Ready to Take Your Story To the Next Level?
With Raise the Stakes, learn how to keep your reader turning the pages — even if you're a beginning writer.
What’s one of the most important things that agents and editors look for when they read submissions?
Story stakes.
This doesn’t mean super high-action scenes; it’s much more subtle - and honestly, easier to create. Raising the stakes means capturing your reader and holding their attention throughout your entire book.
Inside Raise the Stakes I walk you through the 3 crucial things that keep readers riveted to your book, no matter whether it’s a picture book or a middle grade or young adult novel.
You can use Raise the Stakes for every book you write, because when you identify and understand that every story needs those key 3 elements, you’ll create better stories with every new project.
These three things are essential to keep the reader reading
How to identify the external story question.
The stakes of the main character’s failure to answer the question/resolve the problem
The “ticking clock” of time running out
With concrete examples from respected stories, you’ll learn exactly how to:
Keep the reader reading with your external story question
Maintain story tension through setting in motion the ticking clock
Identify the antagonistic forces that thwart protagonist success
Identify your main character’s crisis of faith and the failure to answer the question
Fashion the beginning and the end of your story
Raise the Stakes is created by a multi-published award-winning author and creative writing teacher with over 25 years of writing and publishing experience, and 7 years helping writers to publishing success through both courses and hands-on coaching.
Janet is the author of 13 books for young readers, from picture book through YA novels, fiction and nonfiction.
Her courses are designed for all kidlit writers, from beginners to advanced.
Whether you are experienced or brand new to writing for children, this course is a game-changer.
You’ll understand exactly how to keep your readers at the edge of their seat.
And you’ll be able to apply this lesson to everything you write — picture book or novel — going forward.
The course is designed to be completed in about 1–2 hours. You can go through the lesson and handout in one sitting and immediately apply what you learn to your own writing.
Yes. This course focuses on one specific outcome: helping you create tension that keeps your readers engaged using a clear framework so you can move forward with confidence.
Perfect—you’ll use your existing idea throughout the course to test, refine, and strengthen it so you know whether it really hooks your readers.
This course is especially helpful for that. You’ll learn how to quickly assess your ideas and identify which ones have the strongest potential.
No. The method works for picture books, middle grade, and young adult novels. The principles of capturing readers' attention apply across all categories.
Both! For beginners and early-stage writers, there are clear examples and a simple step-by-step approach. And even more experienced writers can struggle with weak or unclear story concepts. This course helps you diagnose and fix that problem quickly.
It will give you a strong, practical framework to evaluate your story against industry expectations—so you can make smarter, more informed decisions before you invest time writing.
No problem. This course comes with a refund policy—if it’s not a good fit, you can request your money back.
