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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46251
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46251
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You _write_ slow. It is fine to put yourself into the character and see how you would react, but take your time describing that. Get into the details.

This isn't a "real time" exercise, the length of the writing does not have to reflect the length of the action. The only time that is true is during _dialogue_, people know that sentences take a certain amount of time to say. They know it is seldom true that anybody talks in long paragraphs or soliloquys or speeches or sermons.

But that does not hold for _action_ or _exposition_ that has no dialogue. Thoughts are on the borderline, but it is fair to describe several wordless thoughts or impressions that go through somebody's mind, and even though that took six paragraphs, the reader will still get this all happened in a single second.

Consider when you describe a scene the character sees. You can spend a page on something they "saw" in three seconds of scanning a room. We still get it, they didn't stand in the doorway for a full minute as they walked in, the exposition about the setting is not a "real time" description.

The same goes for your panic attack. Don't rush the prose to match the rushed mood. Describe what is going on, thoroughly but as always without getting repetitive or irrelevant. Don't worry about "real time" or getting through it quick.

The author's job is to aid the reader's imagination, so they "see" an image of what is going on and what happened and the consequences of that.

Original score: 5