Hi folks!

This post ties into the earlier posts on objectives.  When choosing objectives, it is not only necessary to uncover what the character wants and why, but to understand how badly they want it.  Two concepts help clarify the answers to this question.  One is called stakes, and the other urgency.  Adding stakes and urgency to a character’s objectives energizes the actor and add fuel to the fire of their objective.  Although related, the concepts refer to two different things.

Stakes refer to what the character has to win or lose by either achieving or failing to achieve their objective.  It is literally what is at stake.  Generally, the best choice for the actor is to motivate their character’s objective with the highest stakes justified by the script.  Life and death, naturally, are often referred to as the highest stakes.  But as I’ve already discussed in my earlier post on Objectives, there are exceptions – such as validating one’s self-esteem and sense of identity. Depending upon what is the core of the dramatic story, many other things can be more important to a character than life itself.

Higher stakes motivate the character to fight harder for what they want, and this makes for better drama.  But this is greatly aided if the character has confidence that they can win no matter how difficult the task.  Confidence is critical.  When people don’t believe they can get what they need they often just give up, surrender, or curl into a fetal position. As in life, this too can happen for a character in a play – a great example is the character of Masha in The Seagull.  Always wearing black, and in a constant depression, “in mourning for her life,” Masha is a character who has given up on her life.  Generally, this kind of choice does not make for great drama – although in the case of Masha it does make for great comic moments.

When a character is confident that they have a fighting chance, they will tend to focus more on what they have to gain then what they have to lose.  They will get right back up when knocked down.  Professional athletes often share this trait.  Champions believe they can win and their perspective is focused more on what they have to gain than what they have to lose.  Watching a great tennis match played by two champions fighting till the last point is a wonderful thing. And much more interesting than when one of them loses their confidence and begins to fall apart on the court. Athletes, people and characters whose focus is all about the consequences of losing tend to give up too soon. Unless, your character is plagued by depression or wallowing in misery, it is always the best choice to build up your character’s confidence that they can win.

Urgency refers to the window of opportunity a character has to achieve their objective before they run out time.  A quick example:  a character is trapped in a locked room with a ticking time bomb.  If the character cannot disarm the bomb in 60 seconds he will die.  Urgency and stakes both add heat and energy to the character’s objective, and along with confidence motivate how vigorously the character struggles to disarm the bomb.

While similar in the way they impact the fire fueling a character’s objective, stakes and urgency operate independently of one another. Often the stakes involved for the character remain the same, but the urgency increases. Time runs out and the window of opportunity to get what the character wants narrows. Let’s take the example of a bear chasing a man. The stakes are life or death, and these don’t change until the man safely escapes the encounter.  But the urgency could change at various points. Say the man distracts the bear and comes to a cabin. The bear is now far off, looking around and sniffing the air. The man has some time now to figure out how to get into the safety of the cabin, thus the urgency decreases.  But then the bear sees the man again and charges. The cabin is locked and his window of opportunity to get to safety narrows. The bear is getting closer and the urgency increases. At the last minute the man jumps through a window to safety. Now he can wait, hoping the bear will lose interest and move off. But what if the bear breaks into the cabin and corners the man? If the man sees no option to escape his confidence in surviving the encounter will likely evaporate – unless he is James Bond. Normal mortals might give up and resign themselves to their fate. But, then again, maybe not. There is a classic scene from Jaws when Quint, played by Robert Shaw, is being swallowed by the shark. But he still never gives up.  He fights and claws and screams till the very end. He is determined till his death, to survive, or at the very least hurt get his pound of flesh from his nemesis before time runs out.

High stakes, immediate urgency, and determined confidence are strong tools for creating gripping drama filled with edge-of-your seat suspense.  Actors should always work to find justifications in the script to dial up all three as much as possible.

That’s all for now!

David