Livelihood Stakes in Romance
Another cross-post from The Rogue MFA!
Capitalism corrupts absolutely, but it makes for a hell of a narrative stake for your protagonists to duke it out with. Despite its prevalence in our daily lives, though, it’s not always the simplest thing to plot, so let’s talk about the ways in which you can ensure your readers feel the heat without having to give them an economics lecture.
Want to learn about the 10 other narrative stakes, and get extra recommendations for the books that absolutely nail it? Kelly and I are leading our first workshop as part of The Rogue MFA- What’s At Stake: How Unputdownable Novels Keep You Hooked- at the end of July! RSVP now.
When livelihood works
Destitution consequences
The natural place to start with livelihood is establishing a situation wherein which the character’s quality of life is at stake. In practical terms, how will the events of the story threaten this character’s ability to eat and have a safe place to sleep? Losing this job or failing to secure this marriage should directly result in a worse way of life than their status quo at the start of the story, and cannot be easily remedied.
A good example: Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood*
The status quo for our heroine, recent STEM grad Elsie, is pretty bleak. That she’s adjuncting full-time is bad enough (IYKYK), but she’s also had to supplement her income by offering herself as a fake girlfriend. Things get even worse when the (hot) brother of her current client is also on the hiring committee for her dream job (but also, the only job in her field in the area that can offer actual benefits and stability), and he thinks she’s lying to his brother about her identity. And she can’t immediately reveal the fact that she’s his brother’s fake girlfriend because of the reasons she was hired to be his fake girlfriend in the first place!
Though it doesn’t matter to her at first that the (hot, I cannot stress this enough) older brother of her fake dating client hates her, it matters a LOT when that hatred (and then the subsequent un-hating) might mean the difference between health insurance and burning out from another year in adjunct hell. Navigating this relationship might mean the difference between her affording her insulin (let’s add another log to the fire: she’s also diabetic!) or not.
Consequences outside the self
Like we talked about with reputation stakes, the easiest way to up the stakes of a situation is to add a dependent or five into the mix. When it’s not just the livelihood of your protagonist being risked by their actions, but the livelihood of others. Bonus points if the others are unable to fend for themselves, because of age, ability, or societal circumstance.
A good example: Duchess by Design by Maya Rodale*
Adeline Black, a broke aspiring dressmaker in Gilded Age NYC, accidentally knocks the broke English Duke of Kingston off his course. Kingston has arrived in NYC to woo an American heiress to save his crumbling dukedom and his mother and sister, who because they’re women in an elevated social class can’t really make money for themselves.
What really works about this book is that in order to save his family, not to mention his tenants, from destitution (because running a dukedom is expensive, even if they’re thrifty!), he can’t pursue the girl of his dreams. Does he choose love… or livelihood? HIs journey in pursuing one and falling into another is our compelling narrative engine.
Dream job consequences
Livelihood doesn’t have to have utter financial destitution as a consequence to have meaning, though, because while capitalism corrupts absolutely, work we care about still matters. It still means something to have a job at stake when the character truly cares about their job, or they’ve wanted it forever, or they’re incredibly talented, and this might be their only shot.
So what about when livelihood stakes don’t work, and how would you resolve a plot using this? That’s for paid subscribers over on The Rogue MFA, who you can join now!
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