Photo by on A (fiction) writer friend has a wonderfully whimsical writing voice which he uses to great comedic effect to describe characters and places. But he likes to write full-length sci-fi novels with gritty settings and premises, following the three-act dramatic structure, complete with bombastic plots, fight scenes, and suspenseful climaxes. Reading the full manuscript, I cannot say that the story worked for me and I could never quite tell exactly why that was the case until another writer friend pointed out this little nugget of writing wisdom during a critique group session.At some point in the story, a character, during a protracted engagement with an adversary, be it a fight or another kind of confrontation, needs to sacrifice something. They need to lose something. It can be physical or mental. It can be big or small. It can be their life. It can be a tear in their dress which means they cannot wear it on the weekend date they were looking forward to. But they need to lose something.
This ties into the question of stakes. In a novel which follows the general conventions of the form — let’s say a genre fiction novel aimed at an adult or young adult audience, for the sake of convenience — stakes need to be high to capture and keep the reader’s…
