I’ve just finished watching Vox Machina season 4, and it's occurred to me that only two movies in a long time have truly given me this feeling of ‘wtf the stakes have never been higher’.

No, in fact, it's three movies: Vox Machina, Invincibles, and The Wheel of Time. And this is what I would call masterful storytelling.

So, still fresh off the high from that higher-than-cliff-hanging ending, I want us to talk about how to raise the stakes in your fantasy fiction.

I’ve come upon a secret storytelling technique that I’m not sure creators are talking about. Normally I would keep this goody to share with folks in the T. O. C Newsletter ™ (The Trenches of Creation Newsletter). But alas, this must be made public.

The one true secret to raising the stakes isn’t the common themes like a tragic death, loss, a deadline, damage, or blah blah. Yes, these are important and necessary, but they cannot create maximum impact without what I’m about to show you.

What can raise the stakes of your story, as high as it can get, to stun your audience and get them madly invested, is the BUILD UP.

(Read that again for effect).

Just like how the Whispered One said he made his plan meticulously for 500 years (wow😮), you too must meticulously craft the BUILD UP that can produce a high stake.

What makes a BUILD UP, you ask? Well, let’s nosedive into some masterful storytelling techniques.

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First, What Is The Use Of High Stakes In Fiction?

Stakes are simply what your characters stand to gain or lose depending on what happens next.

They give the conflict weight and give your audience a reason to care about the outcome.

Without stakes, things may be happening, but there’s little reason to feel worried, excited, or invested.

High stakes take this several levels higher—the potential loss, consequence, or change becomes so significant that the outcome could alter a character’s life, relationships, world, or everything they have fought for.

That heightened consequence is what keeps an audience thinking, “How on earth are they getting out of this?”  And thus deepens their investment in the story.

“The greatest stakes are earned through accumulation.”

Defining The BUILD UP That Raises The Stakes In Your Fantasy Fiction

Imagine a snowball. It can start as small as a pebble in your hands. But as you start to layer it with more snow, it gets bigger and bigger. Imagine making a snowball so large that it’s capable of doing real damage.

The process of layering up that pebble-sized snowball is what a Build Up is for your high stakes.

The build-up is the deliberate accumulation of pressure, consequence, and anticipation before the story’s greatest threat fully lands.

It is every warning, setback, revelation, sacrifice, unresolved danger, and tightening limitation that shows the audience how much can be lost, why it matters, and why escape is becoming increasingly impossible. The build-up is not the high-stakes moment itself; it is everything layered beforehand that gives that moment its weight.

A snowball can do immense damage. But the level of damage is determined by the build-up. In the same way, the height of your stakes is determined by everything you have carefully layered before the moment of impact.

If you understand, the next natural question is: how do we layerrrr? For sure, I’ve got answers. This is the practical part of how you can use storytelling techniques to raise high stakes in your awesome fantasy fiction.

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How To Craft The Build Up For Higher Stakes In Your Story

1. Build the plot progressively and fully

Taking your time to tell the story gives ample space to fully develop every aspect of your story. Go deep on your character’s personality, motivations, capabilities, relationships, flaws, and strengths. Allow your audience to get to know and understand the characters on a personal level.

Make your world more familiar to them. Reach the point where your audience is able to make intelligent deductions on why things happen the way they do in your story. Where they know what is at risk of being destroyed if a threat appears.

Establish what really matters in your story’s world and why it does. Introduce the threat early and unveil it in layers. Justify it thoroughly. For example, a monster suddenly appearing can be frightening. A monster whose shadow has stretched across the story for twenty chapters is far more powerful.  

Allow the enemy’s plan to advance. Allow your characters to misstep and learn. Progress your plot fully

2. Ensure proper character development

This is its own number because character development is the backbone of stories that make an impression. The better your audience knows a character, the more they can empathize, deduce, and follow the character’s journey.

But this is where you, too, must understand I’m not just talking about your MC. We spend a lot of time developing main characters as the hero of the story, forgetting others who carry the story with them.

All characters matter. Thoroughly develop them to be known and understood by your audience.  Let them make all kinds of choices and show how they work through what comes next.

3. Use a dynamic antagonist

We’ve come a long way in fantasy fiction, and one of the most notable evolutions is today’s antagonists.

Maybe there was a time life used to be black and white. But our world evolved. And along with it, your audience’s perception of things.

It’s not enough for an antagonist to simply be the ‘bad guy’. To want world domination, some ancient power, or whatever one-track bad goal.

Impressive high-stakes stories of today’s time are colored by dynamic antagonists. The one whose motivations get you thinking. The one whose intelligence and power you can respect.

An antagonist who is truly out of your main characters’ league. A true mountain they must overcome. A worthy adversary who, battling with them, will not simply make your character a ‘hero’. But will leave them grown and changed. He/she must impact their lives in more ways than one. Such is the makeup of an antagonist for a high stakes tale.

4. Plant relevant plot bombs and revelations

Don’t hoard all the big moments for a cliffhanger. Introduce some early in your story. Allow big things to happen and have your characters see them through.

It gives the sense of, ‘if this is happening now, what’s going to happen later? OMG it must be bigger!’

But notice how I said ‘relevant’ plot bombs and revelations. These can’t come out of nowhere. They must fit in timing and consequence in your story.

5. Craft two paths for your high-stakes moment

These paths are -  the one often expected and the one that leads off the highest cliff.  

This part of the technique is the one where you reap the rewards of your hard work so far.

The idea is essentially to build toward a believable outcome that your audience expects, while secretly preparing an even more consequential outcome. Then, when the expected path reaches what looks like its endpoint, take the story one level further.

Let’s use an analogy here. Imagine you’re standing over a bucket of water. And you have a smooth, heavy stone in your hand. Now you drop the stone into the water, and it sinks right to the bottom and stays there...this is the expected path.

Then suddenly the stone starts pushing the bottom of the bucket. The force is creating a whirlpool in the water. And the bottom of the bucket rips open with a loud CRACK! And the stone is still going, burrowing into the earth…this is the path  that leads off the highest cliff.  

Use the path expected to lead your audience to where your high-stakes moment awaits. This step is the one that brings all your work in the build-up together.

If you have more practical questions, drop them in the comments below, and I’ll be happy to answer.

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