Another storytelling rule I think people should remember is the law of diminishing returns. If you keep on ramping up the stakes higher and higher and higher, after a point it gets to where the audience can’t really care anymore.
I think this is also connected to what I have no idea whether there's a word for it but you know how in The Lord of the Rings (the books) there are all those moments when no action happens and they're basically resting somewhere nice, the hobbits are enjoying some food and banter, or the narration stops to admire the scenery? Yeah, those are there for contrast, to make the action count, and remind you why you should care for the characters and their fighting and questing to save the world. You don't get the saving-the-world high stakes of that story just from bigger and bigger battles.
This seems related to the previous point:
I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are. "We have a word for that in Japanese," he said, "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally." Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry? "I don't think it's like the "pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.”
2002 interview between Roger Ebert and Hayao Miyazaki
