Screenwriting : Today's Wish and Creative Tip by Laurie Ashbourne

Life or Death The stakes for your story must not only be clear, they need to boil down to life or death, it's that simple. If not physically through world destruction, disease, or murderous intentions, then metaphorically through your character’s personal life stakes… The job they don’t get will mean they’ll lose their home and family. Losing the game will not only mean letting down everyone of their fans who mean the world to them, but it will also mean they have wasted a year of their life preparing when they could have been spending that time with loved ones. The audience should understand your character/story well enough that they know, in their mind success or failure will be the equivalent to life or death for them. Often, stories and plots get convoluted and the stakes become muddy. Keep us focused on amping up just how much life is at stake for your character. Erin Brockovich worked so well, not only because David beat Goliath, but because throughout, the life or death stakes of Erin were kept front and center. She had to fight for the job to feed her kids, she had to fight for her clients so they could get the life-saving care needed and her fight for them made her have to turn around and fight for the love of her kids again -- who were her whole reason for being. Clearly some genres make this easier than others but even in a rom-com, not finding love works best when it feels like the end of the world… Harry is destined to spend the rest of his life walking around NYC, alone on every holiday – essentially killing his outgoing personality… until he sums up the theme of the movie by running to Sally and telling her, ‘when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.’ In other words, Harry has finally figured out how he wants to live. If there are no life or death stakes, there is stasis, and that is a death knell to a story. Live like you mean it.