Scenes that stay with you forever

[Garren Jacobsen]

There are scenes that stay with you forever. Scenes that touch your heart or chill you to the bone. I think it is the goal of every writer to have at least one scene like this. One scene that touches your reader in a way that affects them throughout the rest of their lives. I can think of three scenes off the top of my head that amazed me and I can still remember vividly.

This one from the 1987 movie Masters of the Universe (sure it hasn't aged well overall but damn did Frank Langella nail this role): https://youtu.be/2E2ZWfP4xUc?t=13m7s (I couldn't find the short version of this. End at the part where Skeletor says, "I don't think so, no.")

This one from Star Wars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs-OvfG8tE

And last, this one from Lord of the Rings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6C8SX0mWP0

The first one inspired me and remains with me because, sure this villain is totally over the top, but that "I don't think so, no" just makes me want to have a villain like that (not all of him just that). Just someone that knows their power and outright denies the request with a little bit of melodramatic snark. Can't resist it.

Darth Vader inspired me here because for the first time I actually thought, yep, dude be evil. Now I want my villains to be just that intimidating and still classy because he kept the decorum in that meeting via force choke (and stopping when requested).

And the last, that one is self explanatory. I want something half that inspiring to come about in my writing.

So, perhaps, my question is what inspires you? What has stuck with you? And dang it how do you go about writing those inspiring moments?

 

[WooHooMan]

In the book "Trout Fishing In America" by Richard Brautigan, there's a scene where the narrator compares a bookstore to a graveyard.
It's the paragraph that got me into literature and reading, in general. It gave me an appreciation for written words, I guess.

I don't try to write inspiring moments. I feel like as soon as you try, it's forced. You got to just let it come naturally.

 

[kennyc]

Yes, but not from movies.

Raymond Carver's "Fat" for one example....

...many many short stories, flash fiction and poetry have very powerful scenes like that which stay in my mind.

 

[Russ]

I have a number of them from books, but don't feel comfortable relating them because they pretty much all contain spoilers.

 

[kennyc]

Titles?



.

 

[skip.knox]

Not many from fantasy, I must admit. One of the descriptions of Gormenghast. Several scenes from LoTR, naturally.

But many from SF. Most vividly, darn near everything from Martian Chronicles, but two of my favorites:
When the Earth astronauts are hailed by the crowd, carried on their shoulders, only to realize they are in an insane asylum.
The masks and the bee gun of Mr. K.

Really, though, it's remarkable how many memorable moments--Let There Be Light, for example--there are in SF compared to fantasy. I'm not sure what to make of that.

 

[Ankari]

I'm with Russ. Here's a few titles:

The ending to Mark Lawrence's Broken Empire series.

The ending to Deadhouse Gate, A Memory of Ice, and Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson. Honestly, the man can write some emotional scenes. As I type, I realize I'll list most of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

The ending of the Black Company series by Glen Cook. There were also some great endings in individual books as well.

The ending of Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan. Another scene from book four, Shadow Rising involving Rand and Moraine has stayed with me since I was 13.

And The Last of Us (video game) ending really resonated with me.

 

[X Equestris]

I've got a few, though not a ton from fantasy.

The Rohirrim's charge in Return of the King is one. I don't know what it is,mbut there's something about that scene that makes it stick. The death of the Witch King is another.

For Game Of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire:

Spoiler: a certain twist in Book 3/Season 3

once you've seen or read the Red Wedding, you're not forgetting it.

The scene leading up to Macbeth's death is wonderful, especially after he has realized he's probably going to die.

The Omaha beach scene from Saving Private Ryan is probably one of the truest portrayals of war ever put to film. I mean, I've heard of veterans who had actually fought there saying "Yep, that's how it was."

For Red Dead Redemption:

Spoiler: Red Dead Redemption's ending

The scene where John gets gunned down by the government. Marston gave up his life of crime, tried to become a rancher, did what the government asked him to do and hunted down the remaining members of his outlaw gang, tried to return home, and all it got him was betrayal.

Also, the scene where John's son Jack hunts down the government agent who orchestrated his father's murder, Edgar Ross. Jack kills Ross in a duel, but in doing so he chooses the life of outlawery that his parents hoped he would avoid.

For the first Bioshock, the famous "Would You Kindly?" scene:

Spoiler: a major plot twist

Where you find out that the man who has been guiding you through the underwater utopia turned dystopia of Rapture has been controlling you using the phrase "Would You Kindly?" In the same scene you also find out that he's actually businessman and crime lord Frank Fontaine, and he's been using you in his bid to take over Rapture.

And finally, the ending of Bioshock Infinite:

Spoiler: the ending and some plot events

Player character Booker DeWitt has fought through the racist, ultranationalistic, and religiously zealous floating city of Columbia and rescued Elizabeth, a girl with reality-bending powers, to fulfill a job given to him by mysterious employers who promised to wipe away his debts. The leader of Columbia's Founders, Zachary Hale Comstock, is dead by Booker's hand, while Elizabeth killed the leader of the rebel Vox Populi when she tried to kill a child. They're attempting to leave the city and find out the truth about Elizabeth's powers when:

[video=youtube_share;YPmzA_cRMgM]http://youtu.be/YPmzA_cRMgM[/video]

Those are probably the ones that have stuck with me the most.

 

[Feo Takahari]

The People Who Walked On by Tadeusz Borowski. He was a political prisoner in Auschwitz, a relatively rarified group with more privileges and a longer life expectancy.

-- -- -- --

We started by building a soccer field in the empty meadow behind the hospital barracks. The meadow was nicely situated. On the left, the camp for the gypsies, with its crowds of hovering children and its pretty, well-groomed nurses; in the back a wire fence, then the ramp alongside the railway tracks–always jammed with the freightcars. Beyond the ramp, the women’s camp, which we called by the initials FKL. On the right side of the meadow, the crematoria: some were just beyond the ramp, next to the FKL, others were nearer, right by the wire fence. Strong buildings set solidly on the earth. Beyond the crematoria was a tiny grove and a small white house.

It was spring when we built the soccer field; even before we finished, we started to sow flower beds and to pave the paths with broken red bricks. We also planted spinach and lettuce, sunflowers and garlic. With turf from the soccer field we laid small squares of lawn. Each day we had to bring several full barrels from the lavatory to water all the stuff we had planted. By the time the plants were growing, the soccer field was ready.

After that, the plants grew by themselves, the sick stayed alone in the hospital block, and we played soccer. Every evening, after supper had been distributed, whoever felt like it would come out to the field and kick the ball around. Others would gather at the wire fence and call out to the women in the FKL across the railway track.

One Sunday I was playing goal; a large crowd of Pfleger and convalescents was standing around the field, men were running back and forth after each other and after the ball. I stood at the goal, with my back to the ramp. The ball went out of bounds and rolled over to the wire fence; I ran after it and as I picked it up, I looked at the ramp. A train had just rolled in. People began stepping down from the freightcars and walking toward the grove. From that distance, all I could see were the colorful splotches of their clothes. They were dressed for summer–for the first time that season. The men took off their jackets, and their white shirts shone. The procession moved at a slow pace, constantly joined by more and more people from the cars. Finally, it came to a stop. A few people sat down on the grass and looked our way. I went back to the soccer field with the ball and kicked it out among the players. It went from leg to leg and then came back to the goal in a wide arc. I kicked it into the corner. It rolled across the grass and again I went to get it. Picking up the ball from the grass, I looked up and stood, thunderstruck; the ramp was empty. Of the whole crowd of those colorfully-dressed people, not a single one remained. The freightcars were gone too. One could see across to the FKL blocks without hindrance. The Pfleger stood, as before, at the wire fence and shouted their greetings to the girls who shouted back from the other side of the ramp.

I returned with the ball and kicked it out once more. Between my first and second boot, they had gassed three thousand people behind my back.

-- -- -- --

That was the only long translation I could find online, but the one I first read was even starker. "Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death."

 

[cupiscent]

The scenes that spring to mind for me - some pivotal scenes from various of Guy Gavriel Kay's works, a key scene or two in Veronica Mars, a brutal but inevitable betrayal in Holly Black's White Cat, and oodles more - all have one thing in common: they are emotionally devastating, to game-changer level, and usually for more than one character. It's the emotional resonance that carves them into my heart.

Sidebar: When I was in France a few years back for a friend's wedding, I learned a piece of French slang from another wedding guest: "C'est énorme!" Literally translated, it's basically "it's enormous", but it was used as a hyperbolic exclamation of something being awesome. It really resonates with me, though - that feeling of something being so mindblowingly amazing that it's just too big for your brain and your words to encompass.

That is what I try to put into my scenes when I'm writing something that I want to be the devastating emotional crossroads scene. I want it to be enormous.

And that can't just come from a single scene. It has to be built from the significance attached to all the elements that come together in that scene. The finale of GGK's Lions of Al-Rassan isn't epic because of what happens, it's epic because of all the emotional weight attached to what happens because of everything that has come before with the characters involved.

 

[kennyc]

Also LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas has a number of memorable scenes.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Scenes that stuck with me…

In a book - Dean Koontz's Dragon Tears, a scene where the bad guy pauses time—because he can—and rips off a girl's arm at a dance club—because he's a dink—and shoves her, leaving her half tipped over. The two protagonists facing the villain are also "unpaused," but he leads them on a chase. The MC (and therefore, the reader) is elsewhere when the time-stop ends, so the chaos at the dance club and the fate of that poor girl remain unseen.

In anime - Cowboy Bebop. "Bang." Pretty much all of episodes 25 and 26, but especially the second half of 26. I immediately replayed that scene after finishing the series.

In a game - Metroid. Descending an elevator. I know it was an old game and there were no scenes between action, just an elevator that took you to a new section if the world and that beep-boop-beep-boop music. But I used to have dreams of space exploration thanks to that game making my imagination run wild. There was something intense about being in the fray, and your only break was on that elevator. Next would be a new area with new creatures that rip you to shreds if you screw up.

In a movie - Aliens. Just about any scene, really, but off the top of my head, the part where Ripley gets the queen to call off her boys… then the look as an egg starts to hatch. And I just remembered, Patrick Brown on DeviantArt depicted a frame of this beautifully!

So, in art - this piece of cartoon eye-candy!

 

[Kazzan]

In Malazan Book of the Fallen there are a lot of scenes that have stuck with me, from the ending of Deadhouse Gates, to Ygathan and HAIL THE MARINES! Some are really wonderfully written.

Some scenes from Game of Thrones are pretty hard to forget as well, but those are more for the shock value they brought or the satisfaction in some cases. The dragon fight in the Gotrek & Felix novels, and defence of Kislev for that matter. Then there is Logen Ninefingers duel in Abercrombies books, Druss' last stand in David Gemmels 'Legend'. List goes on.

No idea how to go about writing a really memorable scene myself, taking the shock value route seems like the easy way out, though I had a scene like that planned for one of my stories, where the protagonists sister dies to poison during a feast. Mostly you just have to get people to feel emotion for the scenes and story to stick, though not all emotion is equal I think. Sad scenes stay with you longer than happy ones I believe, same with scenes where characters are being badasses stick longer than if they were barely scraping by.
Most my own scenes come out quite dull though, but I'll fix them in the second version.

 

[Cambra]

“Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear?
Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet
deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long
night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children
are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and
hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods”

The first para that gave me an entry into the world while creeping me out...

 

[FifthView]

The epilogue to Samuel R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which still stands for me as the best contemplation of morning ever put to paper.