Make a negotiation turn on the cost of keeping something, rather than assuming possession guarantees a good deal.
The Ransom of Red Chief: The Ransom of Red Chief, the cave scenes, counteroffer and return.
Sam and Bill kidnap a boy expecting his father to pay for his return. They can hold him in a cave, but assume he wants to leave and his family urgently wants him back.
The boy enjoys the outing and exhausts his captors. His father offers to take him back only if they pay him $250. They accept and pay to end their own predicament.
This is a comic reversal built through exaggerated conduct, not a realistic model of all parents or hostage situations.
The Ransom of Red Chief, the cave scenes, counteroffer and return. ↗
Selected passages: The Ransom of Red Chief, the cave scenes, counteroffer and return.
A captor may control where someone is while misunderstanding what everyone wants. If keeping the arrangement going becomes increasingly expensive or exhausting, the holder's willingness to wait changes. Establish that pressure before the counteroffer so the new terms follow from what the reader has watched happen.
For a negotiation already in your story, name what each side gains if no agreement is reached today. Give the holder a recurring cost the other side does not share. Show that cost in a scene before anyone names a new price. This source uses exaggerated comedy, not a general rule about families or captivity.
Use in my storyMake a running joke develop: each attempt to get rid of a nuisance should inconvenience a different person in a different way.
Make another attempt more frightening by having the danger damage the very ability the character needs to escape it.
Keep several failed attempts interesting by making each fail because of a different person's motives or assumptions.