Intensity
By Donald Maass | September 7, 2016 |
Flickr Creative Commons: midnightxmoon
Ask yourself these questions: Do I wish for my readers to experience quiet, peace, placidity, and calm? Or, do I wish for my readers’ experience to be intense? I suspect I know your answer. Who does not want their novel to be intense?
A couple of weeks ago, guest contributor Gaëtane Burkolter introduced us to her Excite-O-Meter, a tool to chart the intensity of her WIP. It’s a graph with the horizontal axis representing each chapter and the vertical axis measuring intensity on a scale of zero to one hundred. The line produced is a visual picture of her novel’s rising (one hopes) level of intensity.
But what exactly is intensity? What causes the action of a novel to provoke that feeling in characters, readers and authors? How is intensity produced on the page, so that readers feel it? How is it generated by authors within themselves on any given writing day?
When most of us think of intensity, we probably think of experiencing what is extreme. That’s not wrong. Extreme action can be intense. Dean Koontz’s novel Intensity (1995) is a good example. It’s the story of graduate student Chyna Shepherd who is recovering from an abusive childhood. Her weekend visit with the family of her lifelong friend Laura Templeton, however, turns into a violent nightmare. Serial killer Edgler Vess breaks in at night and kills everyone except Laura, whom he abducts, and Chyna, who stows away on Vess’s motor home.
The story that follows is about as horrifying as they get. I’ll spare you, or save for you, the lurid and violent details, but there are two points to note. First is that Vess (modeled on real life serial killer Edmund Kemper) kills in order to experience “intensity”. Second is that Chyna is able to endure and defeat Vess because she, thanks to her abusive childhood, has a greater tolerance for intensity than he. Trust me, the read is quite intense.
In science, intensity is a measure of power per unit area (physics), such as radiant heat flux (heat transfer), or field strength (electromagnetism). It can also be luminous intensity (optics), radiance (astronomy), or peak ground acceleration (as in earthquakes, geology). In other words, intensity is when force is packed tightly into something. It’s not the object itself but its effect. In writing terms, that means that intensity isn’t action per se, it’s the effect that any given story moment has on us.
Violence can be intense but it’s not the only way to produce the effect of intensity. In psychological terms, intensity is a high degree of emotional excitement. Over-excitability used to be seen as a personality problem, but is now understood not as a cause but a consequence of something else; a consequence that can be constructive, in important ways forming and strengthening personality instead of impairing it.
Psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration explains, among other things, the extreme excitability of gifted children. Once seen as hyperactive, distractible, disruptive, immature and oppositional, Dabrowski and later researchers revealed that such children are instead high energy, imaginative, passionate, sensitive and creative. They react more quickly and intensely, moved by inner forces that generate over-stimulation.
That’s true in all healthy personality formation. Conflict and pain lead to an inner collapse or “disintegration”, which in turn builds stronger personality based on an individual’s values. The result is autonomy, or what informally we would call maturity. Grown up, if not gifted, individuals are curious and driven to challenge conformity, complacency and self-satisfaction.
Does that sound like a guideline to creating great protagonists? It may well be. Protagonists in general do not easily conform. They do not run from conflict but face it. They do not experience emotions in the muted, contained and safe way in which most of us must in order to get along in life. Protagonists are passionate, principled and large in their feelings. They don’t get along. They are excitable. They are intense.
Thus, creating intensity in fiction starts with creating protagonists whose emotional excitability is above average; characters who react and respond to things in a larger way than most of us would. Second, it means packing scenes with material that produces a strong response, both in characters and in readers. Third, it means bringing your own excitability into the moment as you write.
Let’s look at a couple of practical ways to get at what we’re talking about.
- Choose a scene. What in this scene stirs your POV character to a greater than usual indignation, affront or anger? What threatens his or her sense of safety, propriety or rightness? How could this element become even more disruptive? Give it an extra cutting edge. Make it a trigger. Push your character’s response out of bounds.
- Chose any point in your story. What’s the worst thing that can happen to your protagonist? What can you take away? How can you punish unfairly? What would be greatly humiliating? Who can disparage your protagonist? How can he or she do self-harm? Spring a surprise that is devastating. Twist it to make it even worse.
- Chose another point in your story. What’s the best thing that could happen to your protagonist? What unexpected gift can you give? What unexpected reward? What would be encouraging? Who can believe in your protagonist when no one else does? What courage or resourcefulness can your protagonist summon? Spring a surprise that is wonderful. Add something to it to make it even better.
- Choose any page in your manuscript. What on this page relaxes or relieves tension? Eliminate that.
- Your story world is a place where things can happen that do not happen in real life. What’s one? What’s another? What’s the most extreme thing? What are you waiting for?
- What produces in you high emotion? What makes you want to cry? What reduces you to mush or rubble? What makes you speechless with anger? What makes you want to murder? Make that happen not just in your manuscript, but in your pages today.
Intensity is an achievable effect. It makes for exciting action. It tears characters apart and builds them back up. It gives readers a high experience. It challenges you to be a greater storyteller. The effect, though, comes not from characters or events. It’s not a function of plot, arc or voice. It’s the result of your own commitment, passion and courage. Your novel is intense not because it is, but because you are.
Pack it in. Make heat. Be radiant. Shake the ground. Shake us up. Shake yourself up. Get intense. Don’t worry, it will make us stronger. We’ll be okay.
How is your story getting intense today? How are you?
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Fabulous post, Donald. I’ve printed it out to remind myself about the importance of keeping up the intensity.
As I was reading your article, I thought of the series, Bloodline, which I’m currently watching. The writing is incredible, and yes, intense. The characters are so unpredictable. I’m on edge for much of the program; it’s almost unbearable to watch as each scene not only surprises but amps up the tension. Sometimes to an uncomfortable degree but the story is compelling. Shakespearean in its scope.
Thanks for the great nudge.
How have I missed Bloodline! What a cast. Sissy Spacek, Chloë Sevigny, Sam Shepherd, John Leguizamo, Beau Bridges…just for starters! Producer Todd Kessler of The Sopranos.
Wow, thanks!
You’re welcome. Not an easy show to watch, but compelling. Not sure half the time who to root for. The dynamics keep changing. The writers make you care about people who aren’t that savoury. Quite a feat.
This series has been on my to-be-binge-watched list for months. After reading your enthusiastic description of it, it’s moving to the top of the list! Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome, Nancy.
Agreed! Now I need to put it on the front of my list! Thank you. And thank you, Donald for such a great post. You wrote something many years back that I keep on my computer for reference (and it helps me keep up the intensity!): “To sum up, the puppy has a purpose and it’s not just to chase bouncy balls. It’s to show us what really matters, why we truly care, and to illuminate the meaning of everything.”
Perhaps one of the most intense experiences for anyone is when one’s circumstances force them to face their most uncomfortable fears, and in order to overcome those circumstances, change inside, find courage, overcome what they are afraid of. The most tranquil, reflective scene can be the most intense. I like your definitions of intensity in terms of the sciences we know, Don–it shows that likewise, in fiction, there are many ways to define intensity, be it through something earth-shaking, or something still, where the power of light and insight can shake the bedrock of one’s inner being just as dramatically. Personally, I am far more moved by stories where I simple cannot stop reading not because of the action and excitement, but because of how much I can feel the protagonist’s yearning to get what she’s longed for but could never have, to have to change tremendously inside and overcome great fear, to find courage and stand up strong and through attaining (or failing to attain), becoming a different person. As you put it, protagonists are indeed special, torch bearers for readers, those who say “this is how you can be different,” and so they inspire. Now, to apply that in my fiction–thanks for the prompts. Once more, another valuable tool with which to approach writing and make it better, intenser.
I agree, yearning, yearning, not getting, not getting…getting! Can be very intense.
John Robin–I like what you say here: “The most tranquil, reflective scene can be the most intense.” I believe that’s true, but it’s tough to accomplish. Don Maass gives more emphasis to the extreme, nail-biting version of intensity–witness his principal illustration.
I seek out and have more respect for work that intensifies and deepens the meaning of prosaic, un-sensational experience. I’m especially pleased when I find this in crime fiction–i.e., Laura Lippman, Ruth Rendell, et al. The writer who can work that miracle is not held hostage to the frantic, self-strangling demands of internal or external mayhem. It’s what I aspire to do in my suspense novels.
Barry, thanks for adding your thoughts. I’m right with you on how tough it is to accomplish intensity through tranquility. I think it’s worth pursuing, no matter how hard. So much about our everyday life truths and the things we struggle with lies not in the realm of the sensational but in those little moments where we change tremendously. Tough to pull off, and it will push us to our edge. Let’s go there, and enjoy the riches we can bring back to our readers.
Oh, I’m for any kind of intensity, Barry, external, internal, whatever! Lippman is terrific. Love her recent novels.
Excellent points, Don. In one of the workshops I teach I talk about the writer’s goal as creating tension in the reader which may or may not be sparked by a character’s tension that is caused by what is happening in the story, which I call “scene tension.” In other words, a character may be troubled or anxious, but the reader may not be affected by that. The technique I see as most helpful in intensifying the reader’s experience is the continual creation of story questions that make the reader want to know what happens next.
There are questions and there are questions. How do story questions themselves become intense?
What’s for dinner doesn’t make me wonder very much. What’s driving Jenny does make me wonder, but only if Jenny is highly intriguing and a character about whom I have reasons to care.
Exactly. It’s the nature/intensity of the story questions that can lead to a turn of the page. If a narrative delivers on intensity but not story questions, what reason is there to read on?
I love what you say here about conflict and pain leading to maturity, and especially what you say about gifted children. I have one of those children in my life and she astonishes me with the intensity of her responses to things. You asked what moves us, what makes us cry. For me sometimes it’s as simple as coming upon something in nature. A rainbow dancing in a spiderweb, for instance. But I’m also moved by the power of ordinary people to step into the role of hero. It just gets me every time.
I’m working on a scene today where one character is trying to retrieve her sister’s stolen heart in order to save it from eternal oblivion. She’s certain it has been taken by another character for nefarious purposes, but he is actually trying to keep the heart safe as well, only he is on a mission of fanatical devotion. Today, the two have a confrontation. Your post today is pure gold.
You might want to check out a book called Living with Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, edited by Susan Daniels and Michael M. Piechowski.
I’m hooked on your words, We’ll be okay, meaning THE READER. My protagonist is passionate, often angry and unable to control that anger–because her child is missing. She’s all over the place with emotion and yet I’ve been advised to be careful that she doesn’t become a shrew, unlikable because of her currently distraught emotional state. I know I can’t please every reader. In your post today, you write that my work would be intense because I am. From that I am taking that I can allow my MC to be angry and hurt, though once in a while provide her with a calm moment, let the reader see what she once was before this tragedy. Thanks, Don.
Angry is good. However, a heroine who is raging, all over the place and a mess is going to be tough to put over. Try thinking of her as someone angry but focused? Furious but determined?
Yes, that works: focus on her work–I need to highlight that more and it fits with loss of her child, because she’s a maternity RN, much restraint and focus needed to propel her forward while yearning for her own child. Thanks, Don.
What a terrific post – as all of yours are, and as your books are. The more I write, the more strongly I realize that the single thing that improves my writing is cranking up the intensity — not so much of events, though that helps, but of how they affect my protagonist, who lives in a society where strong feelings are suspect.
As I did. Example: Once when I was little I said I hated something. I don’t remember what. My Pennsylvania Dutch father, who had a doctorate but never escaped his childhood messages, told me I should never “hate” anything. Hate was wrong. 70 years later, I remember how enraged I felt.
Hate is an intense feeling. How to compassionately convey that in a character is a challenge, but an even greater challenge is to provoke hate in readers.
Hey Don, you’ve really gotten me thinking today (not that this is unusual). Since I read your post, I’ve been perusing my shelves and my Kindle index, looking for examples of novels and characters I consider to be intense. There are plenty that jump out at me. I’m glad you point out the distinction between violent or action-oriented intensity and a more internal or emotional intensity. The distinction gave me pause in considering two that popped out for me: Sabaa Tahir’s Ember in the Ashes series and Robin Hobb’s Fitz and the Fool books.
Tahir’s books are nothing if not intense. The tension for the characters is palpable on every page. Talk about creating a page-turning pace! The characters live in a constant state of high alert, poised on the edge of torture and death. And while Hobb’s character Fitz often finds himself surrounded by danger, forced to keep secrets that, if exposed, would lead to terrible outcomes—for himself and those he loves—the atmosphere of the series is much less afflicted or impassioned. Fitz’s intensity is mostly between the ears, rather than overt. The pace of Hobb’s books rarely falters for me, but the effect is more temperate. The tension builds more steadily.
In considering a few other examples, one of the things that I noticed is more telling about myself than about the stories. While I thoroughly enjoy reading stories of both types exemplified by my sample, I find a difference in how I consume them. With more “outwardly” intense books, I tend to stand outside and watch. In other words, I don’t feel like I’m “in the skin” of the protagonists, or experiencing it vicariously “through” them. Even if I’m interested and rooting for them, I tend to feel like I’m watching someone else. For those more internally intense protagonists, I’m more likely to experience their story by putting myself in their place. And it doesn’t seem to be a gender issue—I’ve found several examples of both male and female protagonists that fit the theory.
Maybe this is why I’m drawn to epic fantasy, as opposed to, say, thrillers. It’s certainly interesting—worthy of ongoing consideration. And knowing myself better as a reader can only be a boon to knowing myself as a writer. Terrific post! Thanks.
Ember in the Ashes is indeed intense, though the extreme and constant peril of the characters is imposed by the brutal world in which they live.
I haven’t yet read Hobbs’s Fitz and the Fool series but I’ll take your word for it: intensity more internal, with a slower build.
How great, and rare, it is to find intensity created both ways.
I’ve been reading Lisa Cron’s “Story Genius” over the last few weeks while planning the next book in my Navy Brat series. I wanted a character who built a wall between herself and the civilian world at an early age. But a middle grade book involves 8-12 year old characters, so how do you create that kind of characteristic in a child who is barely old enough to have a dark moment? I did develop her, but it just didn’t seem realistic to me. Until I read this. Some people are born with an intensity the rest of us can’t understand. I met a 10 year-old girl in Michigan State Park two weeks ago who I would describe as intense. I couldn’t have made this kid up on my best day. These people do exist, though. And they make the best characters. So my middle-grade girl who shuts herself off from the civilian population at her school is not so far-fetched. All of us brats did it to some extent. So an extreme case is quite believable. So tonight, I’ll sit at my iPad with its shiny new Scrivener app and revisit my character, taking her up another notch or three.
By the way, for intense YA characters, see “Stargirl.”
Perfect post for me today, as I struggle with creating intensity for my protagonist. I know I have to turn up the heat more…I’ll refer back to this article again and again. Thanks.
Stargirl? I will! Thanks.
Hi Don,
Thanks for the great post, as always. I have a question on one of your points: “Your story world is a place where things can happen that do not happen in real life. What’s one? What’s another? What’s the most extreme thing?”
As an agent, where do you draw the line?
In my recently completed first novel, a WWII alternate history, the climax scenes happen at a Nazi weapons factory/concentration camp where two coincidental encounters take place. One of my primary male protagonists (a time-traveling scientist) runs into his inmate grandfather while trying to sabotage the weapons facility. At the same time, my primary female protagonist (a German linguist and theologian from 1943) encounters her father, who was interned there by her abusive husband (a lieutenant in the SS).
These two coincidences would likely not happen in real life, and most who’ve read the novel don’t seem to mind. However, a couple of my beta readers have commented they found these encounters too unlikely to be reasonable.
Why did I do this? The conflict of meeting their loved ones in the camp – which has the potential to dredge up all kinds of emotions, not to mention distracting them from their mission – seemed too good to pass up.
Thoughts?
Wait, your story involves time travel and your beta readers found meeting family members across time “unlikely”? Excuse me, but isn’t time travel itself already unlikely?
What I’d say is that you have two very similar, parallel events, but that is a different matter.
Don, your post made me reflect on my protagonist in my WIP, who is a good-natured bumbling sort who can’t get out of his own way. Though there’s nothing of the serial killer whispering outside the door in this work, I am hoping the readers feel the emotional intensity of how he mangles his job, his longed-for relationship and his sense of self by his mistakes. And seeks redemption.
However, there are also scenes that have a fair amount of goofy mirth in them, because that’s both in his character and in some of the secondary characters. I’m hoping those are additive rather than subtractive in regards reader engagement. If not, I’ll just resurrect Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, to add some crazed, goggled-eyed sweating into some scenes.
For an example of goofy mirth and longed-for relationships in action, read Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project, a huge international best seller and hilariously intense.
Don, I really enjoyed this piece and it’s also given me some insight into my children, who feel everything so very intensely. They do not have any medical conditions but I’m privy to their emotions — the good, the bad, the ugly — and nothing about them is mellow. Thanks for the book recommendation up in the comments.
Your first Wed posts coincide with Adoration. It is a quiet hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament. To an onlooker, I am doing nothing important, just sitting or kneeling, perhaps fingering my rosary beads or writing, but inside me, after the praise, worship, contrition, supplications end, a quiet awe … words fail me. I get dressed up for this monthly date here on the island :) I am most beautiful in this hour.
Adoration? Not on my calendar, probably should be!
‘Testament’ by Canadian author David Morrell is a prime example of narrative intensity.
David is Canadian??? How did I not know that? I did know his novels are intense. No surprise there.
Yes, he was born in Kitchener, Ontario. Unfortunately he’s never repeated anything as good as ‘Testament’ (as far as I’m aware; I haven’t read all his novels).
Thank you, Don. As always you provide inspiration and ways to push ourselves to write the best we can.
Consider yourself pushed. And you’re welcome.
When I first saw the title of this post, I immediately thought of the time I read Dean Koontz’s “Intensity”, and frankly, I never see or hear the world without shuddering. I remember walking through the house when I needed to get up from my chair, holding the book open, reading as I walked. There was never a book, before or after, that socked me so hard. Nor one I’m afraid to revisit.
Like Truman Capote’s non-fiction account In Cold Blood, Dean’s novel enacts an American nightmare that I think is even more potent than fear of terrorism.
Unfortunately, it’s also something that happens. I think of that family in tranquil Cheshire, Connecticut and so many others.
Excellent!
Thank you
Welcome!
This post is very helpful as I consider how to build more tension into a fairly domestic story I’m working on right now. I have great tension and lots of intense (for various reasons) moments between my protagonist and every other character — except her childhood best friend, and yet that is where I have realized there needs to be the most tension, simmering and festering and eventually causing a rift that cannot be mended, but also one that the protagonist has let her memory twist so that she does not recognize her fault in the matter. So that’s what I’ll be working on this month, and the questions in this post will help. Thanks, Don!
Simmering resentment, eh? What wrong can one have done to the other? How was the wrong actually wrong? How as it justified?
More: What doesn’t the wronged party yet know? What has the other failed to see about her actions? What consequences could not be foreseen? How was the “wrong” that was done a good thing in ways understood only later?
More: If this happened between two strangers, what would be the result?
More: Who takes the side of each? Who switches sides? What has the wronged party done to stoke her resentment? What has the other done previously to atone? What is even more important to do than that? What is the hardest thing to do?
The gift that keeps on giving. :)
Thanks for always taking the time and going the extra mile. You’re a class act.
Hi Don
Thank you for another wonderful post. I’ve been reading Company Town by Madeline Ashby, and I think I’ve found a unique way the author showed the build-up of intensity at the start of the 11th Chapter. A character walks into a room and goes to a freezer. She wraps ice in a towel because she has a concussion. Another character comes in holding a bottle of chilled vodka and asks how she got the concussion. This brings a single tear rolling down her eye. Then the two characters have an explosive argument while also talking about a oil rig being blown up. The passage goes from frozen, to thawing, and then exploding with emotion.
This is a gem: “In other words, intensity is when force is packed tightly into something.” And now I’m going to have to read that Koontz novel; I’ve only ever read one of his, so it’s time to give him another try. I love your thoughts on characters themselves being emotionally excitable, not just the reader, because, really, we mostly experience things through them, so it makes perfect sense. Great post, Don!
Oh wow, this post spoke straight to my gut. I am definitely “emotionally excitable” and feel constant pressure to tone it down, both in life and my writing. Well, I don’t want to tone it down, who needs more vanilla? And I certainly love meeting non-vanilla people and protagonists.
One way I fight this pressure is a baseball #42 (Jackie Robinson) sticker on my computer to remind me to write with courage. Add this to a memoir about infertility and reproductive trauma–“yearning, yearning, not getting, not getting–furious but focused and determined”–I will talk to anyone about intensity, and I thank you for the encouragement.
“Ask yourself these questions: Do I wish for my readers to experience quiet, peace, placidity, and calm? Or, do I wish for my readers’ experience to be intense?”
Well, I do want my ‘novel to be intense’. Somehow I feel is in the use of the techniques, such as ‘Tension Where There Is None’ and ‘Transforming Low-Tension Traps’, and science, let’s say. In a way giving us the ‘quiet, ‘peace, and calm’ we need/yearn. Still working on it! I’m confused about it but I feel is right. To get it ‘right’ I’m using some of your techniques/craft and Beyond Biocentrism (ROBERT LANZA) https://beyondbiocentrism.com/ .
The “placid” means ‘Pleasantly calm or peaceful; unruffled; tranquil; serenely quiet or undisturbed’ (in https://www.dictionary.com/browse/placidity ).
In a sense to be in the mind of someone and feeling calm. That’s what I want my readers to experience, that sort of “intensity”.
A PLACID EXPERIENCE OF INTENSITY.