/lit/ - Literature

>>22977821
Yes, sort of. If a book suddenly introduces something important without preparing you it can have a similar effect. Of course text is much less visceral than cinema. You're probably not going to jump, literally, the way you might when CARRIE'S HAND REACHES OUT OF THE GRAVE AND GRABS AMY IRVING or whatever.

A common technique is to put the jump in the middle of a sentence with very casual syntax, no buildup. <pic attached> is an example from WIlliam Gass's short story "The Pedersen Kid", in "In the Heart Of The Heart Of The Country".

The context: narrator lives on a farm in Minnesota or somewhere. It's all snowy and they found this neighbour's child frozen outside. They brought him in and tried to resuscitate him. The kid is lying on the kitchen table with melted snow and everything everywhere.

"They":
1) The narrator, a boy, early teens
2) Hans, a hired man working for the family
3) The boy's mother (a downtrodden woman)

The other "missing" character is the boy's father who is a mean drunk. He was asleep in bed and the boy was sent to tell him what's happened and got hit for waking him up. The father hasn't appeared yet. There's tension because he hides bottles of whisky around and the mother found one. Hans is drinking from it and the father is going to be really angry when he finds out. (His natural state is angry).

When he appears, at the top of page 24, it gave me a jolt, as I'm sure it's meant to.