I would appreciate your suggestions to get me out of this rut! How would you transition from: he's lying in bed, being lost in his own thoughts, and the window suddenly erupting in a thousand pieces? With a bit more context: he is lying on the top bunk of a bed and it is a smoke grenade (of sorts) that is thrown through the window.
You're in his POV, I assume? Close third, maybe? So maybe give us his previous thoughts, then what happened, then him figuring out what happened. So, for one sort of character... It made no sense. She'd said she wanted him to leave, and after all these years she should know better than to be subtle or tricky with him. So what the hell had she-- He was moving before he knew what was happening. Rolling toward the wall, dragging his blankets over himself like they were some kind of shield. It took half a second for his brain to take over from his instincts, and then he rolled back and stared at the jagged shards of glass where the window used to be. An acrid burning smell, and smoke billowing up from something on the floor. It was an attack. He needed to move. Or for a different sort... It made no sense. She'd said she wanted him to leave, and after all these years she should know better than to be subtle or tricky with him. So what the hell had she-- A sudden, sharp crack. From--he stared at the broken window. It had--someone had--what the hell was going on? Was it smoke? Smoke from--Jesus Christ, what the hell was going on? etc. I think you just do it. He's thinking, something happens, and he's reacting. Write it.
I would set up the scene with long flowy sentences. Make it clear he is relaxed, make the writing relaxed. Describe the scenery, describe what's out the window. Be slow and methodical, the wind, the sky, the leaves. How he feels about life, whatever his thoughts are. Then the window explodes. The sentences are cut short. Glass flies throughout the room in a cacophony. The ground shakes. The bed trembles. There are periods everywhere. It's all action. That's what I'd recommend!
Sorry, I should have given more context. I guess I'm just overly critical of myself, but I'm not satisfied no matter how I spin this: Tom sighed. What was the point of life anyway? Perhaps he should just lie and get his life over with… Suddenly, with a crash, the window erupted in a thousand pieces, making him dash to his haunches, hitting his in the head against the ceiling. Ps: I'm, more or less, looking other examples to give me inspiration.
Tom, is it? I’ll sketch something. I have to fiction some fictional fiction to make it work. . . (some language, whatever.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= A man could lose himself here. He was meant to. Tom lay on the hard tack of the upper bunk, a comfort as yielding as an ironing board, and remembered his days back in Muskogee: fencing in sight of the Arkansas River, taking the quad down to mire, flinging bales up onto the Chevy. His old life was a rumor. His gut still ached where that lunatic gunnery sergeant had dropped him. His fist had felt like a pylon driving forward, twisting through Tom’s abdomen like 7.62 in flight, striving to snap his spine. Tom had been kicked by a steer once. It hadn’t been so bad. He tried to sit up and fell back gasping. Only a candyass cried in the infirmary, the GySgt had roared. He’d stood on Tom’s back and shouted demands. Tom could do little more than hiss nonsense into the dust. The sergeant leapt off of him and started doing push-ups with crazy insistence, his face pressing inches away from Tom’s, his eyes so wide they seemed ready to squirt out of his skull. He must have done fifty, which was a hundred in the real world since the army only counted half the effort. When he’d breathed in Tom’s face, it had smelled like diesel. From behind Tom came a soft tapping. He lay very still. Three taps. Pause. Four taps. Pause. Five. Tom grabbed the edge of the mattress and pulled himself achingly up on one elbow. Outside, the Hangmen platoon was suffering on the PT field. Shin and Gomez were dangling from the Deadfall like fruit bats, some sort of punishment, he assumed. A round blur approached his window. A sparrow, until he recognized its wingless arc. The glass shattered. “Incoming grenade,” the GySgt had said, “and your fat haunches go on it like you’re hatching a motherfucking egg. Make a final contribution, you scolex cowpoke!” Tom had to look up the term the next day. It was predictable. Tom yanked the mattress to him and rolled against the wall. He felt the concussion in his bones. He was an insect crushed beneath the heel of a titan, of God, of the US Army Corps. The world went white . . . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= I’d break (white space) after that and describe the explosion from afar. The MC’s not going to see enough to make it cool. For me the key is not to have him waking up into the scene. It’s an almost universally bad idea, Kafka notwithstanding. You want to have him idly reflecting, and that’s good, but don’t have him sighing and being a low-energy shlump. Put him on the bunk and flashback. Explain his state. It's funny, you can bounce the narration about and make it feel like immediate action. Then pause for a breath and come into the explosion.
I think that the events in your version are out of order. I realize that "events" may seem like the wrong word for things that are split-seconds apart, but I think that we want to perceive this as the character would. And I would expect that to be: Hearing--a loud crashing noise. Sight and sensation--flying glass. An instinctive, unthinking defensive movement. Realization as the conscious, thinking part of the brain kicks in and realizes what just happened. You're starting at the end--the realization that all of that was a window breaking--rather than the beginning. That drains a lot of the excitement out of it. So does the word "Suddenly"--usually that word drains the sense of suddenness out, however unreasonable that seems. And while "thousand pieces" is of course just a sensation, I think that in this context is has a vibe of standing back and counting, and that also eliminates the suddenness. We know of course that no one is really counting, but it would still work better for me as a sort of leisurely observation: "John entered the room, to find the window smashed into a thousand pieces." @BayView 's examples are dandy. I'm going to write one with one of my own characters, just because. Irwen lay on her stomach, her latest assignment and a bowl of nuts arrayed in front of her, contentedly munching and reading. Well, trying to read--her mind wouldn't stop spinning. Take the job? Could she play at obedience, in exchange for protection and a salary? Or should she take him for what she could get and move on? Just how much-- A crash and a rain of glass, and she found herself crouched in the depths of the room, staring at the flames enveloping the chaise. A passer-by peered in through the hole that had been a window. Protection. Definitely, protection. ETA: This produces thoughts for the Highly Flavored Novel. In my progress thread.
