Kelly ChastainJuly 16, 2026

Why Life & Death Stakes Work in Historical Fiction

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.

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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.

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.

Kelly ChastainJuly 2, 2026

Plot is What Happens. Stakes Are Why You Care. Integrate Them and Your Readers Will Be Hooked.

There’s a big difference, and here’s why you should care

Back in the ivory tower days, I ran workshops as part of my creative writing classes. As one does. Not only is workshop feedback massively helpful, but it also showed me where my students had knowledge gaps. Where they instinctually knew something was off, but they couldn’t quite put it into words.

Understanding the stakes, and why they matter even more than plot, was almost like a black hole in their vocabulary. It was something they simply couldn’t articulate. Most of my students would ramp up their plots, add more twists and danger, and still get the same feedback.

If you’re hearing this, you probably have a stakes problem.

There’s a lot going on in this book, but I’m not sure why.
I like this character a lot, but I feel like something’s missing.
But why? Why is the character making this choice? And…?

All of these comments are saying the same thing – give me a reason to invest in this character and this story. They’re asking, what are the stakes if they don’t succeed? Or even if they do.

So… What’s the difference between stakes and plot? First, we’ll talk about the devil we know.

Plot

Plot is external pressure OR Things That Happen

Plot is what drives the story forward, and is almost always comprised of what the character wants and the obstacles that stand in the way of them getting it.

Plot also tests characters and helps contribute widely to their character arc, all because of the stakes of the story. So when readers are saying, Yeah, OK, But WHY? It’s because all they’re seeing is plot point after plot point.

As a plot-driven writer, I say this with my whole chest. Plot is epic, but it’s not worth the paper its printed on if it’s not holding hands with the Stakes.

Stakes

Stakes are internal pressure OR The Costs Associated with the Outcome

If plot is the action, stakes are the consequences. The tradeoffs, the fallout, and the impossible decisions. They’re made up of the sacrifices your character must make in order to advance the plot. The social territory they must traverse in order to succeed.

And without putting your character through some terrible shit, there’s no character arc or satisfying conclusion. But those plot points must test the stakes, and put your character in a position where they must choose between two terrible options.

Imagine Bridgerton. Any season will work. The fair and wildly sought after Bridgerton offspring enters the marriage mart, plucks the diamond from the group, and heads straight to the altar. Yes, we still have the amazing soundtrack and the sumptuous set design and the brilliant casting.

But without the threat of being ruined, or falling into a marriage with someone who may be the diamond of the season but they’re the worst match, or there’s a secret that, if spilled, could cause a massive scandal and ruin the entire family, or class being a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, what’s the effing point? I mean, it’s a gorgeous wedding and all, but…

We would be giving the same feedback.

There’s a lot going on in this show, but I’m not sure why.
I like this character a lot, but I feel like something’s missing.
But why? Why is the character making this choice? And…?

Now, how high you want to make these stakes is up to you. There are 11 types of stakes that always work, and if you want to know more about them and how to deploy them in your work, we’re running a workshop on this very subject on July 30th.

You’ll learn how to diagnose your own work, which stakes might work best for your story, and how to stack them for max effectiveness. There’s even a worksheet. Because of course of there is.

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.