...and then she held the gun
In the short passage I am writing, the starting point is that one character is being held at gunpoint, and the end point is that she now holds the gun, having disarmed the opponent.
The idea is that this sequence happens very rapidly. She is an expert at it, and makes no mistakes. The reader does not know that though, so I need to show it.
I have rewritten this passage multiple times and I am still dissatisfied with the result:
getting into the head of the character slows everything down: it seems to detract from the spike of surprise due to the sudden action in favor of a slower buildup of psychological tension. I do not need psychological tension in this passage. There is psychological tension in the paragraphs leading to it, and this passage should just burst it like a bubble.
I tried a description of the action. She quickly grabs the gun, and simultaneously hits the wrist; before the other can react she twists the barrel, and steps back... and it sounds choppy like a laundry list of what-to-dos advices from the youtube videos I have been watching.
I also tried skipping it altogether. She is held at gunpoint in one sentence. She is grinning with the gun in her hand in the next. This would work if I had showed it once, but this being the first time happening, I need to show something.
I finally tried being more abstract with metaphors and similitudes relying on the ideas of speed and force. Her hand hit like thunder, and she whirled the gun away from the other's fingers. It was a wet rock slipping under the greater will of the sea. And while it may be appropriate for martial art fiction, it is breaking the style and setting of my thriller.
Question: I imagine that this issue is more general to quick combat scenes, which resolve in less than a few seconds. How to get a pacing that surprises the reader and renders the swiftness of the action?
2 answers
I like your last example. Just keep the speedy action and remove the final sentence that seems out of place for your setting. If your character knows what she's doing, the action she performs will be subconscious; even she won't think about it much, and the prose reflects that.
Her hand hit like thunder, whirling the gun away from the man's fingers and into her own.
He didn't know guns. She did. Simple as that.
Jane grinned.
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Have you considered doing something like skipping, then describing?
Something like (but do consider this first draft quality):
The man kept the gun pointed at her. Jane had trained for years, and knew exactly what to do. Moving swiftly and confidently, she wrestled the gun from his hand. The man had been completely unprepared for her hitting his wrist, and it had given her just the fraction of a second she needed to grab the barrel and twist the gun out of his hand and into her own. She held the gun firmly and pointed it at her opponent. "Roles reversed", she thought to herself.
This gets the initial change in situation across quickly, before the reader learns in more detail how it happened. Not entirely unlike how a well-trained individual might actually approach something like that, as a largely automatic action.
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