Fully Booked
The Hidden Gems Author Podcast
Episode 35 – Can Raising the Stakes Produce More Compelling Fiction?
Hosted by: Craig Tuch and Roland Hulme with special guest Alex Kourvo
Whether you’re writing a romance story or a thriller, your characters undoubtedly have goals – but how you communicate, escalate, and eventually let your characters achieve those goals (or fail to) often marks the difference between a well-written book and a great one.
Today’s returning guest is Alex Kourvo, author of No Hero Wants To Save The World. She joins Craig and Roland to make the case that all of the stakes in your books are life and death, regardless of your genre – and communicating that is what really makes a book memorable.
In a thriller, those stakes might literally be ‘life or death’ – but Alex argues that in other types of stories, life and death are equally at stake, just in a different way. That could mean anything from the death of a relationship to the destruction of a character’s standing in your community.
Alex has a lot of insight into the best (and worst) ways to go about doing it, and if you’re interested in taking your writing to the next level, there’s plenty you’ll learn in this discussion – not least of which is how “raising the stakes” keeps your readers not just invested in your current book, but also looking forward to how you raise the stakes in your next book as well.
Alex Kourvo
https://alexkourvo.com/