: Re: ...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

@Fox6458700

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I'm going to try and take the answer from "a CVn":

Have you considered doing something like skipping, then describing?

... and take it a bit further.

Jane was calm, arms up, as John held her at gunpoint. Steadying herself, she assessed him.

Everything about his posture, his demeanour, his very air, spoke volumes to her: He was going to pull the trigger. Her time for playing the mouse was up.

By the time John realised he wasn't holding the gun any more, his arm had been knocked to the side and his wrist felt like it was broken. Looking back at Jane, she was a step away from him, gun already levelled at his chest.

It was John's turn to put his arms up.

I'm not a good writer, so I'm aware this needs quite a bit of revising (e.g before looking back at Jane, a quick exclamation of pain from John may help the scene, up to you to decide. Or perhaps the final sentence could be changed to something more along the lines of, "Confused, surprised, and with a right arm that felt like it was on fire, it was John's turn to put his hands up"), but I hope the point is clear. Showing is always better than telling - even if showing in this instance is not showing all the details because it happened so fast.

You'll note though, that even with not explaining everything explicitly, this section still gives a pretty good idea of what happened - she'd simultaneously wrenched the gun from his hand by hitting (or otherwise hurting) his wrist and knocking his arm away. Just as quickly, she'd stepped away, so he couldn't just do it back to her. Even without spelling out exactly what had happened, it's clear she is very skilled.

If your aim is to show that this happened skilfully and extremely quickly, perhaps consider a variant of this.

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