Explode the Moment
What is Explode the Moment?
To Build Suspense
I was close to the wall facing away from the direction I’d come, toward unexplored realms.
The extinguished flashlight was now cool in my hand, but the pistol felt hot.
The longer the quiet lasted the more it seemed bottomless. Soon it was an abyss in which I imagined myself drifting down, down, like a deep sea diver festooned with lead weights.
I listened so hard that I was half convinced I could hear the fine hairs vibrating in my ear canals. Yet I could hear only one sound, and it was strictly internal: the thick liquid thud of my own heartbeat, faster than normal but not racing.
Seconds passed without a noise or a sudden wedge of light from an opening farther along the corridor. I was about to switch on the flashlight again when a second of superstitious dread passed through me. I was unable to see anything at all, but I was sure that I could feel some presence in front of me. Obviously, my nuclear imagination was nearing meltdown.
I told my self that this feeling was not real and I felt ashamed that I didn’t have the guts to switch on the flashlight. Now my heart was racing.
I was disgusted. If I didn’t get control of myself I would have to spend the rest of my life sleeping under my bed, just to make sure the bogeyman didn’t slip beneath the box springs while I was dreaming.
Holding the unlit flashlight in a tight circle of thumb and forefinger, with my other three fingers extended, intending to prove that my superstitious dread held no basis in fact, I reached forward into the tomb perfect darkness. And touched a face.
From Seize the Night by Dean Koontz
But then she actually did disappear, dropping into the water that was everywhere--no sides no top no bottom--and taken so by surprise that it didn't matter that she was close to shore or that she was a good swimmer because she panicked and in her panic she swallowed water and scratched her cheek and somehow clawed her hair loose from its ponytail and her hair spread out from her like a multitude of tentacles thin as filaments like a sea creature jerking about wildly and then for a second she felt numb and blue and liquid and resigned to the fact that the water would overcome her and in that second she began sliding away from the present and she stopped thrashing about and relaxed and felt like a bird caught in a draft of air rather than a girl pushed and pulled by the ocean and gave up.
From Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes
To Get Further Into Character Thoughts
I moved back into the shadows between the tall maples in front of the library. I was totally still hoping not to be seen. That’s how packs detect you. You move and they see you out of the corners of their beady yellow eyes, and then they swarm for the kill.
Which is why I did not move a muscle when I felt a large, wet, sloppy plop drop down from the branches overhead. Large isn’t the right word and drop isn’t either. Think pour down instead of drop down, and you have it about right. There was a rustle, and a crow flew away grinning. I did not move. The plop slimed down my hair, over my ear, and then along my neck and into the collar of my t-shirt. Still, I did not move. I waited. I could feel the bird poop starting to crust over in the heat, and still I didn’t move. I waited, frozen.
From Ok For Now by Gary D. Schmidt
To Really Show the Action
Blake set his jaw. His arm turned in a slow clockwise motion and his foot lifted almost like a movie on slow-mo. His hips shifted and his arm shot forward. The ball left the glove like a canon. Hurtling, fast and slow all at once. The hitter blinked. The ball rocketed. The hitter started to squint, and smack the ball lodged into the soft padding of the catcher’s mitt. “STRIKE!”
From New Kid by Jim Green
I was close to the wall facing away from the direction I’d come, toward unexplored realms.
The extinguished flashlight was now cool in my hand, but the pistol felt hot.
The longer the quiet lasted the more it seemed bottomless. Soon it was an abyss in which I imagined myself drifting down, down, like a deep sea diver festooned with lead weights.
I listened so hard that I was half convinced I could hear the fine hairs vibrating in my ear canals. Yet I could hear only one sound, and it was strictly internal: the thick liquid thud of my own heartbeat, faster than normal but not racing.
Seconds passed without a noise or a sudden wedge of light from an opening farther along the corridor. I was about to switch on the flashlight again when a second of superstitious dread passed through me. I was unable to see anything at all, but I was sure that I could feel some presence in front of me. Obviously, my nuclear imagination was nearing meltdown.
I told my self that this feeling was not real and I felt ashamed that I didn’t have the guts to switch on the flashlight. Now my heart was racing.
I was disgusted. If I didn’t get control of myself I would have to spend the rest of my life sleeping under my bed, just to make sure the bogeyman didn’t slip beneath the box springs while I was dreaming.
Holding the unlit flashlight in a tight circle of thumb and forefinger, with my other three fingers extended, intending to prove that my superstitious dread held no basis in fact, I reached forward into the tomb perfect darkness. And touched a face.
From Seize the Night by Dean Koontz
But then she actually did disappear, dropping into the water that was everywhere--no sides no top no bottom--and taken so by surprise that it didn't matter that she was close to shore or that she was a good swimmer because she panicked and in her panic she swallowed water and scratched her cheek and somehow clawed her hair loose from its ponytail and her hair spread out from her like a multitude of tentacles thin as filaments like a sea creature jerking about wildly and then for a second she felt numb and blue and liquid and resigned to the fact that the water would overcome her and in that second she began sliding away from the present and she stopped thrashing about and relaxed and felt like a bird caught in a draft of air rather than a girl pushed and pulled by the ocean and gave up.
From Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes
To Get Further Into Character Thoughts
I moved back into the shadows between the tall maples in front of the library. I was totally still hoping not to be seen. That’s how packs detect you. You move and they see you out of the corners of their beady yellow eyes, and then they swarm for the kill.
Which is why I did not move a muscle when I felt a large, wet, sloppy plop drop down from the branches overhead. Large isn’t the right word and drop isn’t either. Think pour down instead of drop down, and you have it about right. There was a rustle, and a crow flew away grinning. I did not move. The plop slimed down my hair, over my ear, and then along my neck and into the collar of my t-shirt. Still, I did not move. I waited. I could feel the bird poop starting to crust over in the heat, and still I didn’t move. I waited, frozen.
From Ok For Now by Gary D. Schmidt
To Really Show the Action
Blake set his jaw. His arm turned in a slow clockwise motion and his foot lifted almost like a movie on slow-mo. His hips shifted and his arm shot forward. The ball left the glove like a canon. Hurtling, fast and slow all at once. The hitter blinked. The ball rocketed. The hitter started to squint, and smack the ball lodged into the soft padding of the catcher’s mitt. “STRIKE!”
From New Kid by Jim Green