Here are two alternatives to your sentences above:
#1 : Running at full speed, she managed to get to her door while her pursuer was still two flights of stairs back. She groped inside her handbag, shoving her way past two lipsticks, an old playbill, a flier for a charity she'd been meaning to donate to. She patted down her coat pockets, then her jean pockets. They couldn't have slipped out in the cab, could they? She shoved her hand into her pocket again and closed her fingers on the grim-reaper keychain. She muttered a quick prayer, shoved the key in the lock, and slid into her apartment just as she heard boots stomping up the stairs.
In other words: If you're going to take full advantage of immediacy and immersion, make it interesting. Make it scary or funny or dramatic in some way. And then, you get an opportunity to slip in some characterization in a way that's not boring or irrelevant.
#2 : She was changing into dry socks when the phone rang.
In other words: there are a lot of times when you can let your readers assume that your characters can get out of bed, shower, eat breakfast, lock and unlock their doors, etc., without too many problems, and skip ahead to the next important incident.
I think this is probably something I had to learn from mainstream fiction, because with science fiction you often want to take every opportunity for worldbuilding: Here's how you shower, in space! Here's what you eat for breakfast, in space! And it is interesting, or people assume it is interesting, because it gives insight into the society and it's not how we do it in the here and now. But if I'm going to describe breakfast, in space!, maybe at the same time the protagonist's teenage daughters are fighting about the girl the younger one wants to take to Space Prom. Or something. If I need to worldbuild I want to squeeze in some character drama or some plot drama while I'm doing it.
no subject
Here are two alternatives to your sentences above:
#1 : Running at full speed, she managed to get to her door while her pursuer was still two flights of stairs back. She groped inside her handbag, shoving her way past two lipsticks, an old playbill, a flier for a charity she'd been meaning to donate to. She patted down her coat pockets, then her jean pockets. They couldn't have slipped out in the cab, could they? She shoved her hand into her pocket again and closed her fingers on the grim-reaper keychain. She muttered a quick prayer, shoved the key in the lock, and slid into her apartment just as she heard boots stomping up the stairs.
In other words: If you're going to take full advantage of immediacy and immersion, make it interesting. Make it scary or funny or dramatic in some way. And then, you get an opportunity to slip in some characterization in a way that's not boring or irrelevant.
#2 : She was changing into dry socks when the phone rang.
In other words: there are a lot of times when you can let your readers assume that your characters can get out of bed, shower, eat breakfast, lock and unlock their doors, etc., without too many problems, and skip ahead to the next important incident.
I think this is probably something I had to learn from mainstream fiction, because with science fiction you often want to take every opportunity for worldbuilding: Here's how you shower, in space! Here's what you eat for breakfast, in space! And it is interesting, or people assume it is interesting, because it gives insight into the society and it's not how we do it in the here and now. But if I'm going to describe breakfast, in space!, maybe at the same time the protagonist's teenage daughters are fighting about the girl the younger one wants to take to Space Prom. Or something. If I need to worldbuild I want to squeeze in some character drama or some plot drama while I'm doing it.