Hey everyone!
How are you doing this fine day? My own writing is... suddenly not going well even though it's been perfect the last few days (???) and I'm going a bit crazy. Ah well. It might sort itself out.
Today let's talk about the importance of raising the stakes.
The most recent example of a series (TV) that failed at this is The Man in the High Castle. I've been dying to talk about this for at least a week since I started to watch Season 3. There will be some (minor) spoilers so if you don't want to know the end of Season 2 stop right here!
What is there to say about The Man in the High Castle.
It started great. The first two seasons were coherent, connected, and everything made sense within the universe where it's set. I liked some of the characters (Tagomi) and hated others (Frank). All of them had their part to play and the first two seasons had UNITY. It had a plot.
Cue Season 3.
The unity evaporated like water in the desert. The characters are no longer doing ANYTHING related to any plot or within their character (established in the first two seasons). They've all gone insane, there is no plot, and the only thing the season has established so far is to put in a lot more fluff. This fluff comes mostly through kissing and unnecessary sex scenes as well as dramatic (emo) scenes where people talk about their emotions that are way too prolonged. Of course I have nothing against either romantic or 'deep' scenes but those are neither. The 'romantic' scenes often happen to characters I don't care about (who were introduced badly in season two and three and with whom the audience has no emotional bond whatsoever) and the emotional talk scenes... well. There's about ten every episode and it's getting old.
There is also (as I have mentioned before) no plot in Season 3 whatsoever. Unless you count the three or four scenes where a dark tunnel is mentioned that needs to be investigated.
All right. Let's get to WHY it doesn't work though. I've talked a lot about WHAT doesn't work. It's time to look at the details of WHY.
The WHY in this case is actually very simple:
The STAKES are not high enough after Season 2. In fact there are almost no stakes at all.
Consider the characters.
At the end of season two they have already lost everything they could lose (Smith his son, Chief Inspector Kido his second in command, Frank is supposedly dead, Juliana everyone she loved, Ed and Childan their shop, livelihood, and family, Joe his honor and pride and so on and so forth, and Tagomi gave up his family for the greater good). These are characters who have absolutely nothing left (and Juliana's sister reappearing in the second season? Well in the third that plot point is made completely useless as the only journey they go through is 'how can we get sister back to her world').
All right. The characters then have nothing left = no personal stakes.
Let's examine the public stakes of s1 and s2 briefly. In s1 the public stakes were beautifully set up and in s2 climaxed upon.
Here is season one's storyline for each main character: What's up with (Juliana and) the films? What will the death of Frank's sister and her children make him do? How far will he go? Will Joe betray them all? Will Tagomi be able to help his spy get the blueprints for the Heisenberg to the science minister and get him out alive? Will Chief Inspector Kido successfully apprehend the resistance member who has the film?
These (mostly personal) stakes are all set up and solved. At the same time Season 2 is set up neatly.
Throughout Season 2 there are even more questions that need answers. There is a new film Juliana needs to see. It is terribly important. Will she manage to get the film to the Man in the High Castle? Who is the Man in the High Castle? Will Frank be found out? Will he be accused of shooting the Japanese crown prince? Will he survive the Yakuza? Will Joe reconnect with his father? Will Tagomi reconnect with his family in the alternate world? Will Chief Inspector Kido apprehend the resistance before it's too late? Will Smith's son survive the season? Will we (the audience) find out more about the films and alternate worlds? Will all of them be able to somehow avert the coming war?
The public stakes here are HUGE. If the Nazi Reich and the Japanese fight over America then millions of people will die. Hundreds of cities will be destroyed. Thousands of communities. And the stakes are averted only at the last minute.
Then we get to Season 3. All the questions above have been answered masterfully. It wasn't perfect (some loose ends and red-shirt setups) but there was a silver lining through all of the two seasons.
Let's see if we can find ANY stakes in this season.
Season 3 starts with Juliana's sister back in her life BUT she has to go back to her own world for reasons unknown - which means the whole plot point of her appearing AT ALL has just been made redundant. It would have been a good ending for Juliana who believes in people and always helps them to get something BACK. But no. Season 3 destroys this.
Frank meanwhile has been hiding out with some jews in the mountains of somewhere. (Denver?). The first and second seasons he has always been adamant about not being a jew (and not just because the Nazis would kill him but because he simply did not wish to live the jewish life). Suddenly, all he wants in life is to be a jew. (And anyway how did he survive the explosion when the girl standing right next to him got smashed up?)
Smith does not react to what happened to his son. He's chill as usual. There is no emotion there where it should have been. Then again... I guess it IS six months later. Smith also has problems with people trying to do him in (or at least get him into prison for treason). A new character is introduced as the 'antagonist' but killed off relatively quickly because ???
Chief Inspector Kido is (as always) doing his own thingamagic. However, all that translates to is his growing relationship with some white woman in a club. I will admit, that's at the moment the only part of the series I enjoy. I like how Kido went from 'I don't talk to working girls' to her being the only woman (person) he talks to honestly. Also she's taller than him which is cute.
Tagomi... is a mystery. He has averted the war in his world. He achieved his mission and why he left his family back in World 2 and returned to Nazi World. So why didn't he go back to them? He was happy there and they were starting to accept him again. BUT he has a new girlfriend (some Japanese painter who says she has a husband but still flirts with Tagomi every chance she gets???). It's all fine. He only loved his wife enough to learn how to traverse worlds.
All these characters do throughout 2/3 of the third season is... nothing whatsoever. Oh of course they're running around doing stuff but none of it has any stakes. Random romantic (or not so romantic since I don't care about these random insert characters who only popped up to have sex with one of the main/side characters) scenes happen. Juliana goes crazy. Frank suddenly becomes a jew. Smith kills more people. Joe loses his mind and then his life (in a rather graphic way that didn't fit the rest of the series at all). Tagomi is just derping around. Chief Inspector Kido... well at least his relationship with the woman from the club is cute.
There are no personal stakes for either of the characters throughout the season. The only characters with personal stakes (Smith and Tagomi) solve them pretty quickly.
There are also no public stakes.
Remember the war that almost happened at the end of s2? Knowing there was a s3 I kept thinking 'something must happen'. The atomic bomb MUST BE dropped onto the Japanese (by accident after the 'bad guy' is apprehended or just SOMEHOW). The atomic bomb MUST be dropped. Well. It wasn't. The war was averted when (thinking about setting up s3) it SHOULDN'T have been. Because what happened in s3? All the stakes were suddenly gone. The characters (as I mentioned) went through so much and lost so much they have nothing left to lose. The public has nothing to lose either at this point.
There simply are no stakes. And that's a terrible thing when you've watched s1 and s2 and know how much opportunity it had!
The best I can figure about the stakes of s3 is that the public stakes are supposed to be the fact that the Nazi Reich is trying to build a wormhole/whatever into other worlds to spread the Nazi Reich into them.
But why? They haven't even conquered their own world yet. They are too afraid to start war with the Japanese but at the same time they're working to conquer whole new worlds? What? It makes just as little sense as the 7-10 kiss/sex scenes in every single episode.
I applaud you if you've stuck with me so far. I would have kept it shorter but I wanted to make a good example of this. (And also the horrible storytelling of s3 makes me really angry after how good the first two seasons were).
This is story-telling 101.
If your first book ends in preventing a war then your second book can't hang on to all kinds of personal sob stories of your characters. You raised the stakes by starting a horrible war... and then let everyone down by going back to 'oh yeah but listen these characters are suffering individually' (and then they're not even suffering anyway but just being or randomly jumping into bed with everyone else).
Of course it's hard to top two great seasons and make the third better. But s3 was just horrible to watch - and so are many other book and TV series these days. The purpose of raising the stakes is to keep reader/audience interest. It doesn't work when they first avert a war and then go back to doing nothing at all for a whole book/season.
I really hope this wall of text will help you figure out why stakes are so important and how to use them well! And if your book two is already great and you just can't figure out what to do for book three? THINK HARDER. THINK BIGGER. If they averted a war in book two it's time to deal with that exact same war in book three OR bow out. There can be no going back to a normal 'comfortable' life after that. Not if you don't want your readers to fall asleep while reading your book (cough Authority by Jeff VanderMeer).
WriteBot has said its piece. Have a good night/day!
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