Internal vs External Stakes: How to Make Audiences Actually Care
Summary
Learn from Emmy-nominated writing partners and producers whose credits include Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, USA's The Purge, and more.
Walk away with a practical framework for diagnosing and fixing stake problems in your script — starting today.
PLEASE NOTE: This exclusive Stage 32 webinar is now available to watch on-demand and no longer live.
Every story lives or dies on one question: does the audience care? Not just about what happens next, but about who it's happening to. Stakes are the engine that drives that emotional investment — and when they're off, even slightly, viewers check out, readers put the book down, and executives pass.
In this exclusive Stage 32 webinar, you'll learn how to identify, build, and balance the stakes in your story — the difference between internal stakes (the personal reason your character is risking everything) and external stakes (the visible danger they're facing). Most writers nail one and neglect the other, which is why a script can have a great concept and solid plot and still feel flat.
Take a heist story — thieves going after the crown jewels. The external stakes seem obvious: arrest, prison, maybe worse. But these are fictional people facing fictional punishment, and most of us can't really picture ourselves in a cell over stolen jewels. External stakes only land when they're tied to something personal — why this character, specifically, is willing to take this risk when easier paths exist. That's the question this webinar is built around.
Your guides are Emmy-nominated writers and producers Nina Fiore and John Herrera — a partnership forged across some of television's most emotionally intense storytelling. You know their work: Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, USA's The Purge, Syfy's Nightflyers, Blood Drive, Alphas, and Eureka. They've sold original pilots to CW and Freeform, adapted a feminist western novel for MGM, and co-wrote Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase for Warner Brothers — with a Netflix series, Bloom, on the way.
You'll walk away with a clear breakdown of internal vs. external stakes, the top mistakes writers make balancing them, and concrete tools to diagnose and fix stakes problems in your current script!
Praise for Nina and John's Stage 32 Teaching:
"It's easy to see why these two are Emmy-nominated!" - Morgan L.
"Nina and John are fantastic. Not only as writers on one of my favorite shows ever, but as educators. I really learned so much from them. Thank you." - Martina M.
"Wow. I'm blown away by the quality of teaching with this one. Some of the best educators on Stage 32." - Rishi L.
What You'll Learn
- An Overview Of Internal Vs. External Stakes
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The Top 3 Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
- Cheap manipulation
- Stand-ins for real problems
- Artificial drama through overcomplicated plot devices
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Why Do We Care? Creating Connection
- Your personal connection to the story
- Your story’s relevance to current issues in the world
- Universality: what do we all tend to fear?
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Creating Context- What’s happening To Your Character “Before The Aliens Land?”
- Tools to craft rich context
- How is their life going?
- What do they hope for/expect from life?
- Do they have a plan?
- If they haven’t acted on their desires, why?
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Constructing Drive: The First Thing Everyone Forgets
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How to weave the following questions into your script
- What does your character want?
- Why do they want it?
- What’s their plan to get it?
- What result do they expect?
- What if facts defy their expectations?
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Big Drama, Small Places
- How to embrace small problems
- Creating plot problems (exterior stakes)
- Creating Character problems (interior stakes)
- A tool- Our lives are filled with irritating inconveniences that can derail everything
- “…the world ends not with a bang but a whimper”
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Creating Conflict- Go Big Or Go Home
- Sounds like a contradiction with our last point: it’s not.
- Jazz hands: Remembering your character’s problems are the worst in the universe (for them)
- Painting your character into a corner
- Making sure you’re not putting your writer’s needs ahead of the character
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Warning- If You Cheat Your Audience, They Won’t Forgive You
- How to always be honest to your character and their stakes
- Consider a simpler, less explosive ending
- Your responsibility to find where the highest stakes are
- Merging internal and external stakes into one.
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Q&A With Nina And John
Who Should Attend
- Screenwriters and TV writers who want to write characters audiences genuinely root for
- Writers who feel their stakes are high on paper but flat on the page
- Storytellers looking to understand the difference between external plot tension and internal character conflict
- Any creative who wants to stop losing their audience mid-story and start keeping them hooked
- Writers at any level looking to sharpen one of the most essential skills in the craft
- Producers who want to learn from the Emmy-nominated writers' approach to storytelling and audience engagement.
Executive
Nina Fiore is an Emmy-nominated writer and producer on Hulu’s THE HANDMAID'S TALE where she collaborates with writing partner, John Herrera. After The Handmaid’s Tale, Nina and John wrote on BLOOM, a new show for Netflix that will be coming soon. She and John have also worked on USA’s THE PURGE, Syfy’s NIGHTFLYERS, BLOOD DRIVE, ALPHAS, and EUREKA. Additionally, Nina and John have sold their pilots PLAYERS and DANTE'S INFERNO (the latter co-written with Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris) to CW and Freeform, respectively, and an adaptation of Melissa Lenhardt’s genre-bending, feminist western novel, HERSEY, with MGM. Nina also co-wrote the movie NANCY DREW and THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE for Warner Brothers and is currently adapting a true-life feature story about the latter days of the Bosnian-Serb conflict of the 1990’s. Before becoming a TV writer, Nina was a script coordinator and writer’s assistant on EUREKA, SLEEPER CELL, THE L WORD. Born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican mother and a Sicilian father, Nina spent most of her formative years surrounded by an excess of personality.
John Herrera is an Emmy-nominated writer and producer on Hulu’s THE HANDMAID'S TALE where he collaborates with writing partner, Nina Fiore. After The Handmaid’s Tale, John and Nina wrote on BLOOM, a new show for Netflix that will be coming soon, and they have also worked together on USA’s THE PURGE, Syfy’s NIGHTFLYERS, BLOOD DRIVE, ALPHAS, and EUREKA. Additionally, they have sold their pilots PLAYERS and DANTE'S INFERNO (the latter co-written with Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris) to CW and Freeform, respectively, and an adaptation of Melissa Lenhardt’s genre-bending, feminist western novel, HERESY, with MGM. John also co-wrote the movie NANCY DREW and THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE for Warner Brothers and is currently adapting a true-life feature story about the latter days of the Bosnian-Serb conflict of the 1990’s. Before becoming a TV writer, John was a script coordinator on EUREKA, CALIFORNICATION, and SLEEPER CELL.
Testimonials
Praise for Nina and John's Stage 32 Teaching:
"It's easy to see why these two are Emmy-nominated!" - Morgan L.
"Nina and John are fantastic. Not only as writers on one of my favorite shows ever, but as educators. I really learned so much from them. Thank you." - Martina M.
"Wow. I'm blown away by the quality of teaching with this one. Some of the best educators on Stage 32." - Rishi L.
Credits
