Tips to Build in Emotional Stakes in Your Book 

by Jennifer Apodaca (Also writes as Jennifer Lyon)

The emotional stakes in a story will hook a reader and keep her invested in the book to the very end. An action-packed plot is fantastic—but all the action or twists in the world won’t keep the reader interested if she isn’t invested in the characters.

Let’s ramp up the emotional stakes so the reader is living out the story right there with our hero and heroine! We want her to feel their hopes and dreams, their fears and heartbreaks. We want readers to be rooting for the characters to triumph.

We do this by weaving together the external conflict that drives the plot, and the internal conflict that drives our characters and their decisions. That way the character’s goals mean more to the reader. She will know the heroine’s desperation to save her baby from a brutal ex stems not only from a mother’s love, but also from the fact the heroine lost her family to a house fire at six. The heroine’s baby is her only family. Now the reader is deeply invested with the heroine, nearly as desperate as she to keep the baby safe.

To understand our characters internal conflict, we need to understand their goals (usually part of the external plot), their deepest desire, and their greatest fear. I’m going to use my recent release HER TEMPORARY HERO to illustrate how internal conflict increases the emotional stakes, and ramps up the overall tension in the story because the readers are more invested in the characters.

Here is the opening set up: Logan Knight, a former Marine struggling with PTSD comes home to his ranch to find a beautiful woman and baby hiding in his house. He quickly learns that Becky Holmes is a desperate woman on the run from a brutal ex and needs a temporary hero to help her get full custody of her baby. She could be the answer to his problem as he needs a wife before his thirtieth birthday to secure the land he wants to build Camp Warrior Recovery for veterans suffering from PTSD. The problem? Logan’s trigger for his PTSD is children, especially babies. He can’t ever have a real marriage and family because of that.

But if he can manage a temporary marriage, then they can both achieve their external goals: Logan will get his land and Becky will get full custody of her baby.

I have three main tropes in this book. Tropes are easily recognizable themes repeated over and over. For example; billionaires, cowboys, secret babies, marriage of convenience, best friend’s little sister, redemption, vengeance…you get the idea. Here are the tropes in HER TEMPORARY HERO:

1.)    Marriage of Convenience

2.)    Baby on Doorstep

3.)    Tortured Alpha Hero

Now to deepen the impact of the story we weave the external conflict (tropes/plot) with the internal conflict and motivations. To do that we must ask ourselves what are each character’s deepest desires and greatest fears, and why?

In HER TEMORARY HERO the heroine and hero’s greatest fears are:

Becky lost her father, brother, home and way of life in a house fire when she was six. Her greatest internal desire is a family, and her greatest fear is losing her family.

Logan spent his first eight years with his mom, then his rich and powerful father decided he needed a son and fought for custody. Logan’s mom gave up the fight, choosing her career as a singer over her son. After that, Logan never really fit anywhere. His greatest secret desire is to be loved enough to fight for, and his greatest fear is abandonment.

Now we take these two characters and put them in a marriage of convenience with a baby on the doorstep. Then to bring out the emotional stakes we do this:

1.) Tempt them with their greatest, possibly secret or unrecognized, desire:

–Becky: She desperately wants a family. A marriage of convenience gives her that, at least temporarily.

–Logan: To be loved enough to stay. Note: Logan doesn’t fully realized he wants that, but this time with Becky is showing him the temptation of love. By the end of the book, he knows that’s what he truly wants.

2) Terrify them with their greatest fears:

–Becky: Losing her family. She’s suffered that before, and family is more precious to her than ever.

–Logan: Abandonment, not being loved enough, and now he’s so damaged now by PTSD, that he can’t see how anyone would love him. Note: This is Logan’s perception and it’s very real to him even if we don’t see him that way.

3) Lure them into false hope that they might actually get their dream, making them want it all the more. They can taste, feel and touch it:

–Becky tells Logan she loves him attaining her family.

–Logan wants to try, believing that he might really be enough to be loved. He’s hopeful and trying, but can’t quite commit. Fear holds him back.

4) Destroy them with the Black Moment: This should be where the external plot explodes and collides with the character’s internal conflicts.

–A secret is revealed and Becky comes face-to-face with losing her family again. She’s emotionally devastated and desperate to save her baby from her brutal ex, and that forces her into actions she wouldn’t normally take. Logan had told Becky over and over to trust him, and she did…now she’s worse off.

–Logan comes home from his business trip and is faced with his greatest fear of abandonment. He’s furious that Becky would do this to him, that she didn’t trust him…until he realizes that this is really his fault (not entirely but he needs to shoulder his part of the blame). That moment is an absolute turning point for him. And he’s forced into action.

A note about the black moment: This is where characters are backed into a corner and will make a decision that their internal fear would have prevented them from making previously. Change is NEVER easy for humans, so we force them into it with the black moment. Logan is now willing to sacrifice his original goal at the beginning of the book (securing his land to build his camp for veterans suffering from PTSD) to save Becky and the baby he has come to love. It’s a light built moment fraught with tension because we don’t know if Logan will be in time to a) save Becky from the external plot and b) will she be able to forgive and trust him again?

5) Payoff Scenes: Bring it all together in a Happily Ever After

–I won’t reveal how it works out in this book, but this is where the external and internal conflicts are resolved into at least a potential happily-ever-after for romances.  The payoff scenes are the reader’s reward—that sigh moment when all the strife and pain they experienced through the hero and heroine is worth it.

In closing, to ramp up the emotional stakes, use your characters internal conflict to:

–Tempt them with their deepest desire.

–Terrify them with their greatest fear.

–Lure them into false hope.

–Destroy them with the black moment.

–Then save them with the payoff scenes in a happily-ever-after.

Building the emotional stakes creates memorable characters that will live on in readers memories long after they finished the book.

*****

Make sure to check out Jennifer’s latest release

Her Temporary Hero

Once A Marine #2

Amazon|B&N

A little about Jennifer: 

Award winning author Jennifer Apodaca grew up in Southern California and met her very own hero at the dog pound. She worked there, he came in on a business, and it was puppy love. They married and had three wonderful sons.

While her husband worked on his master’s degree, Jen did the mom thing by day and went to college at night with the intention of perusing a marketing degree. But her true passion was writing. With time at a premium, she had to make a choice.

Choosing writing, and with the full support of her husband, she poured herself into her dream. A mere eight years later, she published her first book DATING CAN BE MURDER. In her career, Jen has written a fun and sexy mystery series and a variety of contemporary romances. Taking the pen name of Jennifer Lyon, she also created a dark, sizzling paranormal series, and most recently, The Plus One Chronicles, an emotional and sexy adult contemporary series.

Jen has achieved many of her dreams except for attaining a self-cleaning house, a latte delivery service, and finding the holy grail of nonfattening wine and chocolate. She can live with those disappointments as long as she can keep writing the stories she loves to share with readers.

Jennifer would like to giveaway e-copie of The Baby Bargain and Her Temporary Hero to one lucky reader! 

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*****

Make sure to check out all of the other stops on this month long tour HERE and enter the grand prize giveaway.