#writing community

[hayatheauthor]

10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing

New Part: 10 Lethal Injury Ideas

If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain, here are some ideas: 

1. Sprained Ankle

A common injury that can severely limit mobility. This is useful because your characters will have to experience a mild struggle and adapt their plans to their new lack of mobiliy. Perfect to add tension to a chase scene.

2. Rib Contusion

A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult, helping you sneak in those ragged wheezes during a fight scene. Could also be used for something sport-related! It's impactful enough to leave a lingering pain but not enough to hinder their overall movement.

3. Concussions

This common brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment heavily. It can also cause mild amnesia.

I enjoy using concussions when you need another character to subtly take over the fight/scene, it's an easy way to switch POVs. You could also use it if you need a 'cute' recovery moment with A and B.

4. Fractured Finger

A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills. This would be perfect for characters like artists, writers, etc. Or, a fighter who brushes it off as nothing till they try to throw a punch and are hit with pain.

5. Road Rash

Road rash is an abrasion caused by friction. Aka scraping skin. The raw, painful sting resulting from a fall can be a quick but effective way to add pain to your writing. Tip: it's great if you need a mild injury for a child.

6. Shoulder Dislocation

This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation. Good for torture scenes.

7. Deep Laceration

A deep laceration is a cut that requires stitches. As someone who got stitches as a kid, they really aren't that bad! A 2-3 inch wound (in length) provides just enough pain and blood to add that dramatic flair to your writing while not severely deterring your character.

This is also a great wound to look back on since it often scars. Note: the deeper and wider the cut the worse your character's condition. Don't give them a 5 inch deep gash and call that mild.

8. Burns

Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma. Like the previous injury, the lasting physical and emotional trauma of a burn is a great wound for characters to look back on.

If you want to explore writing burns, read here.

9. Pulled Muscle

This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, offering a window to force your character to lean on another. Note: I personally use muscle related injuries when I want to focus more on the pain and sprains to focus on a lack of mobility.

10. Tendonitis

Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted. When exploring tendonitis make sure you research well as this can easily turn into a more severe injury.

This is a quick, brief list of ideas to provide writers inspiration. Since it is a shorter blog, I have not covered the injuries in detail. This is inspiration, not a thorough guide. Happy writing! :)

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

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[elleldoe]

when I comment on a fellow writer's fic and they, in turn, comment on one of mine

[dionysiaproductions]

[angelflower874]

No one may steal the em dash from me! I have too many thoughts to add that I don't want in parentheses!

"If you use em dash in your works, it makes them look AI generated. No real human uses em dash."

Imaging thinking actual human writers are Not Real because they use... professional writing in their works.

Imagine thinking millions of people who have been using em dash way before AI becomes a thing are all robots.

REBLOG IF YOU'RE A HUMAN AND YOU USE EM DASH

[melodicwriter]

[butternutbunny]

i do not “plot”, i do not “storyboard”, i do not “draft”, I FREEWRITE. and if it sounds like shit, I DELETE IT.

[brosh17]

I wrote my own spy thriller — would love for you to check it out Now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F945B3RR

yall gotta learn the difference between "this character is an asshole" and "this character was supposed to be super cool but the author is an asshole" and "this character is a teenage girl who was mean once"

[sourdough-seal]

hyperfixation please stay with me long enough to complete the project. hyperfixation do not fade. hyperfixation finish what you started for the love of god

[that-fan-girl]

[lulujamesspencer]

While I get what she's saying, and don't entirely disagree, the "emotional hollowing-out of people" is already *here*. And it wasn't *just* AI that did it, or is doing it. It also a lot of other factors: the American Exceptionalism Cult that basically controls the internet, the GOP/Right-Wing Fascism that's been spread, and the spreading of "reality" in the form of watching other's pain and laughing at it. There's glorification of bullying, the use of social media to mob onto people, and many of those kinds of things (it's a long list in a similar vein, so...). The social contract as we used to know it is broken. There is no shame anymore, and shame, considered a negative emotion, is treated as if it is a bad thing that you should never, ever experience. That's not true. You should be ashamed if you've done something that's hurt another human being. You *should* take accountability for your actions. Like anything else that deals with emotions, though, you should not *stay* in a state of shame perpetually.

But this also leads to the second problem, which has been troubling me a lot as a pastor: there is *NO* room for Grace at all in the social contract now. What the means is that, if you have done harm, recognized that you have done harm, felt shame enough to apologize for what you've done, and took actions to rectify the situation, you *should* be given the space and time to rebuild your life and relationships. This doesn't mean someone has to forgive you or allow you back in their life, but it does mean that you should *not* be hounded for decades afterwards. It means that if someone makes an honest mistake and immediately apologizes for it and does better next time, they shouldn't be lambasted on social media for years being told how horrible they are. We have redemption arcs in our stories because people should be able to change and grow into better human beings. But we don't allow for that anymore. We celebrate redemption stories and cheer on heroes who used to be villains, but we don't allow other people to do that in real life. Many people, even people who consider themselves "Good People," are willing to hound people off platforms, and even hound people into depression, or worse, suicide, because of real or perceived "bad behavior," without giving them any time to redeem themselves. Let me make this perfectly clear: I'm not talking about the JKRs, Trumps, and other folks in this world who double down on their hatred and bigotry. I'm also not saying that people shouldn't be responsible for their bad behavior at all. What I'm saying is that we need to give people who *want* to do better and *want* to change the time and space to prove themselves. All this is to say is that AI didn't do that, and really, won't do that for ***most*** people. (Yes, I know there's people who let AI run their lives, but I think that's a different discussion.) We've done the hollowing out of our own selves, and we need to fix it. Oh, and let me be clear #2: I'm *not* saying that AI doesn't have its problems, but AI is only as good as the humans who create and teach it, and humans have barely taught ourselves compassion and grace over the centuries, so, why would we expect AI to do any better? To put it another way: AI is lifting up the mirror to ourselves and we don't like what we see. Instead of fixing our own lack of compassion and grace, we lash out and refuse to hold ourselves accountable for the problems we've created.

How human of us.

“They’re trying to convince people they can’t do the things they’ve been doing easily for years – to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies – to write that for you.” We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, “that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won’t know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can’t do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won’t have to process grief, because you’ll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it’s going to destroy humans, long before there’s a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people.”

Justine Bateman on AI in this article from The Guardian

[nondelphic]

"just write a little every day" ok but what if i write nothing for 3 weeks and then suddenly type like i’m being hunted by god

[questions-about-blorbos]

Every poll on this blog is about fictional characters only. This request was sent to us and we made a poll in response to it. Send any Blorbo-related question you want to our inbox and we’ll make a poll on which people can vote with their own Blorbos in minds

[novlr]

Don't abandon your normal moments

You don’t need grand ideas or epic plot twists to write something powerful. Small, honest moments can be just as meaningful as world-changing events.

A character fumbling through breakfast or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can hit just as hard as a battle scene, so don’t underestimate the quiet stuff. Truth lives in the quiet moments, and that’s what readers will remember.

[andimissmylovergirl]

you ever write something so fluffy that you need to put the laptop down abruptly and go pace you room for a few minutes or are you normal

[lannegarrett]

"I know adverbs are controversial, but "said softly" means something different than 'whispered' and this is the hill I will die on."