Be sure you have tight cause / effect lines between action, reaction, and scene. Don’t interrupt an action and its effect with scene description until the sequence is complete.
The reason this works is that readers track cause and effect almost physically—when Jenna throws the punch, some part of the reader's body wants to feel the jaw snap before anything else happens. Slide in a paragraph about the flickering neon sign or the smell of rain between the swing and the impact, and you've broken the nerve connection between the two. The fix is simple: land the punch, let it land fully, then let the room come back into focus. But don't over-correct into a string of bare action-reaction beats with zero air between them—that reads like a fight choreography sheet, not a scene. Once the sequence completes, you've earned the pause. Let the world flood back in then, and it'll land with more weight for having been held off.
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