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Back in 2006, as I began drafting the book that would grow into my debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, I handed over my early, uncertain pages to a friend to solicit feedback. The protagonist was Rebecca, a thirty-five-year-old newly divorced woman who shared custody with her ex and was venturing into the dating scene again. Essentially a reflection of me at that moment, except that Rebecca’s ex-husband happened to be a pastor. My friend’s verdict came quick and blunt: “This is okay… but a little dull. I want to see that marriage.”
I did not share that sentiment. I had just left an unhappy marriage and wasn’t eager to conjure a fictional one and linger there while writing a novel.
Yet I recognized that my friend was right. Rebecca’s world felt thin as I’d drawn it. Co-parenting and dating each carry the possibility of drama, but not a full-fledged novel’s worth of it on their own.
Most troubling, Rebecca had nothing truly at stake. She stood to lose nothing. What was the absolute worst that could occur? A clumsy date? A custody dispute? Was that the kind of conflict I wanted to explore?
Even the name felt flat. No disrespect to Rebeccas, but mine sounded like something out of a sleepy farm tale.
I know I’m narrating this as if someone else wrote that dry, lackluster draft. Still, it was me—suffering from no-stakes-first-draft-itis, a self-diagnosed ailment that also haunts my short fiction. Fortunately, there are ways to fix it. Whether I’d already produced a dreary opening or I was still in the midst of drafting, here are several approaches I rely on to push my characters and their stories from dud to delectable:
Give them a want, give them something to lose
I took my friend’s counsel to heart and returned Rebecca to the fold of her marriage. After marrying the man she believed to be perfect, she enjoys the respectability, social standing, and material perks of being a megachurch pastor’s wife—what you could call the first lady life. If that partnership collapses, she has a lot to lose.
Choosing to make Rebecca’s husband the pastor of a nationally known megachurch also shaped the narrative’s stakes. A public figure like a famous pastor and his wife face far more high-stakes exposure if their marital troubles go public than would a smaller-house preacher and his wife.
But even with this adjustment, I found Rebecca backed into a corner. Despite the advantages, she detested being a first lady (as I would under similar circumstances), detested the glare of publicity (as I would), and wasn’t sure she even believed in Christianity (like me). Moreover, Rebecca’s libido seemed as fiery as ever while her husband, a man fifteen years her senior, appeared to be losing interest. She’d snagged everything she’d wanted by “marrying up,” yet she remained dissatisfied. If the marriage ended, would it count as a true loss?
Takeaway: when a character has already attained everything they desire, give them something else to crave.
Enter the First Lady USA pageant. I introduced the pageant when I transformed Rebecca—miserable as a first lady—into Scharisse, who adored every moment of the role. The other first ladies, however, shunned her because she lacked the proper church-girl pedigree as the daughter of a teenage mother who’d grown up unmarried. Schar yearned for acceptance from the other contestants, so she aimed to win the pageant, win over her rivals, and ultimately become the quintessential first lady.
To intensify the tension, I placed a hurdle in Schar’s path—a scandal that could ruin her marriage just as surely as it could derail her shot at the First Lady USA crown. Another principle for elevating stakes: Keep making things worse. Determine what’s the final outcome the character hopes to avoid, or the most unjust or unexpected or worst possible event that could occur—and make that happen.
Timing is everything
Altering the timing or sequence of events in your plot can elevate the stakes as well. How might the narrative shift if it begins five years later—or earlier? What if the person who got away appears during the honeymoon with a new partner rather than right after a divorce?
Not only did I relocate Rebecca-now-Schar to an earlier moment in time and anchor her back in marriage, I also aged her daughter Gabrielle from five to fifteen. A public scandal and a turbulent marriage affect a teenager very differently from a kindergartner. Those changes and their ripple effects on Gabrielle ended up shaping the arc of the whole novel considerably.
Identify the final, most disheartening or unlikely event that could thwart the character’s aim, or the worst possible thing that might happen—and then let that moment unfold.
The First Lady USA pageant demonstrates another way in which timing can lift tension. Any element bound to a fixed date or deadline acts like a ticking clock. Something has to occur by that event date or else consequences follow for the protagonists and others nearby. And a single story can house several concurrent clocks. When Scharisse and the other contestants gather to kick off the pageant—still months away—she only has eight days to win over women who despise her.
No angels, no demons
Endow your “good” characters with grit and flaws. Once I allowed Schar to possess values and interests that differed from mine, to make choices I wouldn’t, and to parent in ways I wouldn’t, she became considerably more engaging. And she had more at stake.
Likewise, give your villains some complexity. I don’t believe antagonists or those who are unlikable must be redeemed. In fact, I prefer that they aren’t. As a reader and as a writer, I find it far more compelling to encounter their deeper layers and contradictions, rather than a polished, repentant, or chastened version of them, or some heavy-handed, public apology for why they are the way they are.
In my novel, Schar’s chief adversary, head deaconess Sheila Battle, began as a straightforwardly judgmental, holier-than-thou churchwoman. Yet, in later drafts I included a scene that reveals there’s a lot more to Sheila than meets the eye, and it’s often funny. By the end of the book, Sheila remains judgmental and holier-than-thou, but we can’t unsee the other facets of her character, either.
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Two decades ago, a friend spotted something in my half-formed novel that I hadn’t noticed. Or rather, she saw what was missing: a real stake. A powerful answer to the question, “So what?” in light of the situations Schar-then-Rebecca faced. If nothing mattered to the characters, there wouldn’t be a story at all. Not yet.
Once I defined Schar’s desires, reconsidered when in the timeline we encounter her, and ensured that she and the other figures weren’t impossibly flawless or cartoonishly evil, suddenly the story came to life.
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The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw is available via Mariner Books.
