You’ve got car chases, ticking clocks, and maybe even a rooftop showdown… so why does your story still feel flat?
High-stakes storytelling isn’t just about explosions or death-counts. It’s about emotional investment, clarity, and momentum. And if your scenes are falling short, chances are you’re making one (or more) of these common mistakes.
The good news?
They’re easy to fix—and the results can be dramatic.
Let’s crank up the tension.
Mistake #1: Passive Protagonists
If your hero is just a pinball bouncing from event to event, there are no stakes—only randomness. We want characters who cause things to happen.
Imagine a detective who just stumbles onto clues instead of actively chasing down leads. The story starts to feel like a string of coincidences, which drains the tension right out of it.
In contrast, when your protagonist is driving the action—choosing which lead to pursue, pushing through obstacles, confronting antagonists—we feel their urgency. And with urgency comes stakes.
The more control your character thinks they have, the more we care when they risk losing it.
Mistake #2: Unclear Stakes
It’s not about how big the stakes are. It’s about whether they’re clearly communicated.
Even a small consequence can feel enormous if readers understand exactly what’s on the line.
Take a breakup scene: if the protagonist simply walks away from a relationship, it might seem minor. But if you’ve shown us that this relationship is the characters last chance at healing—or the key to their future happiness—the same moment becomes emotionally explosive.
Clarity makes stakes hit harder. Make sure the reader knows what matters before it’s in danger.
Mistake #3: Forgetting Scene-Level Stakes
Every scene needs stakes. Not just the climax. Not just the midpoint shift.
Every single scene.
Ask yourself: What does the character want right now? And what happens if they don’t get it?
Say your protagonist is trying to convince their boss to keep them on a case. If they fail, they lose access to key evidence. That’s a scene-level stake. Without it, the conversation is just filler. With it, it becomes a battleground—with something to lose.
High-stakes stories aren’t just made of big moments.
They’re built from dozens of smaller scenes with clear goals and real consequences.
As a writing coach, I’ve seen writers unlock huge improvements just by clarifying a character’s motivation or tweaking a single line to reveal the cost of failure. You don’t need to blow up a city—just make sure the reader knows what matters and why.
Avoid these mistakes, and your story’s tension will instantly feel more intentional, compelling, and high-stakes… without having to kill off half your cast.
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Kevin T. Johns is a Canadian writing coach who helps genre fiction authors craft clear, engaging, and emotionally resonant stakes that power their narratives forward. Get his checklist for turning ordinary scenes into literary gold:
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