The opening of The Tell-Tale Heart

We looked at the last snippet in terms of its three-part structure, but let’s look at one other subtle trick it uses to create gothic intensity. 

Notice how these qualifying and quantifying words and phrases heighten the intensity.

Imagine the snippet without them:

The sense of hearing was acute. I heard things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard things in hell.

They are tiny, but those extra words make a big difference.

Let’s try the last few examples again, but this time making sure to add some qualifying and quantifying words. We’ll have to tweak the rest of the text to make this work.