#writing technique

[tryslora]

learning sentence level editing

It’s no secret that I hate editing.

I’ve told this story before: When I was in high school, I had an English teacher who told us on our first day of sophomore honors English that she would not give an A for a first draft. She had a rigorous outlining/drafting process that she was determined to teach us. Me, I had undiagnosed ADHD and was a dyed-in-the-wool pantser. So I resolved on that first day that by the end of my time with her, I would get an A on a first draft.

My final essay of junior year AP English (yes, same teacher two years in a row), I wrote about Victorian morals and literature. I read it aloud. I got an A. I only ever wrote one draft.

What that taught me was how to write very technically clean drafts, something that has stayed with me for almost four decades now. Which is great!

What it did not teach me was how to be patient enough to properly edit. And I have never really learned. In fact, that is one of my ADHD sticking points (yes, I know, that’s obvious from my reaction to her statement in the story above). I often feel that a large part of the reason I have never made it as a writer—have never broken into tradpub—is because I do not have the patience to not only write, but then create an outline from the draft, then rewrite, then do it all over again and fiddle with each sentence until it’s perfect.

I’m learning, but I’ll admit, I’m still not there, and I’m not sure I ever will be where novels are concerned. 

But right this moment, I’m feeling very accomplished and proud of myself. I had a short story that every time I worked on it, it grew. Every time I cut it, it felt like it lost its heart and like the taste of the words stopped feeling like mine. My voice disappeared.

I had finally worked out a version of it that was just under 7500 words long, and I thought it was decent. It got no traction, and I was frustrated. I put it up for critique on SFFOWW (a critique group site) while I was active there a year and a half ago. It was chosen for an Editor’s Choice review, and the first half of it got some great comments. Which I promptly had to ignore because I was dealing with other editing problems.

I returned to it recently, because I saw a call I wanted to send it to. The problem was, the call was for stories under 6k, and I wasn’t sure I could cut this story again and still retain its punch. But hey. The biggest feedback I got was about how I handled my descriptions and dialog, and the amount of repetition that slipped into my words. So I absorbed that, and I dug into the story, and I started ripping it apart.

I didn’t edit it, exactly, nor did I completely rewrite it. I printed it. I read it twice. Then I placed it on the desk and went a few paragraphs at a time and started with a blank file and filled it in. Some pieces went in verbatim. Most of it changed. Huge chunks disappeared, and a few new things appeared. Some of it got rearranged. The wordiness disappeared.

Here’s an example…

Before:

"You get one hour," Lana says softly. "One hour with him, and then you're leaving him behind. You're taking your fate and you're setting him free."

After:

"One hour," Lana says. "Then take your fate with you and set him free."

The new version of the story came in under 6k. I did it, and the best part is, I don’t hate it. In fact, this was sentence level revision of a style I had never done before. The closest I’ve come to it is editing flash fiction to be under very tiny wordcounts (or drabbles of exactly 100 words, which gods, those take me longer than writing a short fic!).

I’m not sure I could’ve done this without the editing I did for Into the Split over the last many months. I had to dig into that in ways I have never edited a novel before, and it prepared me to dig even more deeply into this short story.

I’m learning. I guess you can teach old dogs some new tricks.

[karmaalwayswins]

Schnee "When a Deep Character Pretends to be Shallow - Hobie Brown" (2023)

[thelaithlyworm]

So how *do* I use interiority and expositional elements in my writing...?

So I was reading a tumblr post + article about people 'writing like tv' with little to no interiority, and I had thoughts about how I did that, but then I got curious about what actually ends up on the page, and looked up some recent fic to see.

So here's a couple of scenes from Luocha Undersea City, where the POV character Yin Xinyue is tripping through a dreamscape, finding versions of her life where her friend/crush Yatou is still alive. Expositional writing (what someone thinks, backstory, anything that wouldn't show up on a tv screen if this were filmed) marked in bold.

Yatou caught [Yin Xinyue's] hand and turned it palm up with delicate fingers, drawing it into the pale winter light slanting through the boarding house’s high windows. 

She clucked her tongue regretfully. “A sore wound,” she said, studying the graze on Yin Xinyue’s palm. 

“I was so brave,” Yin Xinyue joked, her eyes wide. The graze was a nothing but in truth she had been brave – the supply truck she’d driven that day slipping badly on a cliff road. Her arms still shook under their thick sleeves from yanking the wheel around. But it was a nothing. She flinched as Yatou smoothed cool white salve over her damaged skin and pouted. Yatou smiled indugently and tapped Yin Xinyue’s nose, leaving a smear of astringent cream on the tip.

Out of long, long habit, Yin Xinyue’s fingers curved around Yatou’s wrist to feel her pulse, but it was still strong, still stable, and there was colour in the woman’s cheeks despite the tiny portions of food they were surviving on as they crept through their invaded country like stubborn ants.

Like an alpine flower removed from lowland smothering, Yatou thrived in the privations of their travels. And wasn’t that a wonder?

Over Yatou’s shoulder, Yin Xinyue saw two photos propped up on a dresser in an impromptu shrine, the small rice cake that was the only offering they could spare set between two sprays of dead incense sticks. From grainy black-and-white paper Fo-ye’s bright eyes met her own; he was very handsome in his military cloak. He would not mind sharing, Yin Xinyue thought, not with his old friend Er Yuehong coolly elegant behind him.

Yatou dropped her hand and smiled. Her breath steamed in the chill air but her qipao was thick and quilted – Yin Xinyue could provide! – small stitches showing neatly in the woollen tweed that was the outer cloth where the batting was anchored to it.

“I saw some more of the munitions camp,” Yin Xinyue told her breathlessly, taking Yatou’s hand back and swinging it. “I think I’ve worked out the best place to plant an incendiary device. After that it’s –” she drew a finger across her throat – “all over for the Japanese dogs.”

A line showed between Yatou’s birdwing brows. “You will be careful,” she said.

“Of course,” Yin Xinyue said blithely. “I have to come back to you, don’t I?” She repeated her words, stroking her thumb on Yatou’s inner wrist. “I will always come back to you.”

Yatou smiled at her, indulgent, affectionate, then tugged off Yin Xinyue’s cap, and gently worked at the pins in her coiled up hair.

Somewhere outside, a dog was barking. Yin Xinyue turned her head in startlement even as hair slithered down –

– and tickled her shoulders, the neatly permed curls bouncing on the fine knitting of her dainty little cardigan as Yin Xinyue paced back and forth across the fine carpet of Hong Manor’s parlour.

“And then he said, and then he said – can you believe what Husband said?” She threw up her hands.

Curled up in one corner of the couch, Yatou tucked a finger into the pages of her romance novel to hold the place and lowered the book, looking up at Yin Xinyue. Her eyes were huge and amused behind the silver rims of her spectacles; the silver hairs she had chosen not to pluck out glinted in the warmth of the electric light. “I don’t know,” she said gravely. “What did Fo-ye say?”

Yin Xinyue lifted up her arms dramatically to declaim, “He said –”   but the parlour door opened after a brief knock, and Er Yuehong came through. The upright old man still wore a long, high-collared changshan in his own home, despite the changing fashions of the time, and the midnight blue brocade of it suited him well. A lacquered tray balanced on one hand, holding an array of steaming bowls and lidded cups.

“Er-ye will you marry me?” Yin Xinyue pleaded, clasping her hands. “I can no longer thrive in Fo-ye’s household.” She turned and knelt by Yatou’s couch, eyes wide and welling with emotion. “Can I be your sister-wife, I’ll be so good as wife number two, I’ll wash socks…”  

Yatou touched the side of her head gently, smoothing her hair. “Oh dear,” she said softly, “that sounds serious.”

A soft cough and the women turned their heads.

“Alas,” said Er Yuehong, “I am a one-woman man. However, we can sustain you in your travails.” He placed the tray of food and drink on the little side table. Softly, he added, “Can I talk to Fo-ye for you?”

“Would you?” Yin Xinyue blinked again, her eyes prickling. “Can you remind him that the chicken soup is in the icebox on the left and he mustn’t forget it. And tell him that I. That I. That.” She foundered.

“He will understand,” Er Yuehong reassured her. He bowed briefly to the women, and left. Yatou’s hand landed lightly on Yin Xinyue’s shoulder, and squeezed.

I guess my answer is, It depends?

Arguably the mini-flashback in the first section to driving a truck could have been filmed, if this were tv, though a flashback at that point might have been jarring. There could have been a looooong, loving shot of the photo of the dead husbands, though again, telling the audience what exactly Xinyue was thinking mighta been awkward and intrusive. On the other hand, an 'as you know' conversation about how Yatou was mysteriously not sick anymore would have been griiiiiindingly slow, and I got to do the poetical 'alpine flower' metaphor while I was at it. (Let language be beautiful.)

On the other, other hand, the second scene is conveyed almost entirely through visuals and conversation. And why shouldn't it be? Sometimes showing how people feel through their movements and the stutter-start of their words is both the most economical and the most immediate way to break a written scene.

And... yes, I often do think of the visuals of the scene when I'm writing it out. That focus on hands in the first section felt like a close-up in my mind. The windows of the boarding house, Yatou's padded qipao -- or the permed hair and the spectacles in the second scene -- they were all chosen to convey information about place without me having to dip overly into expositional language.

I guess my advice would be something like: if you're having trouble with a scene -- too long, too dry, too windy, too rushed -- try altering the frame of the language. What visual information do you need to make it clear what the characters are doing? Can your visual information add emotional nuance to what they're thinking or saying? Is it more economical/vivid/both to write out the conversation word for word or summarise it, or skip it and show the aftermath...? What makes us feel closer to the characters in this paragraph?

[atomicdaydream]

Thought this was pretty cute😊

[hermitthrush]

... the poet's perspective: "what matters is not the human pain or joy at all but, rather, the play of shadow and light on a live body, the harmony of trifles assembled on this particular day, at this particular moment, in a unique and imitable way." Whilst this stand distinctly echoes Bergson's privileging of an artistic vision, whereby 'man glimpses reality through the film of familiarity and conventionality that obscures it', it also deploys the Russian Formalist process of ostranenie, or 'making strange', whereby art serves to reveal the aesthetic and hyper-real qualities of ordinary objects by disrupting habitual modes of visualization and confounding perceptual expectations. Nabokov's emphasis on 'making strange' is also suggestive of the presence of 'other' worlds, or an 'anterior reality', reminiscent of the Russian Symbolist impulse, which sought to reveal a transcendent essence that lay beyond 'the concrete presence of an object'.

Barbara Wyllie, Vladimir Nabokov (2010) | Chapter 1. Hyper-reality underlying/behind/beyond/alongside the mundane. The eternal and transcendent in the aesthetic. On "other worlds", they go on to highlight Nabokov's use of reflections in water and glass. Fits well with my concurrent reading of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer: Binx being abstracted from doing research by motes in sunlight.

[clairehtownsend]

Cut-up chaos: art as chaos magic

[thestupidhelmet]

Stopped in today and saw you had an ask game going, had to drop you a few 💛

10, 42, 54

Thank you, Prissy! 🥰

10. At what point in the process do you come up with titles, and how easy or hard is that for you?

Story titles can be as early as when I've hammered out the basics of the story in my mind (or in the case of my One Difference fics, once I know the one difference -- and its consequences -- I'll be exploring) or as late as somewhere halfway through the first draft.

Not always easy, but in comparison ...

Chapter titles are a pain in the butt. Like pulling mental teeth too often. I often try to come up with a theme for the titles to make it easier for me.

Easiest chapter-titling experience I had was Jackie Stargazer. I chose song titles original to the story and in the story (i.e. songs written by me), and each fit the essence of the chapter -- and added some subtext since the lyrics of the song often applied to the chapter.

42. Describe the aesthetic of a story in five words.

For Those Who Play with Demons:

Supernatural

Mysterious

Scary

Funny

Love

54. What’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

Hah. *rumages in giant bag of writing techniques and yanks out one*

No filtering. Meaning, whatever the POV character experiences in their five senses isn't filtered through phrases like could see, could hear, could smell, could taste, could feel.

If a character sees outside the window a dog jumping in autumn leaves, for example, I don't write: Eric could see through the window a dog jump into a pile of autumn leaves.

I write: Eric looked through the window. Outside, a dog dived into the autumn leaves Eric had recently raked into a pile. The combination of rustling and barking signaled his fate: a lecture from Red and two hours more of tiring, back-aching work.

Because we're in Eric's mind, we see and hear what he does. The writer doesn't need to state that Eric is seeing the dog or hearing it bark and the leaves rustle. Describing what he sees and hears without using filtering phrases makes the narrative far more immediate.

(It's crazy to me how much modern fiction is published where the editor has allowed filtering phrases all through the book. Editors used to catch those and tell the writer to revise. 🤷)

Fanfic Ask Game

[razieltwelve]

Hard Mode

Are you worried that your main character has it too easy? Are people telling you that your main character is overpowered for no reason and needs to earn their strength? And do people say that your character needs to face some real challenges and experience some real character growth?

Then I have an answer for you.

It’s time for Hard Mode.

Think of it like a video game. Set the fates themselves against your main character. If anything can go wrong, have it go wrong.

Start from the beginning.

If your character was supposed to have a loving family, do the right thing. You want them to face challenges and grow, right? Show no mercy. Kill their family. Suffering = Greatness. Here are some of the best ways to do it:

Random trucks.

Bandits in previously safe areas.

Various kinds of incurable disease.

Betrayal (extra points if they are betrayed by relatives, trusted friends, or even the gods themselves).

Now your main character has no family because a truck driven by their evil twin who faked their own death ran over their parents and bandits hired by that same twin razed their village to the ground. Oh, and the one relative who did survive, maybe a kindly uncle, contracted an incurable disease, but despite praying to the gods for aid, he just got sicker before being fed poison disguised as medicine by the evil twin who was posing as a doctor and dying in the main character’s arms. Extra points if the death was really gruesome. I’m talking blood spewing from their eyeballs and their body turning inside out gruesome. Maybe you can’t think of any poisons that would do that. That’s okay. Just make one up. Call it Eye-Bleeding Inside-Out Venom or something or something really cool like Invincible Body-Slaughtering Death Soup.

Finally, your main character can experience character growth.

Why, you ask? It’s simple. Suffering = Greatness. Since they have massively suffered, then it’s completely okay to make them ridiculously overpowered and super awesome and cool at everything. They’ve paid the price, and now it’s time to reap the rewards.

Wait… they still haven’t suffered enough?

Nope. This is hard mode, people. Hard. Mode.

Despite their whole family (except for the evil twin being dead), the main character has to suffer more and experience an even worse childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Here are some great ideas to really maximise their woe:

Have them become an outcast because all this suffering is an indication that they must be cursed. Better still, people don’t just hate them and avoid them. No. That’s easy mode. Hard Mode means they getting randomly attacked wherever they go with everyone pointing and laughing. If they’re at school, they have to be mercilessly bullied while the teachers cackle and egg on the other students before joining in. Every day, the main character has to crawl into bed half dead while swearing broody vengeance against those who wronged them and clutching a photograph of their family before a truck, poison, and an evil twin wiped them out. Extra points if you use a phrase like ‘in the end, there were no more tears to shed, only blood to spill’.

Have everybody betray and swindle them. Now that the main character’s family is dead, no one can protect them! The law no longer applies! The executor of their family’s estate hoards all the money. The authorities steal all their stuff. A special law gets written and passed by parliament telling the main character that they suck and must suffer. Billboards are taken out to declare to the world that the main character is lame.

The main character has to live like a wild animal, resorting to crime and villainy to survive in a tragic blow to their hopes to remain a decent person. Forced to kill, steal, and scheme to survive, they nevertheless shelter an innate spark of goodness that they can only hope will not be swamped by bitterness, for if it does, there is no telling what sort of darkness they shall unleash upon the world. This conflict has to be stated repeatedly, aloud, and with suitable posing atop a suitable location (e.g. at night atop a windswept roof on the anniversary of their family’s demise after they are once again forced to kill to survive, ideally someone who looks like their dead family members or something because, you know, extra suffering).

Now, part of Hard Mode involves how other important characters interact with the main character. Here are a few staples you should include:

The love interest. Like a ray of sunlight piercing the clouds, like fresh rain on a parched land, and like a blessing from on high, the love interest is there to make the main character more likeable. How? By constantly praising the main character and explaining their good points while establishing that their bad points don’t really matter. Murdering an entire innocent family for bread? That’s okay. They needed bread, and leaving witnesses wasn’t an option. Extra points if the love interest is somehow related to their evil twin (who they still don’t know is alive). Super extra bonus points if the love interest is actually also in love with the evil twin but somehow cannot find it in their heart to chose, for they have seen the light and darkness in both twins and realise that only their love can save them both! And, yeah, the love interest has to be stunning. I’m talking about the sort of physical attractiveness that would launch a million ships (take that, Helen of Troy!). They also have to be kind, intelligent, and righteous, so their opinion carries extra weight.

The best friend. The main character has to meet someone they can finally trust, a best friend who will be the only person to offer them a hand up in their darkest hour, the one person who ever showed them kindness in a world of cruelty and despair. But since this is Hard Mode, what happens is either the best friend will die (see previous list for ideas how or maybe even have the main character kill them for the pathos) or be secretly working for the evil twin and then betray the main character. Suffering = Greatness.

The pet. Somehow, the main character found a pet they love. Now, it has to die in as horrible a way as possible because the only way to show how much the world sucks is to randomly have people murder innocent animals. Extra points if the main character has to watch, powerless as it happens, before the animal gains just enough strength to die in their arms, possibly while protecting them too. Extra extra points if the main character has to kill the pet themselves, possibly because it got rabies and tried to kill them while visibly trying to fight the disease due to its endless love for the main character before finally succumbing and attacking them.

The mentor. Finally, the main character has a mentor, someone to teach them and care for them and show them the way! How about no. You really thought they’d get that? The main character gets a mentor for just long enough to think the world is a decent place before their character is brutally murdered, preferably for no reason at a nonsensical moment just to show how the world is grim and dark and bad things can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere. This is Hard Mode. Good stuff doesn’t happen to the main character.

The gods. In Hard Mode, there are no benevolent gods. Instead, they’re all spiteful, cruel, and mean, and the gods who do show kindness are just faking it. They all gather to laugh at the main character and mock their suffering despite the fact that they have a world to rule over and billions of people to watch. But the main character is special, so they have to be extra cruel to them and make extra sure to mock them.

With this motley cast of characters assembled, your main character is finally worthy of becoming stupidly overpowered and basically invincible. Once they’ve attained this awesome power, there are a few things they need to do:

Brutally kill the people who’ve wronged them. It has to be super brutal too, and they have to moralise the entire time as well. They also need to speak and act in a certain way. Think brooding shadows, think epic poses, think deep, soulful glances. Everyone who has ever wronged them has to die, and they have to know why. And it’s completely okay because now that our character has suffered sufficiently, everything they do is cool. After all, personal pain justifies everything. And what sort of weirdo would ever learn compassion or mercy after a life of suffering? Hah! If someone bumps into your main character, they need to pay. Only death will teach them the importance of politeness. Sure, it won’t be in this life, but they’ll definitely be more polite in their next life!

The main character has to be right about everything. You see, once you’ve endured a bad enough life thanks to Hard Mode, you become the arbitrator of everything. It turns out that all your bad decision making was actually playing 12D chess and all your moral conflicts weren’t conflicts at all because everything you did was actually the right thing to do. You’ve paid the price, now it’s time to reap the rewards. Literally.

Get revenge in a super climactic battle that breaks the universe. Now that your main character knows about their evil twin thanks to their love interest being brutally murdered in front of them and dying in their arms (thank you, Hard Mode), they now possess the power to defeat their evil twin. It doesn’t matter what the power scaling was like prior to this final battle, you know what to do. Go big. Go bigger. Go biggest. Does your main character have magic powers that can blow up a small house? Pathetic! To defeat their evil twin, they must be able to rewrite reality, blow up the universe, and then remake it! Anything less is letting the evil twin win! Go big or go home!

Add a twist ending or ten. At the end of the battle, the evil win has to say something that makes the main character realise that, actually, they were the villain all along. I’m talking about a twist because every story needs a twist, even if you just slip it in at the end. It turns out that there was no evil twin. In fact, the evil twin was an astral projection created by the main character to separate themselves from their evil impulses that they refused to face. They then abandoned their astral projection, causing them to go insane and lash out at their family. If only the main character had accepted their evil impulses and tried to control them properly! But wait, there’s more because like any good televised commercial trying to sell you useless crap, a good Hard Mode story has to layer on more tragedy. Actually, the main character was a super secret science experiment that his parents created… only they were never his parents! They were vessels for the gods who created him in a bid to create a super weapon to fight some outside entity of unimaginable power! It turns out that it was all for the Greater Good™ and that everything they did was justified!

Put a hook for the sequel that adds another twist. Now that the main character knows the truth, will they save the universe? Of course not. Screw the universe. In fact, now it’s time to join forces with the outside entity to bring down the gods and institute a new moral order! But secretly, the outside entity is the creator of the gods who was an abusive parent who mercilessly tortured them to steal their power before being cast out. Only in the sequel will the main character finally learn that they’ve been played and only after committing countless atrocities that the reader has to sympathise with them about rather than the victims because it’s not like those dead people can feel pain whereas the main character definitely can!

The key here is to remember that in Hard Mode, everybody is evil, everything sucks, and evil always wins. Only through this supreme level of suffering can the main character achieve the power they require to be as awesome and cool as possible. Also, you need to repeat this process at least three times before ending the series, preferably with a monologue from the main character moralising on how hard times make hard people and how hard decision are the only way to survive in a broken world built atop the screaming, tortured souls of the innocent.

If you can do all of this, congratulations! You have finished your first Hard Mode style novel.

P. S. In case it isn’t obvious, this is satire. It is the product of two things. I again haven’t slept in two days (thank you, insomnia, I never knew I needed you!) and I am reading a story that is absolutely magnificent from a technical standpoint, but has decided that the only way the main character can develop is through suffering. It has gotten to the point where I am actually wondering when their dog will bite them before revealing it has rabies and never wanted to betray them, so they have to shoot it, but then the gun misfires and a stray piece of shrapnel hits their brother in the eye, and then their dying brother falls and pushes their elderly father off a roof whereupon they fall and strike their beloved uncle, killing them both. Seriously, the past several chapters of that story, which I will not name out of respect for the author (and I do respect their talent – they are seriously incredible from a technical standpoint, just pristine prose and perfect composition), have been a litany of disasters for the main character, many of which make no logical sense at all. As in you have characters actively going against their own self interest to screw the main character for no reason at all other than to add more conflict to the story because someone criticised the author for making it too easy for the main character. If I could whack whoever said that over the head with a rolled up newspaper, I would.

P. P. S. In all seriousness, don’t freak out if your story has some of these elements. That’s fine. Only worry if you are actually ticking all of the boxes here, as in ALL of them.

P. P. P. S. If I had write the story I described above, I’d call it something like ‘Shadows of Despair: A Hero’s Journey’ or something like that. I’d have a broody-looking guy with a hood with his back turned looking over his shoulder and staring mournfully at the reader because he knows exactly what kind of story he’s in.

P. P. P. P. S. Okay, I’ll come clean. As a teenager, I actually tried the Hard Mode approach seriously before reading through what I’d written and wondering what I was doing with my life.

[stevensavage]

It's out!

While I wait for Print Proofs, here's great news!

My latest book on writing, Think Agile, Write Better, is OUT in ebook form!

Find out how #Agile helps you be a #writer by thinking about your work differently. A change of mindset means better writing - and less stressful writing.

[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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[thingsiwishihadknownsooner]

I'm probably taking this too literally, but here's one way to go about it. The key is to write the entire First Draft, from start to finish, before looking at Wookieepedia.

First Draft: Glup was sitting on the balcony, drinking coffee and reading his favorite book.

Second Draft: Glup was sitting on the balcony-tk, drinking coffee-tk and reading his favorite book-tk.

Final Draft: Glup was sitting in the hammock, drinking revnog and reading* his favorite Ancient Jedi Texts.

* Author's Note: This is an AU where Glup can read.

Andor makes me want to write a Star Wars fanfiction but it's so scary. What if I write "Glup Shitto was sitting on the balcony, drinking coffee and reading his favourite book", but someone comments "didn't you mean he was drinking glop-goppy and reading a holo-journal? 🤨" so I open wookiepedia to check it out and it turns out that they also never invented balconies in the star wars universe and Glup Shitto can't read because of the freak accident he suffered in the episode 10 of the 2024 show "Jar-Jar and Babu Frik". What then.

[khiatons]

I'm crafting my next #spaceopera, Seedkeeper 3, featuring an indigenous character! But here's the twist: I'm using a new writing technique where subplots become multiple writing projects I tackle simultaneously! Will this speed up production? Stay tuned! #WritingExperiment #IndigenousSFF #booktok

[cardiac-agreste]

time and POV leaps in close proximity

Any works of fiction you've come across that do something like this? Sporadically jumping between third-person limited in narrative past, third-person omniscient, and even first-person present? Not, like, with neat divisions, but in a chaotic way, to make the reader struggle to get through the material? I'm thinking a chapter that uses all these while focusing on the exact same event, so you're uncomfortably re-orienting yourself as a reader as if you're being thrown from one camera angle to another?

I'm thinking about trying something, but would love to know if there are examples to actually check out.

[kevinklehr]

Random thoughts which improve my plot

I’m at an interesting stage with my WiP. I revised around two-thirds of the story after creating an excel spreadsheet with details of the changes needed to each scene. Then I read the revised chapters and realised before I continued, the characters needed to be deeper. They were already demanding extra plot twists, telling me they wanted messier lives. I listened and for the second time with any…

[neversung-mural]

All of this

ways to start writing more efficiently

stop writing with the word count on!

use a font like comic sans -- trick your brain into thinking that it's not important, that the writing can be stupid, if it's in a stupid font (if you can't tell i despise comic sans)

time yourself to get to a goal

or give yourself a certain amount of time

quantity >> quality in the first draft(s)!

jot down what you want to happen in that chapter

try organizing your writing (nanowrimo, for example)

do *not* reread! it doesn't need to make sense, it just needs to be there

try not to stick yourself to something you saw on tumblr. what works for someone else doesn't necessarily work for you!

take breaks. time those breaks.

practice writing short stories / oneshots of your characters.

try getting all your writing done within a certain goal (as much as I can for 30 minutes) rather than writing 5 minutes on or off

write down every little wormy idea that comes into your brain! sure, it's probably for a different plot, but maybe you can work it in somehow?

on that note, mash elements of your plots together rather than starting a whole new story

see maybe what little writing competitions you can submit your work to

proclaim your goal to the wide web for some peer pressure

rewards yourself. cheer on every thousand-word milestone. brag to your friends that you've written something, anything.

don't think of the big goal—don't think of publishing, or posting, etc. think of the end of your chapter, the development of your character, where it goes.

switch your writing environment! where are you most productive?

make a playlist only for when you write. never for anything else.

getting off tumblr, probably.

have people remind you of your goals.

remember that it all comes with discipline, but also your mental health is the most important!! don't sacrifice half your sleep to meet your nanowrimo goals. try to recognize when it's taking you too long and close the document. do something else. come back later.

take care of yourself. <3 use this post as a breather (or reminder to start!)

[bookswordsworlds]

"She had a habit of asking more than one question at a time, especially when she was excited. Bosch told her that he had heard about the abduction and then related the tale of his morning's activities." - Echo Park by Michael Connelly