As writers, we're told by the best/most successful (and you know who you are/were, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Anton Chekhov ... and no, he was not on the Starship Enterprise ... etc.) not to TELL what's happening, but to SHOW it. Sometimes that's easy. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's not something visual, but something auditory, and to show it would require a sound effect.
In one scene of my not-yet-pubbed novel, a police car slams into a vehicle during a chase, and I just wrote, "Wham!" That works for me because, in my mind, and I think in the minds of readers, it tells you that here was a collision — it was sudden, it was loud, and it was unavoidable.
When I had a scene with multiple gunshots (and it is a pivotal scene near the end of the book), I also wanted to have it just happen, not to say, "... and then gunshots rang out." And in my very first draft — which I wrote so long ago, Lincoln was President (ok, maybe it just feels that way) — I wrote "Ka-blam! Ka-blam! Ka-blam!"
Yikes.
For many drafts, it looked fine to me, and then one day I realized, holy &$@%!, that looks like it belongs in a Marvel Comic. Along with "Kapow!" and "Zap!" and "Bam!" in an exciting, colorful font. Yikes, yikes, and double-yikes.
On the other hand, being able to notice it tells me I've improved as a writer, over the years. Yay me.
But I still needed a sound for that scene. A major character MUST get shot, several bullets whizzing out of a gun barrel, and it needs to be sudden and dramatic. If it were a big, powerful weapon, cannon-like, I suppose "boom!" would do. But this is a handgun.
I eventually settled for a generic "Bang!" (I searched a bit and did find at least one famous author who used that sound effect for a gunshot). But who knows, maybe I'll change my mind before actually self-pubbing it.
There should be a writers' dictionary of sound effects, don't you think? So we wouldn't have to rack our brains late at night trying to come up with something that works perfectly, conveys the sound we want, but doesn't look like The Hulk might be crouching nearby, ready to pounce on an evil villain?
Do you have trouble with sounds in your novels/novellas/short stories? Explosions, snores, coins dropping on a sidewalk, a wheel rolling away from a disastrous car wreck, a victim's last choking sound before strangulation does them in, a drawer slamming shut ...?
And if you hadn't thought about it before, now you have yet one more reason to sit up till the wee hours, fighting to find exactly the right word. Sorry about that. Pour another cup of coffee. It's going to be a long night. ;-}