Raise the Stakes —  A Micro-Guide for Making Any Scene More Urgent

Three fast, brutal, reliable story moves — from a bestselling novelist — to inject real tension into your draft.

Stories fall flat when the stakes are vague, distant, or simply loud. Danger alone isn’t enough — not if the reader doesn’t care.

In this short, premium guide, S. J. Watson breaks down three fast, repeatable techniques that will instantly raise the stakes in your scenes and make your story feel tighter, sharper and more emotionally inevitable.

Inside, you’ll learn:

• How Pixar builds devastating emotional stakes (and why “lost child” isn’t enough)
• What Silence of the Lambs teaches about inescapable stakes
• The quickest way to raise tension in any scene
• How to remove safety instead of adding noise
• Why danger only matters when it reopens the character’s wound
• A one-page worksheet to use mid-draft or during writing sprints

This is a 7-page craft tool you can return to again and again — the first in a new series of micro-short guides for serious writers.

Perfect during drafting, revising, or anytime your story feels flat and needs pressure.