How do you know if your story takes emotional risks and has real stakes and stuff?

[JoshRaed]

I’m wondering because people discussed this in relation to marvel movies and it had me wondering if my story has any real stakes or emotional risks and stuff or if it’s going to all be bland, predictable, and forgettable.

[BoomerZ]

This is really a trust thing with the audience. In a new story, you have that trust. It's when you don't allow people to die that the audience starts not trusting you. And once you lose that trust, you can't get it back.

[Lazy-Gamer]

What's in your story is up to you.
If you want hard hitting emotional moments though, and you don't know what to have your character go through, I suggest focusing on building your character first if you haven't already.

Write down their fears and dislikes and use those against them in the story.

As for being predictable. I wouldn't worry about it. Your story doesn't have to be unique to be interesting.

[river121693]

you should do everything to ensure that the conflicts you write, no matter how mundane, feel like the end of the world for the character.

A character wants a burger? they've had a miserable day and getting this burger will make them feel like they're in control of their life again.
Character lost a pen? his mom gave him the pen before she passed away.
Two girls fall in love with the same boy? they're best friends who secretly knows that the other person is in love with the boy so they're either risking love or friendship.

One of the reason why some Marvel movies lack stakes is that they've set up death as a stake, but have also made death a mundane situation-- anyone who die can live again. Many of the "good" marvel movies don't even focus on death as a stake, but rather the threat of secret identities being revealed, the responsibility of the hero vs the person's personal lives, or the lost/control of power.

[JoshRaed]

I’ve never really seen there be a precedent for marvel to revive characters. Until endgame, it didn’t happen at all, and they set very specific rules about how it could only happen just this once and not again.

[moontokkym]

From what I understand, the problem with the Marvel films is that they kept undermining their emotional moments (i.e : "oh nooo this character is dead, look at all the consequences of them being dead, look, the characters you love are so saaaad, oh wait no the dead character's back lol pranked.")

Because of that the audience starts waiting a bit before emotionnally reacting to stuff because they've been tricked before and don't trust the story. That means that some emotionnal beats don't land and if anyone else dies, even if it's for real this time, some people will feel cheated because why would x character have to stay dead when y character got to be resurrected.

The way to get around that in death specifically is to either:
- have a realistic world where death means death and no one ever comes back from the dead.
- have a world where some people do come back from the dead but there are grave consequences (usually trauma) and the way by which you get people back is clear, costly, and has a built in reason why previous and subsequent deaths cannot be reversed through the same method.
- have your world be a lighthearted comedy where death means nothing, ressurection is easy and everyone will get resurrected unless no characters actually like them enough to do it. Basically video game logic world.

More generally, for emotional beats to land, they need to be both believable and have consequences.

For example, common trope: romance story, male mc sees female mc talking to love rival from afar. She's smiling and seems flirty. Male MC concludes she's cheating on him with love rival and goes off in a huff, but it turns out that female mc and love rival were just talking about something completely unrelated and it wasn't romantic at all.

This can only really work if:
- the male mc's trust in their relationship with female mc is already rocky (probably because of another event)
- male mc is genuinely worried about the love rival
- male mc has a personnality that allows him to impulsively jump to conclusions (generally this trope doesn't work when the party jumping to conclusions is generally shown/described as calm, collected, communicative, patient, intelligent, etc...)
- female mc to look genuinely flirty and to be enjoying love rival's company

That's what's called the setup. It means all the pieces you need for the scene to be believable are in the story.

Then, during and after the scene you need:
- male mc to act like he thinks he's been betrayed, so if he's seen happily chatting to someone before the problem is resolved, the emotion will fall flat
- female mc has to react like she doesn't understand, and come to her own conclusions about what happened to make her bf go cold suddenly
- this could cause a rift in the relationship where love rival does seem like a better candidate and could change who the audience is rooting for
- the character's trust in each other has to be at least a little scarred long term if it's a big deal, and it can have ripples even long After they've made up (i.e. they're having a heated argument and female mc shouts "you never trusted me anyway! I talked to [love rival] about road blocks and you thought I was cheating on you!")

This is called the payoff, it's what gives weight to the emotional moment because there are consequences to it. People do things when they have emotions, so if it's just "character is sad" alone and it has no effect on their character arc nor the plot it can feel a bit hollow.

TL;DR : emotional moments work best when you're setting them up and paying them off like they're fully plot development, and usually intertwined with plot development. If you undermine the setup and/or the payoff then the emotional beat won't land, and that's what the Marvel films have done with character deaths.

[Lensing]

Marvel produces maximum commercial, fast, superficial, special effect popcorn movies which doesn´t take risks and the only
goal is to be financially successful. I don´t know why you would relate that to emotional risks/real stakes or what you call it

[moontokkym]

I think a lot of people relate "film they enjoyed = good film most/every aspect". Despite it being a wrong impression it's not hard to see why people thing "I liked this therefore I want to make something like this" without really analysing what and why they liked it.

It's actually a good question to ask because they noticed that people were complaining about why emotional moments don't land in Marvel films and was curious about how to not fall into that trap. I think it's a good discussion to have, even though spectacle is very much the selling point of those films more than character or theme.

[darthmongoose]

There are a few facets to it:

1. The character needs to genuinely care about the thing that they stand to lose. It needs to truly be like a spiritual death if they lose this thing.
2. The threat that they'll lose it needs to feel really genuine. A good way to do this is to establish similar things being lost, or the same thing being lost by similar people, or even to temporarily have the character lose that thing and show them suffering.
3. Getting what they want, or not losing their precious thing must involve effort and the character doing things outside their comfort zone. It cannot be conveniently a thing that happens along the way.
4. You need to show the character having emotional reactions and vulnerability. Even if they're stoic and they do it out of sight of others.

If you expect the audience to care about the thing just...because you care about it, or think people care about it generally because it's something like "a hot person", "a cute dog", "democracy!", you might undermine the emotional stakes if you fail to show that the character really cares about this thing. Always make sure there's at least one scene that establishes, the thing they stand to lose is good and worth fighting for.

If you undermine the threat, by say, having dead characters come back to life or undo problems with time travel, or having the good guys win via deus ex machina, you undermine the emotional stakes, especially in a series, by establishing you're not serious. You can't expect people to just be afraid of what the evil dark lord might do to the beloved heroes if all he does is stand around going "Muahaha! I'm evil!" but never actually does anything with lasting bad consequences, for example, or a romance where the love interest forgives literally whatever stupid or dangerous crap the main character does soon loses any spark because it doesn't seem like the character needs to work for it.

If the protagonist just does whatever they feel like, doesn't learn anything and doesn't struggle, like they just do what they want and get rewarded with a hot person who adores them, that'll obviously undermine the stakes. This one sounds silly, but it's not uncommon when the creator's character is a bit of a self-insert, or a beloved OC, and the creator doesn't want them to suffer or be humiliated or to have to change at all, but rather just showers them with cool toys and people who gush over how great they are just the way they are and ineffectual straw-man villains to beat down. It's also common in video games storylines.

If the protagonist is too cool to cry, or at least to show pain at all, obviously it's harder to sell the emotion. This can happen by accident if the actor playing a character, or the artist drawing them just isn't good at depicting emotion. In movies, weak emotional scenes often lean heavily on playing really powerful, sad music, or lingering on the character's face, but it can only go so far, especially if other areas have been undermined.

Basically, spend some time establishing that whatever the character cares about is good and worth protecting, then put it under genuine threat and make the character fight for it and truly strive and suffer and you should get the audience reaction of "omg! No! Aaaa!" that you want.

[river121693]

Yeah since the multiverse it doesn’t matter who dies. But even before that, it was so predictable who will live and die because it’s a Disney franchise and they would never kill off the known "good" characters, coupled with the multi movie deal the irl actors sign.

The movies that does have stake relies on other form of conflicts— I.e whether Spider-Man’s identity will be revealed and what happen if it does

[NickRowler]

When I think of things becoming bland and predictable, I think of the Liar Reveal trope. Some stories make the moral about not telling a lie or else everyone will shun you. I feel like way too many of these types of stories have the character lie and said character ends up making everyone's lives better. It would make most sense to frame the story around not lying because you might put other people in danger. If the MCs actions are putting other characters at risk, the tension comes from whether the MC will change their ways or continue to manipulate those around them.

Stories that often lack a lot of risks are slice-of-life sitcom style stories. They can't do anything too extreme because they have to be able to go on forever. If Homer Simpson breaks his leg, he was to be healed up by the end so that the next episode can continue with a new plot line.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

or if it’s going to all be bland, predictable, and forgettable.

"Bland": I think most of the time this complaint arises because the story beats/character motivations are unoriginal; just tropes stapled into the story without any further thought. The action movie hero is a man? 9 times out of 10, he wants to save/avenge his wife/girlfriend (or recently, daughter). We've all seen that before...

You can avoid this by simply putting some additional thought into these story elements and making them more unique to the circumstances. For example, in the first John Wick movie the hero wants to avenge his dog. ^^; It's a very small change to the trope at the end of the day, but the mere fact that it's something significantly different makes it memorable, and prompts the audience to think about what kind of character this is, and to stay to learn more.

"Predictable": As others have said, predictability isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you put too much focus on "subverting expectations", eventually you end up simply subverting the expectation that you have a satisfying story to tell. ^^;
When people complain about a story being "predictable", though, I think they mean that when a problem arises, the writer chooses to resolve it by making the 'safest' choice. The one that keeps the tone and stakes of the story almost the same, the one that ruffles the fewest feathers and invites the smallest consequences. The more accurate complaint would be "predictable AND boring".

Like, since everyone's talking about character deaths: there's nothing actually wrong with preventing your main characters from dying; it's a very normal and sensible way to tell a story, and in good stories the audience doesn't even notice. I've never seen anyone complain about how many Lord of the Rings protags manage to survive to the end, against honestly staggering odds...

Anywhom: it's the WAY you have your protagonists survive that will get your audience to appreciate it regardless. If they have to make sacrifices; losing allies and advantages and motivations along the way, it will be clear that your story still has stakes. We know the MC will survive...but how?? They may not be the same after this story ends...they may have to give up their peace of mind, their stability, their sanity. They need to keep moving forward not merely because the plot says so, but because every step they take changes them so drastically that moving backwards isn't possible. <--This is interesting to watch.

On the other hand, if they survive simply because things don't happen to them and don't affect them in any meaningful way, that's when people start saying it's "predictable" that they're still alive. A bomb devastates the MC's hometown...but all their friends are okay and they still have all their important belongings and they stop thinking about the event pretty quickly. The MC gets fatally wounded...but the magic healer character heals them and they come back exactly the same as before, with no handicaps or weaknesses or traumas. <--This is not interesting to watch. It's predictable AND boring.

"Forgettable": There's a lot of ways for this to happen, and 'forgettable' is a pretty subjective term. What can be forgettable for one viewer can be unforgettable for another...but I think the best way to generally prevent this from happening is to always give 110% where it counts. Pour your heart and soul into your selling points; figure out what your audience will expect the most, and make sure you deliver.
Because they tend to start forgetting the moment they realize their investment won't be rewarded.

I've heard a lot of people mention how strange it is that Game of Thrones was a pop culture juggernaut in its heyday, and then just blipped off the face of the earth right after the finale. Like, no one talks about it casually or seems to care much about it anymore...and if I had to guess, it's because those final seasons were so convoluted and desperate to "subvert expectations" that they managed to destroy the investment of most of their audience.

People won't remember things when it's not worth their time, when you intentionally take events they're looking forward to and characters they love and throw them out of the plot in an effort to "shock" them. Or, y'know, if you're just paying so little attention to your own story that you ignore what you're clearly setting up. It's disorienting in a way, like you've handed them the beginning of one story and the end of another. And when your audience feels confused rather than entertained, they will forget.

[DiegoPalacios]

Any kind of low or high stakes can be meaningful if it is personal enough for the characters involved and if you keep the consequences for failure in case they fail.

For example, a sports competition will feel like high stakes for someone who wants to become a champion in said sport.

Some stories can still be interesting if you know the protagonist will succeed as long as the "How will he succeed?" becomes interesting. Make sure you have a good answer that doesn't break the willing suspension of disbelief.