I’m putting my developmental editor hat on and getting SUPER nerdy on you with today’s topic! I’ve been working with a ton of dev edit clients lately to unpack how wounds, stakes, and arcs all work together. This is something that is instinctive to a lot of writers, but it’s SO important to understand how they all really work, separately and in concert with each other, to develop a tight story. Having all three of these things working together will get you writing faster—no matter whether you’re a pantser or a planner, having these things sketched out before you start writing will help you anticipate how your characters will react and the general trajectory of the story.
So let’s break down each part individually, and then see how they work together. For a romance, you’re going to need to work these things out individually for each love interest (the rest of this newsletter will assume that there are two love interests, just to keep things simple to explain).
WOUNDS
A wound is the thing that each of your protagonists has in their backstory that they are instinctively—and sometimes unconsciously—protecting so they don’t get hurt further. This is the defining trauma that they’ve experienced in their past—it could be a devastating breakup, huge change in circumstances (e.g. riches to rags; displacement; health), betrayal, broken trust, parents’ divorce, lack of security/safety, death of a loved one, abuse they’ve suffered, etc., something that will inform how they react in a relationship.
We should be able to see how this trauma affects them in other facets of their life too, not just in their romantic relationships—it’s how they react to a situation with a friend, a coworker, a parent, anyone who might dig into that wound, unknowingly or not. So if their wound is that they grew up in a house with lots of conflict and fighting, they’re maybe going to want to avoid any kind of conflict, so they don’t speak up with their partner; they deflect and change the subject at work; they let others walk over them at home because it’s less scary than fighting—they self-protect rather than confront the issue.
Really dig into their backstory and figure out the source of their wound. If you can do that, you can then figure out exactly how they’d react to any obstacle or challenge they might face, and that will build in conflict points for the story.
STAKES
The stakes are what the character will lose if they can't accomplish or conquer their main external goal. In a romance in particular, the other protagonist will be usually frustrating them along their way, and vice versa—one’s goals are often at odds with other’s. Stakes are going to push the plot forward, as each character struggles to get what they want while also fighting their feelings for each other, and that opposition drives the tension higher.
How do you know the stakes are high enough? If you can quickly solve a problem or your reader can think up a quick solution, you need to crank them up more. Alternatively, if you’ve ramped the stakes up so high that you’ve written yourself into a corner and can’t figure out how to satisfactorily solve your protagonists’ problems where they come out on top and in love, then we need to take the stakes down a bit. Stakes don’t need to be astronomical, but they have to mean something in the context of the world you're building. Low-angst, small-town stakes are different from romantic suspense stakes when it’s life-or-death situations, but stakes have to be there to create conflict and propel the story forward.
ARCS
The arc is the journey that the character goes on over the course of the story. This isn’t a nice arc with a gentle upward trajectory, though—it’s going to have peaks and valleys as the character experiences as they comes up against different plot points that will challenge them and build them up to tackle the next one.
For a romance, the arcs of the protagonists will not necessarily match up for most of the story, especially if they happen to be working at cross-purposes to each other. BUT, if we were to graph it out, by the end of the story, we usually want to see those arcs running parallel and as close together as possible so that it’s clear that they are both happy with where they are and that they’re going forward together.
(forgive my terrible iPad drawing here--the MCs' arcs before the red circle can really go in any kind of pattern you like, but by the end, they should be on the upswing together)
WOUNDS-STAKES-ARCS WORKING TOGETHER
You can’t have one of these three things without the others. With no wounds, you have a one-dimensional character whose journey has no emotional resonance, and you have no ability to turn up the tension. With no stakes, there’s nothing to challenge the characters and have them confront their wounds, and push them to the next part of their arc. With no arc, they stay static and don’t go through any real ups and downs, which prevents the stakes from being raised.
So let’s get them all working together now! Start by getting to know your characters and figuring out their wounds and how they got that way. Their history and how it’s affected them will be what puts them into self-protection mode, so you have to develop that first. When they feel scared or threatened in some way, that’s when we’re going to see their walls come up and deter the progress that they’ve made to get what they want and what they’re striving for. We’ll want to see them make little victories against their wounds during the story, but when push really comes to shove and the stakes are super high and it’s a make-or-break moment, how do they react?
Each of these moments where their past challenges them in the present is an opportunity to raise the stakes and see what happens when you throw a wrench in their plans. Make life harder for them by adding in a countdown clock for a sense of urgency, throwing in an extra complication to their original plan, and of course, having them entangled with the love interest who is going to both help and hinder them. By upping the stakes and the tension, you’ll make your reader more invested in your character as they react to the new test you’ve put in their way.
By knowing the characters’ motivations and their protective instincts (wound) AND what they want (stakes) and why (in relation to their wound), this makes it much easier and faster to plot the story—you can already anticipate how they’re going to react to whatever you throw at them and whether it will cause them to falter or succeed and prepare for the next thing you throw at them (arc). At the same time, they’re getting closer and closer to understanding their wounds and the defense mechanisms they use, but are still in denial about the extent of their issues. All of these things keep the story driving forward to the climactic moment where one or both of them either fail or get what they want but it feels like a hollow victory. After that, they have to have an epiphany of how their wounds have been hurting them and figure out how to address them and start healing. Only then will they be back on the same trajectory as their love interest so that they can be together going forward.
This kind of structure won’t work for every romance story, but I do think it works for many. I never want to be prescriptive and say “you MUST do this to write a great story” because I firmly believe there is no one method or story structure or way of writing that is going to work universally for every writer. But if this does work for you, or you take bits and pieces of it and apply them to your own writing, then awesome! Let me know if it helps.