Reading is such a strangely insular way to consume a story in that because there is an implicit expectation that the audience won't manage to burn through the entire book in one sitting the way they might a movie or a TV show episode (which in theory you can pause and watch however you want but if you're in a theater there's no pausing and arguably that's the best way to have a cinematic experience), and while chapter ends can serve as natural breaks there is still the understanding that readers won't always stop and start at the end/beginning of chapters, and you wonder to what degree that's in the back of a writer's mind throughout the writing process. Thus, when creating tension in this medium, you scale a different mountain than say a filmmaker, who has various tools at his/her disposal to enrapture audiences, and in fact image and sound are extraordinarily powerful without thinking even of much else. Where a writer must describe beautiful scenery and trust the audience's attention and imagination to believe it and bring it into existence, there is no such faith required on the filmmaker's part, because there is no work to be done by their audience. In that way, there is this invredible sense of visual immediacy that makes it so much easier to dazzle a viewer than a reader. One could, for instance, spend 100 pages describing the world of Blade Runner and still not achieve the effect that maybe 5-10 minutes of Deakins' cinematographic magic has on an audience. The other side of the coin, though, is that one can convey in 100 pages far more detail, depth, emotion, and interiority than is possible in a dozens hours of film.
Everyone here knows this. That being said, immediacy is the name of the game with intensity.
I suppose I should pause and mention, if it weren't obvious already, that there's a key difference between intensity and suspense – the latter can linger and loom over large stretches of a story regardless of pacing or circumstance, whereas intensity is viscerally ever-present, but maybe fizzles out more easily and is harder to maintain or ramp up. To build suspense in an effective manner certainly does take some mastery, but I find when a writer can draw you in and almost shut the outside world with its many enticing distractions all the way out of your mind, it can be so much more powerful even than being glued to an intense cinematic sequence, and is a far more impressive feat from the writer's side, because they lack the two most powerful engagement tools we have at our disposal in the 21st century, which serve as the very basis for the cinematic medium. For me, though, I find I don't often feel such intensity from books. Even thrillers like Gone Girl don't do it to me, maybe I am curious how they'll turn out, but I can out the book down whenever I want, even in the middle of a sentence, and I've found myself missing that magnetic, all-consuming effect. So what are the most intense scenes and/or books you've read?
by w-wg1