What if raising the stakes in your screenplay has nothing to do with explosions, danger, or bigger plot events?
In this rerelease of a classic episode, Jake takes on one of the most misunderstood producer notes—raise the stakes—and reframes it from the ground up. Stakes, he explains, don’t begin with what happens on screen. They begin with empathy: our connection to a character, what they want, and how hard it is for them to get it.
Jake walks us through a clear, intuitive framework for building stakes step by step—clarifying a character’s desire, externalizing that desire through action, and progressively making it harder. As resistance escalates, we don’t just feel more tension—we learn who the character really is.
Along the way, a deceptively simple example reveals how even the smallest objective can generate real urgency when structure and emotional meaning are doing the work.
The episode culminates in a deeper layer of craft: emotional need. By connecting a character’s tangible goal to the emotional drive beneath it, writers can create stakes that feel alive and real—regardless of genre, scale, or budget.
By the end, you’ll understand why stakes are a structural and emotional phenomenon, not a spectacle-driven plot trick—and how to make your scenes feel charged with meaning, without forcing them to be bigger, bloodier, or more extreme.
You’ll Learn
- A step-by-step framework for building stakes through desire, resistance, and choice
- Why “raise the stakes” is one of the most confusing notes writers receive
- Why meaningful stakes don’t emerge out of spectacle
- How empathy lays the foundation for urgency
- Why small, specific obstacles can create more tension than large and noisy events
- Why making obstacles harder—and then harder still—reveals character
- How plot and structure differ when it comes to stakes
- How to make emotional need inflect every action a character takes
LISTEN NOW to learn how letting theme drive structure can unlock deeper characters, sharper scenes, and more honest screenwriting.
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