How high are the stakes?

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Whenever I try to go 'huge problems, save the world, and so forth', I inevitably end up overwhelming myself and immediately fall back to the more personal stories of beings either in the middle of a crisis or just trying to keep living and hoping to help a tiny bit just by living.

 

[FifthView]

For LOTR, Peter Jackson filmed new scenes and shots after principal photography had wrapped up, typically to add the more intimate layer. I don't remember all the examples off hand, but I believed he added that speech by Samwise near the end of the second movie–

Frodo : I can’t do this, Sam.

Sam : I know. It’s all wrong By rights we shouldn’t even be here.
But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass. A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo : What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.​

^ This is almost a direct statement of the principle of using stakes–how it affects the reader/viewer, heh.

I believe the reaction shots at the end of the third movie were also added later, the Fellowship reacting to Mt. Doom blowing up. That's bringing the significance of the grand event down to the personal level.

I think you can see my preference in, let's look at real world examples and use WW2 as a basis for "epic"... Schindler's List and The Diary of Anne Frank. These are very personal stories with overwhelming settings in the midst of overwhelming and organic stakes: Epic environment. Think movie, and compare those to something like Midway, which is far less personal where the actions of some characters determine world altering events, while also thrusting in personal stories. Then I think there is a somewhere in between even those two ends of the epic story, with something like Band of Brothers, which is danged personal, but still a raucous ride through an epic setting.

If I'm watching a movie, I love all of these. If I'm reading a book and it's not for history (in which case Midway would win, military tactics and such are fascinating) I'm all in for Band of Brothers style... Personal and Epic. Or, Enemy at the Gates, those are the styles I'd prefer to read.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

^That speech is one of my favourites.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I think LoTR fits nicely into the middle ground, with a lean toward the action interacting with world altering players. The Frodo & Sam interplay (books and movie) lends itself more to the personal.

For LOTR, Peter Jackson filmed new scenes and shots after principal photography had wrapped up, typically to add the more intimate layer. I don't remember all the examples off hand, but I believed he added that speech by Samwise near the end of the second movie—

Frodo : I can’t do this, Sam.

Sam : I know. It’s all wrong By rights we shouldn’t even be here.
But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass. A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo : What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.​

^ This is almost a direct statement of the principle of using stakes—how it affects the reader/viewer, heh.

I believe the reaction shots at the end of the third movie were also added later, the Fellowship reacting to Mt. Doom blowing up. That's bringing the significance of the grand event down to the personal level.

 

[FifthView]

With this thread, I've been thinking that a practical approach for writing is not to think of expanding scope to make the stakes "higher," or making the conflict more severe, per se, nor even of zooming in to a more intimate scale, but rather to start by making something really beautiful. And then put that thing under fire, a hail of bullets metaphorically speaking.

This Beautiful Thing can be a character, a set of characters, a relationship, a set of relationships, a principle, a setting, a magical system — whatever. A combination of things, even. Something a reader would want to see more of and would want to endure. [Edit: Heh, I mean that beautiful thing would endure, or last, be "saved," not that the reader would endure it.]

So if something's not working, I'd maybe not think first, What else can I blow up?, so much as consider What beauty can I first build? How can I build it better? And only then would I begin to design how best to threaten it, heh.

Of course, beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, so...

I think LoTR fits nicely into the middle ground, with a lean toward the action interacting with world altering players. The Frodo & Sam interplay (books and movie) lends itself more to the personal.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

but rather to start by making something really beautiful. And then put that thing under fire, a hail of bullets metaphorically speaking.

I do that all the time.
Nagisa, Tomoya, and Ushio from Clannad come to mind, in an example that in my opinion really worked well in making the readers care for the characters--and then see everything ripped away from them.

 

[skip.knox]

It doesn't have to be the world, but it can still be really big stakes. The example I have in mind is Camelot, which was taken from the excellent book, The Once and Future King by T.H. White. (I would make this book--a trilogy, in fact--require reading here at Scribes if I could)

In that story, the stakes could hardly be bigger, for civilization itself is at stake. But what happens at the end, when all is lost? He speaks to a single child and somehow passes the torch, even if it is scarcely more than a single candle, the memory of a brief, shining moment. The scene gets me, every time.

That poignant scene would be no more than maudlin if the larger stakes had not been so grand. Conversely, the battles and betrayals would have been little more than bombast without that final scene by the lake. When you do it right, the personal recapitulates the epic.

 

[FifthView]

When you do it right, the personal recapitulates the epic.

This strikes me as an extremely important observation. The kind worthy of being engraved in marble and positioned at eye level above the desk.

I keep returning to your example of Goblins at the Gates. I've always been skeptical of notions related to "love of humanity," because abstractions are difficult to love; I'm always tempted to believe that those who espouse even "human rights" are really valuing their own personal rights, perhaps also their dearest family members' rights or friends' rights, and only use the larger scale in an attempt to give weight to these.

In an abstract way, it makes sense to protect the whole, insofar as the individual members of humanity would be protected if all of humanity were protected. Also, a commitment to protect the whole carries with it a commitment to protect the individuals insofar as we see those individuals as being indivisible from the whole.

Protecting all of Rome might protect particular Romans. A commitment to protect Rome might be a commitment to protect individual Romans. But in practice, even if Rome is successfully defended, this doesn't mean that every Roman will survive the process. Whatever ideological weight we may give to the whole, our hearts are often with the individuals. The abstract, alone, would drift away into space without a tether, some connection to keep it relevant.

When we write, if we are going to utilize stakes, the important thing is to show the value of those stakes.

As you said, the close and personal can be maudlin—even, inane. This is one of the [hidden] reasons behind my earlier comments about thinking of "stakes" as being a character's stakes, or only developing from a character's goals and desires. I sometimes feel that some authors have decided to write at the intimate and personal scale with the belief that showing a character obsessing over X, Y, and Z in his life will automatically interest readers in the story. But for me personally, although I can see that the character obviously has personal goals and desires, I'm like, "Yeah, ok. But so what?"

The epic can be airy, insubstantial. I may be given explosions, invading hordes, lots of violence, three nations at war, some looming magical catastrophe—and find myself yawning.

I wouldn't say that every story needs both tracks, the deeply intimate/personal and massively epic. But only that, whatever stakes we choose we need to pay attention to how we show the value of those stakes. We make them real stakes rather than, oh, the spare dollar we might throw away on a lottery scratch-off, heh.