You Should Take It Personally: Creating and Raising Internal Stakes
DATE: Tuesday, December 1, 2026
TIME: 7:00 - 8:30 PM EST
WHERE: Online
Price: $30
Every story needs to have something at stake. Stakes keep readers engaged. We all understand external stakes: Are they going to save the world? Will the detective solve the mystery? Will the couple end up together?
Stakes are as varied as the stories they enrich. But whatever kind of story you’re writing—full of exciting adventure, creepy and mysterious, quiet and tender, or even (yes!) narrative nonfiction—the most important stakes are those that are internal.
In other words: What’s at stake for your hero’s heart.
Join Evan for this 90-minute session that will examine various forms and genres, and demonstrate how to identify and raise internal stakes to help your readers invest and make them care.
This event will be recorded.
Evan Griffith is the author of the middle-grade novels Manatee Summer and The Strange Wonders of Roots and the picture book biographies Secrets of the Sea: The Story of Jeanne Power, Revolutionary Marine Scientist and Wild at Heart: The Story of Olaus and Mardy Murie, Defenders of Nature. His books have received the Green Earth Book Award and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, been featured on several state award lists, and earned multiple starred reviews, among other honors. He worked for several years as an editor at Workman Publishing and now teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He lives in Austin, Texas.