrative.

Interior References

We talked about using set design to help describe the unique flourishes of spaces your characters occupy, but you do still need a sense of the layout of the room, and having to invent a fake house and decorations and a floor plan is a lot. My advice here is to organize a section (Pinterest’s version of a sub-folder within a larger board):

Per character and/or location, find a staged room or rooms with similar layouts
Dot the sections with additional important elements to each space

Now, the next time you need a character to reference the location of the couch, or to remember if this is the bedroom with the special lamp, you can easily go double check.

Iconic Objects

What are the objects with important narrative resonance in your story? What might pepper your characters’ homes, their offices, their midday walk? What tangible sigils will come up over and over as the story expands? Instagram grid-worthy latte art in colorful mugs, dusty tomes, a feisty black cat, art supplies, a particular flower… all of that fills out your main project board to define your primary imagery. Let them ground you and help make the world around your characters uniquely tactile.

Research

For my paranormal romance, a major part of the plot centered around dampening the symptoms of a curse, and I wanted to use as much apothecary and medicine as I could for my fake tinctures. Pinterest is naturally lousy with aesthetic infographics of medicinal/magical herbs and plants, and so I used that as my baseline and also pinned outside research alongside them when Pinterest’s own archives weren’t specific enough. I also used it to find and pin recipes for the characters to make.

It’s a more fun representation of research than a real bibliography, and I have a visual memory that makes it easier to recall things when there’s a clear image or color I can associate with information.

Color

Another thing I gleaned from my time as a filmmaker is the importance of light and color in setting the tone for your project. Is this a project defined by bright, bold, saturated colors, or muted jewel tones? Does it frequently take place at night, or in full sun? Like a crow, I collect shiny things for each of my project boards that follow a particular aesthetic or color palette aligned with the tone and imagery of the story. Then, when I need inspiration or just to get back into the world, I can feast my eyes on my visual collage and be transported.

Choosing colors early will also help with marketing & cover design; your designer will absolutely ask what you have in mind, and if you already have a curated color identity for your story, that process will be all the easier!

Join our Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel (which meets every other Thursday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST), where we’ll be building routine and community with YOU. Subscribe to get notified, and if you’re even a little bit interested, please fill out our quick survey so we can expand these in the future with you in mind.