10 Non-Lethal Injuries To Add Pain To Your Writing

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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Writing a Believable Family: Information You Need

So today I thought I’d help out myself and anyone else who’s writing something where family plays a central role, seeing as a lot of people write about families but I barely see any posts about it!

Families are really fun to read about (imo), but often hard to write, as each family has a different dynamic that you really need to get a hold of. It’s easy to get discouraged because sometimes your fictional family might feel like strangers when they interact with each other. So without further ado, here are some questions and prompts to help you get to know your characters’ families.

Questions

Who is in this family? Are they all important characters?

How big of a role does this family play in the story? The theme of family in general?

Who looks the most like who? What general physical features do they all share?

Who is closest with each other? Who feels more distant?

What is a tradition this family has?

What holidays does this family celebrate? What religion do they practice?

What does this family always fight about?

Are all the relationships in this family healthy? If not, what makes them toxic?

Who is in charge or seems to have the most authority?

Is there a social hierarchy within the family? Who generally seems the coolest to the others?

Does this family travel a lot together? Where do they go?

What was/were the older generation(s) like before the younger generation(s) were born?

Has anyone in this family died? How did this impact the others?

Do members of the family have different politics? How does this affect the family’s relationship?

How much do your characters value their family?

What movies does this family watch on movie nights? What movies do they refuse to watch together?

What role does extended family play in this family’s life? (Ignore if the family you’re writing about is an extended family.)

Who argues the most?

What personality traits does the family share?

What makes this family unique?

What did/does the younger generation do for fun as little kids?

If this family had a vacation home, where would it be?

Who looks up to who?

Prompts

Write a conversation at the family’s dinner table.

What was the most disastrous family reunion/outing? Write it.

Try making a character web (shown in this post) for the family.

How does the rest of the family behave when one member graduates?

Write the script for everyone’s favorite old home video.

Draw a family tree. See how many generations you can go back.

Write each family member’s favorite family memory.

Describe how a family road would trip play out.

This family becomes the family fighting in Walmart. Describe how this happened.

The family is known for their top-notch annual ________ party. Write one such party.

Have a character from the family give your reader a “tour” of the family home.

Who got drunk at the last reunion? What ensued?

A character from the family is going through their favorite family photos. What are they? Why do they like them? What is the story behind them?

Imagine that this family has one huge family scandal in its history. What was it? How did people react when they found out?

A character has been hiding a secret for years, and their family finds out.

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“Well Your Honor, my client literally never asked to be born so…”

Defense attorney’s closing statement from a 1918 burglary case I’m working on.

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shakespeare wasn't lying that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow can creep in this petty pace from day to day

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haymitch saying “I don’t drink” hahaha so funny I have a gun in my mouth

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A Few Of The More Creative Spellings Of Christmas I’ve Come Across While Looking For Dear Santa Letters

A few of the more creative spellings of Christmas I’ve come across while looking for Dear Santa letters in old newspapers this year.

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Making a game about bugs :] this account is for sharing progress related to that and to share the pixel bugs I'm making along the way. This is a sfw space for people who want to follow along with this project or just enjoy looking at bug art :)

Premise of game:

- Turn game on

- bugs come :]

- add new bugs to your collection

- time advances automatically, different bugs come depending on at time/date/ temperature/weather/biome, use bait or light to attract different types

- let bugs run in the background and keep u company while u work

- over 500 different bugs :] maybe more depending on how silly I get with it

Support this project on patreon

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I love how humans have literally not changed throughout history like the graffiti from Pompeii has people from hundreds of years ago writing stuff like “Marcus is gay” “I fucked a girl here” “Julius your mum wishes she was with me” and leonardo da vinci’s assistants drew dicks in their notebooks just for the banter and mozart created a piece called “kiss my ass” so when people wish for ‘today’s generation’ to be like ‘how people used to’ then we’re already there buddy we’ve always been

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