writ-ing-research

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masterpost for writers creating their own worlds, or even just characters

names that have specific meanings

meanings of any names

popular baby names

upper class names

common last names

fancy last names

aristocratic/royal names

random name generator

random place name generator

list of latin words

english to latin translator

english to greek translat

or

greek mythology database

the culture of ancient rome

list of legendary creatures

fantasy name generator

feel free to add in any links!

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need refs/inspo for period clothing?

here you go:

Medieval (9th-15th century):

10th century and earlier

Romance (1000-1250)

11th century

12th century

13th century

more 13th century

14th century

more 14th

15th century

and more 15th century

Gothic (1150-1550)

Renaissance (1520-1650)

16th & 17th century

16th century

more 16th

Tudors (1500-1550)

more Tudors

Elizabethan Period (1558-1603)

Jacobean Era (1603-1625)

17th century

more 17th century

and again

and even more

this won’t stop

Baroque (1600-1750)

Georgian Period (1714-1830):

18th century

more 18th century

18th century women’s fashion

18th century men’s fashion

Rococo (1720-1770)

Classicism (1770-1790)

children 18th-19th century

Regency Preiod (1811-1820)/ Empire (1800-1820s):

1790-1820s

more stuff on regency and georgian era

even more

that’s not enough regency

and more

how is there so much

early 19th century men’s wear

early 19th century women’s wear

Victorian Period (1837-1901):

Romantic Era (1820-1840s)

Civil War Era/1850-1860s

1870-1890s

more victorian

Edwardian Period (1901-1910):

1900-1910s

Belle Epoque (1880-1910s)

more edwardian/belle époque

Modern:

1910s-1920s [Fashion between the World Wars]

1920s

more roaring 20s

so much 20s

1920s hairstyles

1930s

1930-1940s

1930-1950s

1950s

more 50s

1960s

1960-1970s

1980s

lots of periods in one spot/fashion through centuries:

here, here, and here is almost everything (and properly ordered)

also here with lots of historic fashion magazines

100 years of beauty (includes lots of other cultures too!)

historic fashion

costumes of antiquity

more historical clothing

history of fashion

more history of fashion

“vintage” clothing

historic costumes

children’s historical fashion/toys

details

historic wedding dresses

historic assecoires (hats, shoes…)

hats

masks

parasols

lots of embroidery/jewlery

it indeed is western/european centric, I’m sorry for that, but for other cultures I simply don’t have so many references

ALSO note that most of the pictures show historical clothing from the upper classes or more festive clothing of the lower/working class because normal working clothes wouldn’t survive for such a long time, and the clothes were often re-used over and over again!

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Complementary Character Traits

Anonymous said:

I know you are not back for a few days. But I’ll just leave this here. Could you please write up a list of character traits that compliment each other? Like for romantic relationships? Thank you.

Hey Nony! Before I start, thanks so much for your patience with me. I was out for about a week longer than I initially said and I really appreciate it.

So these are definitely a bit of a challenge to come up with someimtes; it’s hard to figure out which ones would go well together without creating too much conflict between your characters. 

The dictionary defines complementary as “combining in such a way as to enhance or emphasize the qualities of each other or another”, so that’s how I’m interpreting this. The qualities on the left side of the list were taken from The Positive Trait Thesarus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi (but that doesn’t mean that those on the right are definitively positive or negative).

You’ll find some tips for incorporating these qualities into your characters beneath the cut. But without further ado! Behold, the big ol’ list of complementary character traits:

Adaptable vs. Rigid

Affectionate vs. Withdrawn

Alert vs. Oblivious

Ambitious vs. Unmotivated

Appreciative vs. Ungrateful

Bold vs. Timid

Calm vs. Energetic

Cautious vs. Reckless

Centered vs. Scatterbrained

Charming vs. Antisocial

Cooperative vs. Independent

Creative vs. Unimaginative

Curious vs. Indifferent

Decisive vs. Indecisive

Diplomatic vs. Rude

Discreet vs. Inattentive

Easygoing vs. Strict

Efficient vs. Sluggish

Empathetic vs. Callous

Extroverted vs. Introverted

Flirtatious vs. Modest

Friendly vs. Antisocial

Funny vs. Serious

Generous vs. Stingy

Gentle vs. Rough

Honest vs. Dishonest

Honorable vs. Cowardly

Humble vs. Proud

Idealistic vs. Realistic

Industrious vs. Lazy

Innocent vs. Dirty-minded

Just vs. Partial

Kind vs. Cold

Loyal vs. Unreliable

Mature vs. Immature

Meticulous vs. Careless

Obedient vs. Rebellious

Optimistic vs. Pessimistic

Organized vs. Messy

Passionate vs. Indifferent

Perceptive vs. Ignorant

Philosophical vs. Shallow

Private vs. Sociable

Proactive vs. Stagnant

Professional vs. Inept

Protective vs. Negligent

Quirky vs. Conventional

Responsible vs. Irresponsible

Sensible vs. Foolish

Sentimental vs. Pragmatic

Sophisticated vs. Unrefined

Spiritual vs. Irreverent

Spontaneous vs. Deliberate

Spunky vs. Apathetic

Thrifty vs. Extravagant

Traditional vs. Modern

Trusting vs. Wary

Uninhibited vs. Careful

Whimsical vs. Serious

Wholesome vs. Indecent

Wise vs. Unaware

Choosing Traits

So, that’s a pretty long list of traits to choose from. As you’ve probably guessed, though, there are any more to choose from; what’s above is just a fraction of all the possibilities. But if there are so many, how do we know which ones to choose?

If you’re just starting off, choose two or three pairs to work with. Create your characters and develop these traits, building off the ways that would separate them. Then, find some traits that they would have in common, traits that would actually give them a reason to stay together. Maybe Character A is more perceptive while Character B is a bit more on the ignorant side, but they’re both extremely creative and loyal. In this case the reasons for these characters to stay together outweighs their differences, so that would be a good goal to start with.

A general guideline that’s worked well in the past for me has been to choose differences that you know can be balanced out by shared traits. I don’t want the characters in my pairing to have six complementary traits and only two shared ones; that could create a lot of conflict and would make the relationship more work than necessary. You want them to complement each other, but don’t overdo it.

Creating “Complementary Characters”

Well, my first response is this: You shouldn’t create a character based off of the traits of another. If you do this, there’s an extremely high chance that your readers will be able to tell. Another thing you’ll probably want to avoid is adding these traits into a character you’ve already created. If that character has already been rounded off, throwing more traits into the mix might mess with the balance.

Instead, I would advise choosing your traits and developing a character around them. If we’re using the character example from above, I know that I want A to be perceptive, creative, and loyal. These aren’t the only three traits they might have, but those are the three I want to start with. The same goes for B; they’re a little ignorant, really creative, and loyal, but those aren’t their only three traits. I find it easiest to start with things like these and develop the characters more from there, letting things evolve naturally to create the characters I want.

Something to Remember: These traits don’t all follow the same path, based on the character’s entire personality. Keep this in mind; chance are it’ll help you vary your characters’ personalities during development to really make them stand out.

Something to Remember 2.0: The above list and tips don’t apply only to romantic relationships! Complementary traits will play a huge role in (probably) every single one of your character’s releationships!

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Hi. So I have a question. I'm going to write about a city I've never been to, New York, do you have any tips on how to do this?

Hello, dear. I get asked this often and 4/5 times it’s about New York City, so you’re getting a resource list so I can just direct people to your ask from now on!

Writing Real-Life Locations

How To Write About A Real Location If You Haven’t Been There

7 Tips for Writing About Places You’ve Never Been

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Writing about Place

How To Write About Place In Creative Nonfiction 

Misplaced: why do novelists disguise real locations?

Basics of Describing Settings

How to Describe the Setting in a Story

Discover The Basic Elements of Setting In a Story

How to Write Descriptions and Create a Sense of Place 

How to practice location descriptions

Fictional vs. Real Settings: Which Are Best?

Writing About New York [City]

my list of NYC writing links & tips

Humans of New York (for local character/lifestyle examples)

Google, bro. everyone and their grandma has written about NYC.

Have fun researching! Consider taking a trip, if you can!…I’ll be jealous…

+ If you benefit from my updates and replies, please consider sending a little thank you and Buy Me A Coffee!

+ HEY, Writers! other social media: Wattpad - Pinterest - Goodreads

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Writing Food Scenes

At first the topic of this article may seem weirdly specific … well … because it is. But guys. As human beings, we eat. A lot. And I’ve read a lot of scenes that involve food (probably more of them than I should have). If you are writing a novel, food is naturally going to come up, as it should. But there are dos and don'ts about how it is handled.

So yes, this is a post dedicated solely to food scenes.

(You might want to have a meal already planned that you can eat once you finish reading this.)

Let’s talk about food in fiction.

Be Specific

Meals are often (too often, in fact) used as backdrops for character conversations. This makes perfect sense. Cause that’s what people do. They eat. And they talk. (Hopefully not at the exact same time.) And it’s better than having people talk with nothing to do.

But sometimes what happens, when the food is really the backdrop for a dialogue scene, is the writer forgets to mention what the food is. The characters are just “eating dinner” or what have you.

When working with food in a scene, be specific. Often the more specific, the better (well, okay, to a degree–use common sense).

If they are eating breakfast, what are they eating for breakfast? Cereal? Oats? a protein shake? Muffins? Fruit and yogurt? That’s more specific than “breakfast.” But, you can get more specific still. What kind of cereal? Or oats? Or shake? Or muffin? Or fruit and yogurt? Maple and brown sugar oats? A chocolate protein shake? Strawberries and raspberries? You can be specific in only a few words, so for most scenes, that shouldn’t ruin the pacing.

If the food is more than just a backdrop, you can get more specific, which leads me to the next point.

How Much Description You Include is Proportional to How Important the Food is in the Scene (Or How Unfamiliar it is to the Audience)

If the meal is literally a backdrop to a dialogue scene, you don’t need to get too carried away describing the food. Be specific. But probably be brief. If this is an intense or heated conversation, you probably shouldn’t spend several paragraphs describing in detail what the chicken cordon bleu is like.

On the other hand, if the food itself is part of the experience and point of the scene, it should get more detail. If this is the first time Katniss Everdeen has tasted Capitol food, then we should have that food and experience described more fully. If this is Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, I need to taste every flavor of the gobstopper. If this is a novel about a chef trying to succeed, the reader should visualize and touch and taste every key meal.

The more important the food, the more description it merits.

But whatever the case, taste is one of our five senses, which we should be appealing to regularly in our stories. Since we literally can’t appeal to taste in every scene, we should take advantage of moments when we can. (Also, don’t forget to describe food’s smells, textures, or temperatures.)

Readers love experiencing delicious food.

But it’s okay to describe the gross food when it’s necessary.

Also, how familiar the food is to the audience also plays a part in how much description it deserves. We’ve probably all had potato chips, so it’s going to take less words to create that experience for the audience. But a lot of us haven’t had octopus salad, so that may require more description to capture the experience.

When Appropriate, Mention Your Character’s Likes and Dislikes

We all have preferences when it comes to food–even me who is known to like literally almost everything. Mentioning your character’s likes or dislikes or preferences can add an element of authenticity to the story. Katniss loves the Capitol’s hot chocolate. Violet Beauregarde loves chewing gum. Ron Weasley hates corned beef sandwiches. Buddy the elf loves maple syrup. On everything.

And part of what we do, is compare what we are eating to other things we have eaten. I can tell you right now, that the Cafe Rio in my hometown (*cough, cough* the original *cough*) has the best taco salad I’ve ever tasted, and I compare it to every other taco salad. Heck, when I order, I even compare it to past orders of the same dish (sadly, as Cafe Rio expands over the U.S., I have noticed the quality in my hometown start to diminish). If we are eating something new, we’ll compare it to other foods, tastes, or textures. Have you ever noticed how shrimp kind of pops in your mouth when you bite into it? If you’ve never been around cooked liver, I can tell you the smell reminds me of something like gym socks.

Don’t Make Food Your Only Backdrop

Food as a backdrop to a scene gets overused. A lot. It’s sorta how writers start stories with characters waking up in the morning. It just feels like a natural concept to grab when you haven’t given the scene much thought. It takes less effort than brainstorming a different backdrop. But the reader doesn’t want to read about meals every time there is a conversation (well, most readers don’t). Give us some variety. What else do people do while they talk? Can they be playing a game? Working on a hobby? Cleaning? Exercising? Shopping? Doing homework? Playing with the dog? Take a few minutes and consider what else could be used as a backdrop. Everyone eats. But what your character does besides that can tell us more about him or her.

Sure, there should probably be some meals present in the story. But make sure you aren’t using every meal as part of the story.

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reminder to writeblr

if you’re a writeblr like me, who doesn’t do a whole lot in the graphics or aesthetics department, you’re still a valid writer.

you don’t have to have a mood board or pretty wip pages or a fancy book cover for your work to be considered a “writeblr.” there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of that - i admire people with that talent - but there’s also nothing wrong with not having any of that.

i’ve been around long enough to see that writeblrs who do have graphics and things sometimes tend to get more attention, and i’m here to tell the rest of you who maybe don’t make those as much, that you’re still cool. you’re still valid, it’s fine, you don’t need it if it isn’t something that jives with you. you’re gonna find your circle of admirers and you’ll be all right. even if you’re disorganized like me and don’t even have so much as a tag page or any finished story arcs, you’ll have people drawn to your writing regardless. don’t worry about having to have wip intros or moodboards, just find what works for you, and keep plugging away at it, and don’t forget to interact with others. what goes around, etc.

and a reminder to the rest of the community - let’s take a bit more of a look at people who might not make aesthetics and pictures a part of their style. it might not be as attention-grabbing to see a simple paragraph with a readmore to the rest of the work, but we’re writeblr, after all. let’s get reading.

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site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

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Whatever you do, love your characters

Characters are essential. They drive the plot. You have to know your characters in order to see their motivations-i.e, why they do what they do. While writing, you have to love your characters.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have them go through bad things. Writing is all about conflict. However, it means that the bad things make sense. They grow the character and they change them. The conflict is supposed to mean something to them, to match their weaknesses. The conflict moves the story to where the characters need to be. The impact is not watered down or contrived, but working towards a purpose for the character.

Then you get to bring your character back out. You get to watch them rage and cry and mourn, and then you get to bring them to happiness, light, and love. Love your characters. Make their conflicts count. Don’t drown them in an endless pit of sorrow-that will make it all meaningless. They need range to feel real.

Love your characters. Love their flaws, their conflicts, their emotions. If you love your characters, you write them how they are meant to be written-no personality changes, but natural growth.If you love your characters, you can write every shade of them as needed. If you love your characters, you’re going to make their feelings matter and that is going to be an essential core of whatever you are writing.

Love your characters. They’re made by you, anyways. 

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“The only way to start is start”, as writing advice, can come off simplistic and condescending. 

But I’ve been at the starting line dozens of times and goddamn, it really is that simple. There’s no other way to word it. To begin a story, you have to let go of the need to keep preparing, accept that you can’t keep delaying it, and fling yourself into those first few sentences. 

You don’t know how your creative choices are going to look until they’re on the page. 

One character’s sweet personality might be cloying if it acts as their dominant trait chapter after chapter. Another might be known for their sarcasm, but come off as an inappropriate asshole when their default response is to be cocky in most situations. 

The thing is, you can’t change or control how it comes off when it’s just a line in their character profile. You have to let it happen on the page, in the story, so you’re able to step back and see how well it works.

So why not just start? 

Worst case scenario, you’re under-prepared and have to think on the fly, or you figure out what you don’t want to do and what doesn’t work, so your next draft has a stronger chance of being what you want. 

Best case scenario, you get some words finalised, you have somewhere to put all your neat ideas, and you have your masterpiece finished a lot sooner than you thought.

Besides, you’re more than capable of getting it right, even if it’s hard and things look bad before they get better. It’s your story, isn’t it? Who else could do this but you?

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Why do people listen to the advice of those wannabe ‘writers’. I mean they are not even published? 

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“Nope,” I whisper as I exit out of a fic with no paragraph breaks.

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War, Battles and Sieges: Building your Army

The war has been called, your characters will have to fight their enemies with an army. But an army isn’t just magically raised over night. A king can’t just snap his fingers and an army appears ready for war. So how can you build your army in realistic fashion?

Conscription

Conscription or the draft is when a kingdom/country/establishment enlists its people in the military. Conscription is on old system of raising an army and it is still used in some parts of the world. Conscription is a surefire way of raising an army but it has its downfalls as the people may not agree with it and it can be devastating to many small families.

Babylonian Empire: used a system of conscription called Ilkum. Under that system those eligible were required to serve in the royal army in time of war. During times of peace they were instead required to provide labour for other activities of the state. In return for this service, people subject to it gained the right to hold land.

Norse/Medieval Scandinavia: Conscription or the leiðangr, in old Norse, in this case involved the levying of farmers to sail fleets for summer raiding excursions and the defense of their lands.

Anglo-Saxon England: The fyrd as it was called was the drawing of men (non-serfs) from the different counties. It was common to fine those who wouldn’t show up when muster was called.

Ottoman Empire: The Sultan Murad I raised a slave army called the Kapıkulu, which was made from conscripted from the children of conquered Christian lands. The most skilled of these soldiers were called Janissaries.

United States, WWI: The Selective Service System ensures that men were drafted for service during the war in the age range of 21 to 30 but after losses and other issues the army had to widen the gap, instead drafting men between 18 to 45.

Also think of child soldiers. Some war torn countries in Africa or the middle east rely on hiring child soldiers. These children are ripped from their homes and given weapons to fight in wars they may not understand. This is a tactic to break the enemy and also offers the army a large pool of soldiers.

Mercenaries

A mercenary fights for money. These are loyal to nothing but the coin and wages.

The Medjay: These were a primarly Nubian force, mostly a mixture of scouts and light infantry who served as the guard of Pharaoh Ramesses II.

Anabasis: The “Ten Thousand” were a Greek company hired from Cyrus the Younger during the war for the Persian throne. The company fought valiantly, despite the death the mercenaries’ generals were double-crossed and murdered while trying to negotiate a retreat.

The White Company: This was one of the most was one of the most famous mercenary companies in Mediaeval times. During the tumultuous 14th century in Italy, the company was at the forefront of the battles. It was formed by an English knight but made up of a mixture of German, Breton and Hungarian adventurers. The company was famous for their skills with archery and lancers and famous for their ability to fight in any weather, day or night.

Varangians: These were the Norse guards of the Emperor in Constantinople. They were well paid to leave their raiding excursions to live with the Emperor to protect him. They were famous for their fierceness and also their strange appearances, making them highly desired.

Tribute

When conscripting soldiers, each town, village, holdfast and place must offer up a certain amount of bodies/monies for the war effort. The demand was often made by herald, reading from a pre-prepared letter sent by the crown or the noble in charge of the region.

In Mediaeval France, each town, city or village was required to make a donation equal to their size. The amount of homes in the region and prosperity were taken into account. So let’s say that if Mediaeval Ireland went to war, the crown would charge Dublin for more bodies and more money than let’s say Doonbeg.

China charged by family rather than city. Every family in a region was required to give up a father or a son to military service in time of war.

England charged by landowner. If you were a landowner worth with £5 you gave an archer or soldiers that made up the archer’s strength. A £10 landowner was to give a spearman mounted or not, £20 gave two spearmen, and £25 had to offer up a knight or a squire.

Training and Armouring

Knights and skilled mercenaries would not be trained. They would be considered to have basic training and bring their own armour and weapons. Knights would often bring a retinue to serve their needs.

Basic conscripts and volunteers would be less equipped or trained. Some elder soldiers may have fought in other wars so may rise in ranks but the youths would begin in basic training. Some armies may provide armour but not all soldiers would be armoured by the leader and may have to pillage bits of armour from dead men.

Incentives

Conscription forces men to fight but how do you bolster numbers by recruiting volunteers? Wages might be offered but a share in pillage and plunder might be a greater incentive. Let’s say one tribe attacks another and takes the city. City B is richer and if soldiers get to keep perhaps 10% of what they take, they may come home rich. Sometimes the incentive is the cause but money does make the world go around.

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Small physical things that give your characters personality

How they smile

What their “tell” is for lying

Posture

Volume of speech, if they’re verbal

Nervous tics

How much eye contact do they make

In a group conversation, how close do they stand to others? Are they off to the side just listening and occasionally speaking or are they right next to people?

When standing, what do they do with their hands? Talk with their hands, cross their arms, put hands in pockets, prop up against the wall, etc

The sound of their footsteps

Nonverbal greetings: do they wave, nod, hug, glare, punch, high five, something else?

How do they get others’ attention? Raise hand, clear throat, etc

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some really good @clpolk [tweets] about narrative trust

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Injury angst for writing dummies.

Hospitals and injury are always such a staple of angst fics, but 9 times out of 10 the author has clearly never been in an emergency situation and the scenes always come off as over-dramatized and completely unbelievable. So here’s a crash course on hospital life and emergencies for people who want authenticity. By someone who spends 85% of her time in a hospital. 

Emergency Departments/Ambulances.

Lights and sirens are usually reserved for the actively dying. Unless the person is receiving CPR, having a prolonged seizure or has an obstructed airway, the ambulance is not going to have lights and sirens blaring. I have, however, seen an ambulance throw their lights on just so they can get back to the station faster once. Fuckers made me late for work.

Defibrillators don’t do that. You know, that. People don’t go flying off the bed when they get shocked. But we do scream “CLEAR!!” before we shock the patient. Makes it fun.

A broken limb, surprisingly, is not a high priority for emergency personnel. Not unless said break is open and displaced enough that blood isn’t reaching a limb. And usually when it’s that bad, the person will have other injuries to go with it.

Visitors are not generally allowed to visit a patient who is unstable. Not even family. It’s far more likely that the family will be stuck outside settling in for a good long wait until they get the bad news or the marginally better news. Unless it’s a child. But if you’re writing dying children in your fics for the angst factor, I question you sir. 

Unstable means ‘not quite actively dying, but getting there’. A broken limb, again, is not unstable. Someone who came off their motorbike at 40mph and threw themselves across the bitumen is. 

CPR is rarely successful if someone needs it outside of hospital. And it is hard fucking work. Unless someone nearby is certified in advanced life support, someone who needs CPR is probably halfway down the golden tunnel moving towards the light. 

Emergency personnel ask questions. A lot of questions. So many fucking questions. They don’t just take their next victim and rush off behind the big white doors into the unknown with just a vague ‘WHAT HAPPENED? SHE HIT HER HEAD?? DON’T WORRY SIR!!!’ They’re going to get the sir and ask him so many questions about what happened that he’s going to go cross eyed. And then he’s going to have to repeat it to the doctor. And then the ICU consultant. And the police probably. 

In a trauma situation (aka multiple injuries (aka car accident, motorbike accident, falling off a cliff, falling off a horse, having a piano land on their head idfk you get the idea)) there are a lot of people involved. A lot. I can’t be fucked to go through them all, but there’s at least four doctors, the paramedics, five or six nurses, radiographers, surgeons, ICU consultants, students, and any other specialities that might be needed (midwives, neonatal transport, critical retrieval teams etc etc etc). There ain’t gonna be room to breathe almost when it comes to keeping someone alive.

Emergency departments are a life of their own so you should probably do a bit of research into what might happen to your character if they present there with some kind of illness or injury before you go ahead and scribble it down.

Wards

Nurses run them. No seriously. The patient will see the doctor for five minutes in their day. The nurse will do the rest. Unless the patient codes.

There is never a defibrillator just sitting nearby if a patient codes. 

And we don’t defibrillate every single code. 

If the code does need a defibrillator, they need CPR.

And ICU. 

They shouldn’t be on a ward. 

There are other people who work there too. Physiotherapists will always see patients who need rehab after breaking a limb. Usually legs, because they need to be shown how to use crutches properly.

Wards are separated depending on what the patient’s needs are. Hospitals aren’t separated into ICU, ER and Ward. It’s usually orthopaedic, cardiac, neuro, paediatric, maternity, neonatal ICU, gen surg, short stay surg, geriatric, palliative…figure out where your patient is gonna be. The care they get is different depending on where they are.

ICU.

A patient is only in ICU if they’re at risk of active dying. I swear to god if I see one more broken limb going into ICU in a fic to rank up the angst factor I’m gonna shit. It doesn’t happen. Stop being lazy. 

Tubed patients can be awake. True story. They can communicate too. Usually by writing, since having a dirty great tube down the windpipe tends to impede ones ability to talk. 

The nursing care is 1:1 on an intubated patient. Awake or not, the nurse is not gonna leave that room. No, not even to give your stricken lover a chance to say goodbye in private. There is no privacy. Honestly, that nurse has probably seen it all before anyway. 

ICU isn’t just reserved for intubated patients either. Major surgeries sometimes go here post-op to get intensive care before they’re stepped down. And by major I mean like, grandpa joe is getting his bladder removed because it’s full of cancer. 

Palliative patients and patients who are terminal will not go to ICU. Not unless they became terminally ill after hitting ICU. Usually those ones are unexpected deaths. Someone suffering from a long, slow, gradually life draining illness will probably go to a general ward for end of life care. They don’t need the kind of intensive care an ICU provides because…well..they’re not going to get it??

Operations.

No one gets rushed to theatre for a broken limb. Please stop. They can wait for several days before they get surgery on it. 

Honestly? No one gets ‘rushed’ to theatre at all. Not unless they are, again, actively dying, and surgery is needed to stop them from actively dying. 

Except emergency caesarians. Them babies will always get priority over old mate with the broken hip. A kid stuck in a birth canal and at risk of death by pelvis is a tad more urgent than a gall stone. And the midwives will run. I’ve never seen anyone run as fast as a midwife with a labouring woman on the bed heading to theatres for an emergency caesar.

Surgery doesn’t take as long as you think it does. Repairing a broken limb? Two hours, maybe three tops. Including time spent in recovery. Burst appendix? Half an hour on the table max, maybe an hour in recovery. Caesarian? Forty minutes or so. Major surgeries (organs like kidneys, liver and heart transplants, and major bowel surgeries) take longer. 

You’re never going to see the theatre nurses. Ever. They’re like their own little community of fabled myth who get to come to work in their sweatpants and only deal with unconscious people. It’s the ward nurse who does the pick up and drop offs. 

Anyway there’s probably way, way more that I’m forgetting to add but this is getting too long to keep writing shit. The moral of the story is do some research so you don’t look like an idiot when you’re writing your characters getting injured or having to be in hospital. It’s not Greys Anatomy in the real world and the angst isn’t going to be any more intense just because you’re writing shit like it is. 

Peace up.

[writ-ing-research]

Writing Fear

Writing about fear isn’t just about writing a scary scene or working on a horror novel. Writing about fear is about understanding your characters and what really terrifies them. Since we all don’t share the same fears, it can be difficult to get your readers to understand what your characters are going through. You need to write in a way that convinces the reader that your character is really scared by using all the senses—without flat-out telling them.

Showing fear through your writing is a very effective way to reach your audience and to write an intriguing scene. First off, let’s start off with some body language that shows fear.

Someone who is afraid might not might eye contact with whoever they’re afraid of. On the other hand, in a more intense situation, they might have a wide-eyed stare. For example, if someone is hiding their fear of another person, that’s when they might avoid eye contact. If something scares them suddenly, they might have the wide-eyed stare and have unwavering eye contact.

A scared character might be breathing heavily (maybe through the nostrils) and might have a clenched mouth. It’s likely that most of their body will be clenched, think tightened muscles and clenched fists, and they might be stuck in one spot.

They might be sweating or shaking as a result of excess adrenaline. Their feet might be turned away from the person they’re afraid of, subconsciously ready to get away. Some people might hunch or slouch and other people might stand taller and become more aggressive. It all depends on the situation.

Nervous behaviors such as tapping legs, crossing arms, or fidgeting might indicate fear. Rocking back and forth might also be from fear.

All of these body language suggestions should help you shape your character and how they experience fear. However, this is just one part of writing fear. Explaining why someone is so afraid could be just as important. Creating a back story, even if you don’t reveal it for a while, will help YOU and your readers understand why your character is so afraid. Knowing the intricacies of your character’s fear is important and it will help you translate it into your novel.

The emotional implications of fear also need to be explored in order to strengthen your novel. That fear might somehow manifest itself into their daily life, which will make your character development stronger. Someone who is afraid might have trouble dealing with that fear and might develop depression or distrust issues. Fear can often cause nightmares, trouble sleeping, or other health issues that will make their lives uncomfortable. Even after someone “gets over” a fear, there might be some residual issues. They might still be dealing with it for the rest of their lives.