Well, this thread got away from me, but I’ll try to make good on my note from earlier.

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How do you generate investment in a story’s stakes quickly? Everyone lives in the world, right? Threaten the world! Everyone can go “Ooh, I live there! It’d be a real shame if that were destroyed!” and immediately be bought in, right?

OK, that’s too big? We need to go a bit smaller? OK. So, how about we introduce some characters, see, and tell the audience that they’re good people and then make it clear that they might die! No-one likes dying, that’ll do just fine.

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It’s exhausting how often I feel I encounter things like that. I have no deep-seated objection to save-the-world or life-and-death as stakes, but when they’re used as shortcuts it usually shows. Turns out, it’s still work to make me care about a world or a character, and these kinds of stakes often correlate with stories that don’t seem to acknowledge or put in that work.

Also, when they’re the only stakes you see, it’s like eating nothing but, I dunno, grapes. Grapes aren’t bad, but they’re pretty boring. Sometimes, you have real grapes and they’re amazing, but most of the time you have stupid thin-skinned seedless grapes, and it’s just a hollow reminder of what grapes can be. I would rather eat delicious high-quality grapes sometimes, and other fruits and vegetables other times. Sometimes, I want to see stakes like “can these two people come to really understand each other?” or “will the cat make it home?” or whatever.