building-story-stakes

Read [runtime](../../content/RUNTIME.md) and [advisory rules](../../content/policies/advisory.md) before applying this skill. Other Foreman layers and the catalog are in `../../content/`, relative to this SKILL.md. # Building Story Stakes What keeps a listener hooked is not curiosity. It is the elephant you planted at the beginning -- the question they desperately need answered. Stakes are the gears that make stories work; without them, any narrative, however polished, becomes something an audience can take or leave. The framework identifies five discrete techniques for infusing stakes into a story, each learnable and each deployable in settings ranging from a Moth stage to a Series A pitch meeting. The entrepreneur who masters these techniques does not merely tell stories. That entrepreneur controls attention. --- ## The Framework Stakes answer a deceptively simple question: would the audience want to hear the next sentence? If the answer is no, the story has failed -- not in content, but in architecture. These five strategies address different failure modes of attention, and they work in combination. Some stories need all five. Others, naturally loaded with drama, need only the first. The key is diagnosis: knowing which strategy a given moment demands. ### 1. The Elephant Every story must have an Elephant. The Elephant is the large, obvious thing in the room -- a clear statement of the need, the want, the problem, the peril, or the mystery. It tells the audience wha...