For the better part of two months, Becca and I have been exploring pain, and how to write about it in fiction. It’s been enlightening for us, and we hope for you as well. So many ways to torture characters, who knew?

(Well, we did. And you did. Pain is sort of our bread and butter, isn’t it?)

But maybe you missed a post or two. It happens. You were on a writing retreat, or vacationing at the lake. Maybe you were hiding out in a sleeping bag in the woods, denying the arrival of fall and Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

Whatever the case may be, we’ve got you. Here are all the posts in this series.

The Three Stages of Awareness

Pain has 3 stages: Before, During, and After. For realistic and logical description, you’ll want to know what all three will look like for your character and the type of injury.

Different Types of Pain to Explore

Discomfort comes in all shapes and sizes, including physical, psychological, and spiritual pain. Mine this post for ideas on how to bring something fresh to your story by targeting a variety of soft spots.

Describing Minor Injuries

Cuts, stings, and scrapes create discomfort and can easily lead to bigger problems. You’ll find loads of descriptive detail for showing smaller injuries here, and how they can make your story more realistic.

Describing Major or Mortal Injuries

Sometimes a wound is serious, casting doubt on whether your character will survive this crisis. Fill your mental toolbox with ideas on what happens when your character is stricken with an injury with no easy fix.

Describing Invisible Injuries and Conditions

Not every injury leaves a physical mark, and when you can’t see it, you don’t know how bad it is. Invisible injuries and conditions are a great vehicle to encourage readers to worry about characters they care about.

Factors that Help or Hinder One’s Ability to Cope

We all hope we’ll cope well when injured, but certain factors make it easier–or harder–to handle pain. This list will help you steer how a character responds!

Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse

No one likes to get hurt, but when circumstances are afoot that cause that injury to worsen? Tension and conflict, baby. So, when you’re feeling evil, read this one to see how you can raise the stakes.

Everyday Ways a Character Can Get Hurt

We want to immerse readers in the character’s everyday world, so it helps to think about where dangers and threats might be lurking so we can create a credible collision with pain that comes from a believable source.

Best Practices for Writing Pain in Fiction

Finally, we round up this series with unmissable tips on how to take pain scenes from good, to great. Authenticity is key, and of course, showing and not telling. Don’t miss these final tips to help you write tense, engaging fiction!

We hope this mother lode of pain posts helps you level up your stories.

Pain is an Emotion Amplifier, and a powerful one at that, so putting in extra effort to showcase it well is worth the time.

Pain presents a challenge for your character while making them more emotionally volatile, and prone to mistakes. This means tension and conflict, drawing readers in!

Pain also helps empathy form because people know pain, and so when a character they care about is battered and bruised, or beset by trauma, readers can’t help but be reminded of their own experiences, and worry over what will happen next.

Other Compilation Posts

If you found this collection of resources helpful, you might be interested in some of our other posts that contain a mother lode of topic-related information.

How to Write about Character Occupations
How to Show (Not Tell) Character Emotions
How to Create Phenomenal First Pages
How to Write Conflict that Has Maximum Impact
How to Choose & Employ Your Character’s Talents and Skills
How to Write about a Character’s Emotional Wounds
How to Use Amplifiers to Stress Characters & Elevate Emotion

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Want to Show Your Character’s Pain? Here’s Everything You Need to Know appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Are you enjoying this series on writing your character’s pain? That’s a weird and slightly sadistic statement—even more so when we say how much we’ve enjoyed writing about pain. But it’s one of those things your character IS going to encounter; it’s not a matter of if, but when (and how often). So we need to be able to write it well.

We’ve covered a lot of ground, from the 3 stages of awareness to the symptoms of minor, mortal, and invisible injuries. But regardless of the kind of pain your character is feeling, there are certain practices that will enhance your descriptions of it to maximize reader empathy and minimize their chances of being pulled out of the story.

Show Don’t Tell

This one comes first, because if you want to create evocative and compelling descriptions, showing is the way to do it. Take this passage, for example:

Pain throbbed in my wrist. It radiated into my fingers. Tears sprang to my eyes.

On the surface, this description gets the job done because it adequately describes the character’s pain. But it’s not engaging. Lists seldom are—yet this is how pain is often described, as a series of symptoms or sensations. This isn’t how real pain registers, so it being described this way won’t read as authentic to readers.

Don’t stop the story to talk about what the character’s feeling. Instead, incorporate it into what’s happening. This keeps the pace moving and readers reading:

Cradling my throbbing wrist, I searched for the rope and loosed it from my belt. I drew a shuddering breath of relief to discover my fingers still worked, though the pain had me biting nearly through my lip.

This description is much better because it reveals the pain in bits and bobs as the character is going about her business. It uses words that describe the intensity and quality of the pain: throbbing and shuddering. There’s also a thought included, which is important because when agony strikes, our brains don’t stop working. The opposite is actually true, with our thoughts often going into overdrive. So including a thought that references the character’s mental state or physical discomfort is another way to show their pain to readers in an organic way.

Take Personal Factors into Account

The character’s pain level and intensity will depend on a number of factors, such as their pain tolerance, their personality, and what else is going on in the moment. Being aware of these details and knowing what they look like for your character is key for tailoring a response that is authentic for them. For more information on the factors that will determine your character’s pain response and their ability to cope with their discomfort, see the 6^th post in this series.

Adhere to Your Chosen Point of View

Whether you’re telling your story in first person, third person, or omniscient viewpoint, consistency is a must, so you’ve got to stick to that point of view. If the person in pain is the one narrating, you can go deep into their perspective to show readers what’s happening inside—the pain, yes, but also the nausea, tense muscles, and the spots that appear in the character’s vision as they start to black out.

But if the victim isn’t a viewpoint character—if the reader isn’t privy to what’s happening inside their heads and bodies—you’ll need be true to that choice. Stick with external indicators that are visible to others, such as the character wincing, the hissed intake of breath through clenched teeth, the weeping of blood, or the skin going white and clammy.

Consider the Intensity of the Pain

All pain isn’t created equal, and the intensity of the pain being described will often determine the level of detail. Excruciating, agonizing pain is going to be impossible for the character to ignore; because of their focus on their own pain, more description is often necessary. On the flip side, a lot of words aren’t needed to express the mild, fleeting pain of a stubbed toe or bruised knee. The severity of the pain can guide you toward the right amount of description.

Don’t Forget About It

Remember that pain has a life of its own. Some injuries heal fast, with the pain receding quickly and steadily. Others linger. Many times, healing is a one-step-forward-two-steps-back situation, with things seeming to improve, then a relapse or reinjury causing a setback. And then there’s chronic pain, which never fully goes away.

The nature of the injury will dictate how often you return to the character’s pain and remind readers of it. Minor injuries can fade into the background without further mention. But moderate and severe hurts will take time to heal. This means your character will be feeling the pain well after it began, and you’ll have to mention it again. But when you do, the quality and intensity will be less, and your description will follow suit.

Be Realistic

In serious cases, your character’s pain will become limiting; they won’t be able to do the things they could when they were unscathed. But we see unrealistic practices surrounding pain and wounds all the time in fiction. The hero’s shoulder is dislocated, he knocks it gamely back in place, then goes running after the villain. Maybe he’s grimacing and grunting, but two pages later, he’s duking it out without any mention of the injury or the pain that activity would cause.

Don’t let pain unintentionally turn your hero into a superhero. Keep them real and relatable, which is easy to do with some basic planning. If you know they’re going to be injured in a scene, ask yourself: what physical activity will be happening afterward? Then plan accordingly.

Maybe you tailor their injury so it puts them in distress but allows them to do what they need to do. Or, if a severe injury is necessary, you might rearrange your scenes so the character is able to heal up before encountering any serious physical activity. Another option is to let them tackle the active moment following a painful incident, but show their limitations.  Show them struggling and having to compensate. The important thing is to keep their physical abilities in the wake of an injury realistic so readers don’t call Bullcrap and start thinking about what’s wrong with the story.

The Complete Pain Series

And with that, this series is a wrap. Hopefully these posts have provided some solid information and practical advice on how to write your character’s pain effectively. In case you missed any of the installments, I’ve listed them here, for easy reference.

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Writing About Pain: Best Practices for Great Fiction appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

We’ve covered many aspects of pain so far in this experience, such as the different categories of pain and how to write the discomfort associated with minor, major, and invisible injuries. All of this is helpful for identifying the pain your character will be feeling and helping you write it accurately. But how will your character sustain their injury?

If you’ve determined that pain is in your character’s future, you’ve got to then figure out how it will happen. The good news is that this can often be done organically through whatever they’re already doing. It’s just a matter of knowing which activities they’d be involved in and the locations they’re likely to visit. Get them there, and let the mishaps unfold.

Here are a few of the common causes for injuries and places where harm could naturally befall your character.

Household Accidents

It’s commonly known that many injuries occur in and around the home. This means your character’s living space can become a minefield of potential hazards. Moving heavy furniture, slipping in the shower or on slick floors, falling down stairs, cutting oneself while cooking, choking on food, fingers getting smashed in a drawer, getting zapped by a faulty electrical outlet…the possibilities, both serious and slight, are endless.

This is also true of incidents happening just outside the home. Your character could be injured while using faulty lawn equipment (or misusing perfectly good tools), tripping over uneven driveway pavers, being exposed to poison ivy, breathing noxious fumes from a DIY painting project, getting a splinter, or falling out of a tree.

Sometimes, the easiest solutions are the best ones. When it comes to injuries, there really is no place like home.

Workplace Injuries

The other place your character spends a lot of their time is at work, making it a logical place for bad things to happen. If your story calls for a certain kind of injury, consider a career for the character where it’s most likely to happen. Maybe a more dangerous occupation is in order, such as construction work, being a police officer, or working as an EMT in a hazardous area.

But even mundane office jobs can provide opportunities for a range of injuries—paper cuts, carpal tunnel, slips and falls, and back and neck pain from staring at a screen for hours, to name just a few. As a matter of fact, a physically painful event at work can spice up a boring day on the job. Just make sure it’s a natural fit so it doesn’t read as contrived.

Recreational Activities

What does your character do in their spare time? Could it be something that would incorporate the injury you need them to sustain? Maybe they’re an exercise enthusiast and enjoy running marathons, lifting weights, or some other way of pushing their body to its limits. Or they could be into extreme sports, like motocross, rock climbing, cave diving, or hang gliding. Even run-of-the-mill activities like hiking, jogging, fishing, hunting, and playing pickleball can end painfully given the right (or wrong) circumstances.

Transportation Accidents

When your character leaves home, some form of transportation is going to get them to their destination. Whether they’re in an isolated area or are surrounded by other people who are also getting from here to there, there are many opportunities for harm to befall them. Car accidents, falling off a bike, suffering a heart attack while riding the city bus, being hit while walking as a pedestrian, difficulties driving in other countries where the traffic laws are unfamiliar…so many possibilities.

Weather Events

Wherever your character lives, they’re going to encounter different kinds of weather that can impact their safety. Slippery roads and icy streets can make accidents and falls more likely. Heavy fog, rain, and snow will decrease visibility. High winds can cause tree limbs to fall, crushing buildings or blocking roadways and causing hazards. And then you have extreme weather—tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, lightning strikes, and hailstorms. The latter are much more dramatic, so you’ll have to lay that groundwork carefully. Make sure your character is living in an area where these threats are real. And use enough foreshadowing to inform readers of the danger so when it happens, it rings true.

Animal Injuries

As much as we love our pets, they can inadvertently be a source of pain. For instance, we know how dangerous it is when an elderly person falls and breaks a hip. What you may not know is that one of the main reasons the elderly fall is because they’ve tripped over a pet. Sustaining an injury while walking the dog is also common, along with the garden-variety scratches, nips, and bites that may occur. It’s also easy to be hurt while trying to help a wounded or scared pet.

But domesticated animals aren’t the only ones your character needs to be careful with. Consider the altercations they might have with animals of the wilder sort: insect stings, snake and spider bites, or being bitten by a tick and incurring the chronic effects of Lyme disease. Is your character the reckless sort that might try to hand-feed a raccoon in the backyard or get a selfie with a bison at Yellowstone? They’re likely to get more than they bargained for.

Physical Violence

Sometimes harm occurs from other human beings, and it’s not always intentional. Being bumped on the street, elbowed in the mouth, knocked down in a crowd, slammed in a concert mosh pit, roughhousing with the kids—there are many ways someone could accidentally injure your character. And then there are deliberate acts of violence in the form of an attack, mugging, bullying, or domestic abuse.

This is a short list, really, of the ordinary ways your character could be injured just going about their day. It’s definitely not exhaustive but hopefully provides some ideas for how you can naturally incorporate the painful events your story needs in ways that are natural and seamless.

And if you need help in this area, consider adding an Emotion Amplifier into the mix. Your character may be a good driver, but what if they’re distracted or inebriated? They might be the most careful person on the worksite until they get dehydrated or are sick with a fever. And consider how added stress can make your character less patient, more reckless, and prone to making poor decisions. Amplifiers are a great way to turn a normal scenario into one where an injury is more likely to happen, so keep those in mind when you need to hurt your character.

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Best Practices for Great Fiction

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Writing About Pain: Everyday Ways A Character Could Be Hurt appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

When we put characters in dangerous or unfamiliar situations, they can get hurt, and when they do, things become harder to do. Injuries can mean reduced mobility, pain makes it difficult to think clearly, or something they must do (win a fight, escape a threat, or be independent, for example) may become all but impossible.

Injuries and pain can cause an array of problems, generating tension and conflict. Readers also tend to become more invested when something happens to a character, either because they care and want them to be okay, or readers feel a rush of schadenfreude because a nasty character is finally getting what they deserve.

A writer’s mindset is all about How can I make things more difficult for this character? so it can be tempting to pile on the injuries and pain, but this isn’t always a good strategy. Too many ouchies and a protagonist won’t be able to continue their quest, meaning they can’t logically achieve an important goal (unless the author manufactures a ‘Hail Mary rescue’ that will feel contrived). Or, if injuries are piling up like a serial killer’s body count, readers might get angry and feel the author is going too far. So we really want to find the sweet spot of making things hard, not impossible for the character.

When you need to make life challenging, rather than adding new injuries, a better option may be to add a complication.

In the right circumstances, even a small injury can cause big problems. Cuts get infected. Bites may be poisonous. A blister can make it hard to run fast enough to escape. Complications are not only realistic, they raise the stakes and make readers worry, generating tension.

How to take an injury from bad to worse

Being unable to treat the injury. Some problems require medical intervention, but that doesn’t mean your character can access help. They might be on a remote hiking trail, in the middle of a farmer’s field, or simply unable to go to the hospital because if they do, it will alert the authorities. When a character can’t get the help they need, this not only ramps up the pain, it ramps up the consequences.

An underlying condition. Does your character have a clotting disorder that means a cut on their thigh won’t close? Are they being treated for an illness that leaves them fatigued? Will that concussion re-awaken difficult side effects caused by a previous traumatic brain injury? When you want to make an injury more complicated and particularly dangerous for a character, think about what underlying conditions or illnesses they may have that will make it harder to function.

Infection. Your story doesn’t need to be in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse to cause characters to worry about viruses. Wounds exposed to the wrong conditions can cause fever or delirium, compromising your character’s ability to function and make rational decisions. Untreated, infection can lead to blood poisoning, gangrene, or even flesh-eating disease. Yikes.

Reduced mobility. If your character breaks a bone or injures their back, they may be unable to move on their own. This can put a strain on others who must step in to help, causing delays or forcing them to expend energy they need for other things. If your character is on their own, say with a broken leg at the bottom of an embankment, an inability to move much will become a crisis if they cannot source food, water, or find help. Sitting or laying prone too long can also increase blood flow related issues, making injuries worse and healing slower.

Muscle tears or nerve damage. A bike accident, overdoing it at the gym, or a pell-mell flight from a pack of wild dogs can mean more than bruises. A muscle tear or nerve damage can affect mobility and dexterity, and generate high levels of pain. These injuries take time to heal, and sometimes require special treatments or even surgery. So think carefully about how this type of complication might play out in the story. Your character might be damaged in a way that their recovery may not fit the timeline for conflict resolution.

Scar tissue. Everyone has a few scars, but what if your character’s reduces function in some way, or even disfigures them? What will this mean as far as their dexterity and range of movement, or how other people view them? Will it close doors because they’ve lost their edge as far as a skill goes, or reveal a lack of depth in their relationships because people can’t accept this change?

Extreme swelling. Injuries cause tissue to swell, and if this happens to a body part that is confined somehow (a swollen foot stuck in a boot, or a wedding ring cutting off circulation due to a broken finger), it can cause intense pain and the need for intervention to avoid losing the limb.

Improper healing. Sometimes a character can’t get help when they need it, and the injury starts to heal in a way that is less than ideal. Bones may not be fully aligned as they knit together, causing a limp or malformation. A deep cut that can’t be stitched in time can lead to an ugly scar, loss of sensation, and reduced function.

Fears or phobias being triggered. Characters who have suffered past trauma may have their deepest fears awakened when an injury occurs, especially if they are reminded of that painful experience. Or a phobia of doctors, hospitals, dying, or another fear can make them resistant to being treated.

Addictions. A character in recovery will not want to risk medication that could trigger a relapse. Instead, they may have to bear extreme levels of pain to stay drug free, or have no choice but to have drugs in their system so a surgery can be performed, or an infection is stopped before it can spread.

Making the injury worse. When there’s danger present or a character is faced with a ticking clock, they can’t take it easy. A strain the character must ignore to escape a threat can become worse if it isn’t treated. Over time, increased fatigue or reduced strength will make a character unstable and more prone to additional injuries, too.

Ideally, injuries should push characters to think of creative solutions to their problems.

When they do, it makes for great reading. Too, characters who don’t give up (even though they may want to) are the ones readers admire most!

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Writing About Pain: Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

We know that pain is an unfortunate part of life. And if you’re doing your job as an author, your character will be put through the wringer, experiencing many painful events—big and small—throughout their story. We’ve talked about the kinds of physical pain they could encounter and how to describe that. But how will your character respond to their pain?

Much like a fingerprint, each person’s pain response is unique. It will be determined by a combination of factors—some that are controllable and some that aren’t. Remember, it’s the character that will draw readers in and keep them engaged, but only if their reactions are believable and consistent. So it’s imperative to know the most sensible responses for your character.

Passive Factors

There are many ways a character can react to physical discomfort, and a lot of them will be subconscious. Their ability to handle their pain will be based on some passive factors that are out of their control and are already running in the background when things go south. Because these factors will dictate your character’s pain response, it’s important to familiarize yourself with them and know what they look like for your character.

Pain Tolerance

This is defined as the maximum amount of physical suffering a person can handle. The higher your character’s pain tolerance, the more they’ll be able to withstand the discomfort they experience. This threshold varies from one person to the next and is established by a number of variables, such as genetics, past experiences with pain, and how much stress the character is dealing with when adversity strikes.

Personality

Your character’s values and dominant traits will play a part in how they respond to pain. Just think about the natural reactions you’ll get from different kinds of characters: melodramatic vs. stoic vs. needy vs. someone who’s always playing the martyr… The traits and qualities your character values will play a large part in how they handle discomfort, so take those into consideration.

Imperative Responsibilities

If the circumstances surrounding their pain are simple, the character’s response can be straightforward. For instance, if they tumble down a flight of stairs with a roommate nearby, they can focus on their physical state and what to do next. But what if they fell, alone, trying to get upstairs to a crying baby? What if they’re a federal agent who was attempting to neutralize a sniper who is now free to keep shooting?

When an injury threatens the well-being of others or keeps the character from an imperative duty, they may be able to ignore or minimize their pain until they’ve accomplished what needs doing. On the flip side, becoming incapacitated while others are in danger may actually worsen the pain.

Pharmacological Factors

Alcohol, medications, and illegal drugs obviously dull pain. This is why drunk drivers can gravely injure themselves in a car accident and walk away without feeling much of anything. If your character is wounded while they’re under the influence, this will impact what they feel and how they react.

Responses That Help Control Pain in the Moment

Now that we’ve had a look at the latent factors that contribute to a character’s pain response, let’s turn our focus to active reactions, starting with those that are most helpful in controlling and lessening discomfort—both in the moment and in the aftermath of a painful event.

Maintaining a Positive Mindset

Positive thinking keeps the character in a forward-focused mindset, concentrating on what can be done and what actions to take. It engenders a sense of empowerment and control as they work toward solutions and betterment. A positive mindset also reduces stress and anxiety, which are known to make pain worse.

Utilizing Mind-Body Techniques

These techniques allow the character use the mind to positively influence the body. Meditation, prayer, relaxation techniques, and deep breathing exercises can mitigate pain and help the character become more centered and calm.

Distracting Themselves

In the midst of even a minor injury, the pain won’t go away completely. Sometimes, the best thing a character can do is to focus on something else. Exercises such as mentally preparing a grocery list or summarizing the storyline of a favorite movie can be beneficial in taking the mind off the pain. If the injury allows, the character can also engage in a distracting hobby. Reading a book, working on a puzzle, or playing a game won’t negate the pain, but activities like these can push it into the background and make it less intense.

Responses That Help Control Pain During Recovery

Pursuing a Healthy Lifestyle

Physically healthy bodies heal faster, with a quicker secession of pain. To this end, making nutritious food choices, prioritizing sleep, and reducing stress can improve the character’s overall health and aid in pain management. Exercise is another important factor because while it makes the body stronger and especially helps to manage ongoing discomfort, it also releases endorphins, which can have a pain-relieving effect.

Educating and Self-Advocating

Healthcare providers are wonderful resources, but they don’t know everything. A character who researches their own injuries and physical limitations will increase their knowledge and likely find new treatment options. This form of self-advocacy can result in a sense of empowerment, staving off despair, depression, and hopelessness.

Volunteering and Altruism

When pain is ongoing and/or intense, it’s often more comfortable to stay at home and avoid the activities that aggravate it. But studies show that when we shift our focus from ourselves to others, amazing things happen with our mindset and our outlook on life. In this way, volunteering and serving others can have a mitigating effect on pain. At the very least, acts of altruism can make physical discomfort more bearable as the character finds a greater sense of purpose.

Attending Therapy

Therapy is a magical tool for helping people find better ways of dealing with their problems. For a character trying to cope with pain, a therapist can provide great insight into the mental and emotional processes that can be adopted to minimize the discomfort or put into a proper perspective.

Responses that Hinder Pain Mitigation in the Moment

For every positive reaction, there are a multitude of negative responses that hinder rather than help. It’s easy for people in pain to resort to whatever works to make it go away. But many of these methods are only temporary or create ancillary problems. Here are some common pain responses that will thwart your character’s healing and possibly make their situation worse.

Focusing on the Negative

For someone battling ongoing or intense discomfort, it’s easy to fall into negative thinking by becoming obsessed with the pain, catastrophizing, and becoming cynical. But just as positive thinking has positive benefits, negative thinking begets negative outcomes in the form of increased anxiety and depression, and decreased motivation and self-worth—all of which make healing harder.

Hiding the Pain

People often aren’t comfortable expressing their pain—maybe because it occurred in public and they’re embarrassed or don’t want people to fuss over them. They might need to be strong if they’re with their kids or in a position of authority. Or they could be worried about consequences, such as losing a starting spot on a sports team if they can’t perform. There are many reasons why someone might choose to mask their pain, so it’s worthwhile exploring those possibilities.

Not Seeking Help

While many people run to the doctor when pain sets in, there are some characters who will avoid treatment. This may be true for someone who

• Is in denial about their condition
• Is highly independent and doesn’t want to rely on others for help
• Cares deeply about what others think and doesn’t want to appear weak

Refusing to seek treatment or get help won’t expedite healing and the cessation of pain. It also can make a minor injury worse if treatment is needed.

Responses that Hinder Pain Mitigation During Recovery

Making Unhealthy Choices

Just as healthy habits can encourage healing and minimize pain, an unhealthy lifestyle often does the opposite. Responding to pain by taking up smoking, compulsively eating, or turning to drugs and alcohol can aggravate existing conditions (and the associated pain) or create new health issues that will make life even more difficult.

Being Driven by Fear and Avoidance

If your character is struggling with a high level of discomfort, it’s normal for them to avoid any activities that might make it worse. But ongoing avoidance often results in a sedentary lifestyle that can actually increase someone’s sensitivity to pain, achieving the opposite result.

Having Unrealistic Expectations

In some situations, people will be living with a certain level of pain for the rest of their lives. The discomfort can be managed, but only if the character’s expectations are realistic. Hoping for an impossible outcome, such as a complete recovery with no more pain, will result in disappointment and an inability to recognize and appreciate small gains.

As you can see, there are many factors that can impact a character’s pain response. Some of the groundwork will be laid before the injury occurs, and other reactions are more controllable. Knowing the possibilities can help you choose the right responses for your character, both at the time of injury and in the aftermath.

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Writing About Pain: Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

In this series on pain, we’ve covered everything from minor injuries to major and mortal injuries. But there’s another source of pain that can push our characters to the edge of coping: invisible injuries and conditions.

When readers see a bruise, cut, or gunshot wound, it’s easier for them to fill in the blanks about what happened, and imagine the pain that goes with it. But when the source is internal, writers have to work harder to connect the dots for readers, especially if the character themselves is unaware of what’s causing their distress, or they choose to mask their pain.

So what are some examples of internal conditions or injuries?

A concussion, brain injury, stroke, or another condition affecting the brain. Maybe your character fell on the ice and seemed to have escaped with only a few bruises, until a headache or migraine shows up. There are changes in vision and nausea. Or they’re having trouble forming thoughts, words, or remembering things.

Internal organ damage, bleeding, or ruptures. Physical trauma, being poisoned or exposed to toxic elements, a surgical complication, bone fractures, or even an ectopic pregnancy can all be sources of internal bleeding and damage. While initially a character may not realize they are in distress, it doesn’t take long to know something is off as internal bleeds can cause significant pain, and manifest in different ways depending on where they are located. Organ damage can cause a rapid or irregular heartbeat, make the character feel nauseous, lead to confusion and lethargy and fever and chills. Untreated, organ damage can lead to organ failure.

Chronic Pain. Your character may have fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, or recurring pain from an old injury or condition without visible markers. Because the pain is chronic, it may impair their ability to enjoy everyday things, cause mood swings and irritability.

Neck injuries (like whiplash) can be caused by things like car accidents, pinched nerves, contact sports, or being shaken, and don’t necessarily have visible signs of swelling. Characters can experience stiffness and debilitating pain in the neck, shoulders, and head.

Hearing conditions that lead to sensitivity. Some characters may feel pain when exposed to certain noises, due to hearing loss or other conditions. They could even have Misophonia (an aversion to specific sounds that causes panic attacks and causes one to feel as though they are losing their sanity).

Neurologic disorders, diseases or lesions. A character with a condition like Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Long Covid or even a spinal injury may experience neurological pain, paresthesia, tingling or numbness that is difficult to manage and impacts their quality of life.

Autoimmune Disorders. A character who has a condition like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, IBD, or Crohn’s disease will experience internal inflammation and invisible symptoms that can range from fatigue, joint pain, fevers, and uncomfortable digestive issues.

Cardiovascular Conditions: Heart conditions, such as arrhythmias, certain types of heart disease, and attacks can cause pain in the chest, upper back, and neck, lead to discomfort from experiencing indigestion and nausea, and even cause dizziness. Some arrhythmias have no signs, others can be quick and fatal.

Digestive issues. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastric ulcers, food poisoning, gallstones and a variety of other gastrointestinal conditions create discomfort in the form of cramps, diarrhea, nausea, and bloating.

Other forms of disease like cancer. Tumors pressing against an organ, bone or tissue can be painful, and the radiation or chemotherapy the character may have to undergo no less so.

Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), borderline personality disorder (BPD) and other mental conditions and struggles. Not all invisible conditions cause physical pain; many cause emotional distress, anxiety, panic attacks, etc. as well. The psychological battles being fought may not be visible to others, but this doesn’t make the emotional pain your character feels any less real or debilitating.

The little things. Pulled muscles. Toothaches. Infections. Minor nerve pain. Even small hurts can cause your character to feel irritable, spoil events, or ruin their day.

Tips for showing internal injuries

Regardless if a character doesn’t know what the invisible injury is, or they are purposefully hiding it, we still need to help readers realize something’s off. Here are a few ideas on how to do that.

Seed some hints. Is there something a character is avoiding, like bending down, getting out of bed, or cleaning the house? This can plant a clue that pain is a factor.

Give the character a few tells. Is your character consistently rubbing at their neck rolling their wrist, or they’re extremely irritable for no reason?

Know the signs of internal conditions. This one is one of the most important. Each non-visible condition or injury will have specific symptoms for pain. Do your research to make the character’s behavior authentic.

Show their struggle to manage or hide pain. Is your character overcompensating, breathing in a strained way, or struggling to form words?

Have the character talk it out. If the character is around someone they feel comfortable sharing with, they can talk about what they feel, but only if it makes sense for your character to be open like this.

Have a character make an observation. Characters can be very observant. A pointed question, “Is there something wrong with your knee? You keep rubbing it.”

Reveal something they can’t do. There’s nothing worse than discovering something you used to do is no longer possible: tying a shoe. Being sociable at a family barbecue. Talking about anything without becoming emotionally upset.

Add urgency. Internal injuries get worse when not treated. This can happen slowly, or quickly. Raise the stakes by showing your character’s condition worsening, making it crucial to find an answer to what’s hurting the character.

Invisible injuries and conditions have a superpower: they create tension.

Visible signs give readers a good idea about what’s wrong and how bad the pain will be, but when it’s something invisible, the reader wonders, what’s wrong? How bad is it? And because they’ve experienced that feeling of ‘not knowing’ in their personal life, they will feel unease until the story provides answers.

Internal injuries can also be a false front. Readers might believe a character has gotten away unscathed, only to discover a clock inside them is ticking, and if they don’t get help soon, the consequences will be significant…or fatal. So the next time you need to hobble your characters with pain, consider an invisible injury!

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Writing About Pain: Invisible Injuries and Conditions appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

As you may be aware, we’re smack dab in the middle of a series of posts on writing a character’s pain, and today’s is a doozy. Our last post explored common minor injuries your character might encounter and the pain associated with those. Today, we’re leveling up to discuss the severe and even fatal injuries that could befall someone in your story. But before we get to that morbid list, let’s talk about a common life-threatening thread that runs through them all and will be an issue for most characters undergoing serious physical harm.

Physiologic Shock

Many severe injuries result in a loss of blood or reduced oxygen in the blood supply. Sometimes this is a natural result of the trauma, when too much blood leaves the body or vascular system and there isn’t enough circulating to the organs. In other situations, the body redirects blood to where it’s most needed in the moment, which leaves other parts of the body untended. In either case, the vital organs aren’t getting the blood and/or oxygen necessary to sustain them.

Because shock so often accompanies physical trauma, a character who’s been seriously hurt will likely experience this symptom, so it’s important to know what it looks like. Common indicators associated with this kind of shock are as follows:

• Shallow breathing
• Uncontrollable shivering
• Irregular heartbeat
• Clammy skin
• Dilated pupils
• Light-headedness
• Nausea
• Mental confusion

You’ve probably heard that people can die of shock, but that’s not technically true; they die from the severe injury that interrupted their blood or oxygen flow, with shock being a secondary symptom from the injury. Shock is just an obvious indicator that something is terribly wrong and that immediate measures need to be taken to get the issue under control before too much damage is done.

Now let’s take a closer look at the most common mortal injuries that could befall your character, as well as the pain and other processes associated with them.

Stab Wounds

This form of puncture wound can cause damage to blood vessels, organs, or the spine, resulting in rapid blood loss, organ failure, and potential death. Wounds to the chest and abdomen are particularly dangerous because of the vital organs that can get nicked. But stab wounds to the extremities are still serious because of potential vascular damage.

Associated pain: The patient may experience sharp or stabbing pains from tissue damage, as well as burning and shooting pains associated with injury to the nervous system.

Gunshot Wounds

Gunshot wounds are another kind of puncture wound. But unlike stab injuries, these wounds can cause greater damage because of their high-velocity nature and the bullet’s ability to bounce around and hit multiple targets, resulting in rapid blood loss, internal bleeding, organ failure, and potential death.

Associated Pain: A patient with a serious gunshot wound and minimal nerve damage will experience the same kinds of pain as someone who has been stabbed. As blood loss increases and shock sets in, the pain may diminish until the patient loses consciousness.

Dismemberment

This type of cutting injury occurs when a part of the body is severed from the whole. Accidental dismemberment is often instantaneous, with the victim being unaware of it until it’s done.

Associated Pain: There will be significant and severe pain in the area of the dismemberment as severed nerves are exposed. But shock will kick in very quickly, numbing some of the pain and possibly creating a dissociative effect to separate the patient from their pain.

High-Impact Traumas

These injuries are the result of the body’s collision with another moving or stationary object. Car accidents, falls, sports injuries, and physical violence are common causes that can result in so many problems, including broken bones, a crushed airway, brain trauma, collapsed lungs, torn blood vessels, and displaced organs.

Associated Pain: If the injury is localized—say, a hand that’s crushed in a workplace accident—the pain will be focused on that area. Pain resulting from organ injury might be described as aching, squeezing, or cramping in quality, but because the organs are located close to each other in the body’s trunk, it may be hard for the patient to pinpoint exactly where it’s occurring.

Severe Burns

Third-degree burns that cover a significant portion of the body are often life-threatening because of the risk of infection, edema, dehydration, and other complications. These differ from first- and second-degree burns, which can often heal with at-home treatment, leaving only minor (if any) scarring.

Associated Pain: Despite their severity, third-degree burns destroy nerves, which often results in less or lower-quality pain in the affected area. However, there will be considerable pain in the surrounding areas as the severity of the burn lessens to second- and first-degree burns where the nerves are intact. And, unfortunately, treatments in the form of topical applications, the changing of dressings, debridement, and skin grafts will intensify the character’s discomfort after the initial trauma has passed.

Asphyxia Injuries

These injuries deprive the body of oxygen, often resulting in damage to the brain and organs and leading to death. Types include strangulation, suffocation, choking, drowning, smoke inhalation, asthma attacks, and anaphylaxis associated with allergies.

Associated Pain: In each scenario, the kind of injury will determine the pain involved. Smoke inhalation will cause headaches and pain in the throat and chest as irritants are ingested and swelling ensues. Strangulation will cause pain in the throat and the feeling of pressure building in the brain as the flow of oxygen is cut off. Asthmatics in the throes of an attack often describe it as feeling like an elephant is sitting on their chest. The causes of asphyxiation vary widely, so careful research is required to know the kind and quality of pain your character will experience.

Poisoning

This injury occurs when someone swallows, touches, inhales, or otherwise comes in contact with a toxic substance that can result in serious injury or death. This may include substances that are poisonous by nature (cyanide, arsenic, etc.) and those that become toxic when they’re misused, such as household cleaners or prescription medications.

Associated Pain: A character’s response to a poisoning will depend on the kind and amount involved. Common painful responses include abdominal pain, headache, vomiting, diarrhea, and seizures. If poisoning is in the cards for one of your characters, thorough research into the kind of poison and the body’s response to it is needed to write their pain realistically.

Electric Shock Injuries

The body is essentially a complex electrical system, so any influx of high-voltage electricity can wreak serious havoc. The injuries associated with electric shock are myriad, including internal and external burns, brain trauma, spinal injuries, chest pain, muscle pain, and damage to the heart.

Associated Pain: Shocks of this nature don’t tend to last very long. But in the moment, a character undergoing a severe electric shock can experience burning sensations, a clamping and seizing of the muscles, respiratory paralysis, arrhythmia, and possibly cardiac arrest.

These are the body’s physical pain responses to fatal and near-fatal injuries. But as we learned in the second installment of this series, pain goes beyond the physical. And while near-death and deathbed experiences can be notoriously quick, they can also bring moments of clarity, where thought and emotion come to the forefront.

Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Responses to Major Injuries

• Fear and Anxiety: regarding their pain, the outcome of their circumstances, the probability of death, and how their leaving could impact loved ones
• Determination: Determining to fight with everything they have to survive; redoubling any mental or physical efforts
• Despair: giving in and giving up their hold on life
• Dissociation: A sense of being separated from their pain and any physical sensation, as is the case in an out-of-body experience; viewing their circumstances from outside of themselves, which provides the ability to think and process what’s happening
• Reflection: The “life flashing before your eyes” scenario, where the character is able to review their choices and experiences, both good and bad
• Regret: Wishing they had done more with their time, they’d taken or not taken certain actions, they’d worked harder to resolve certain conflicts or build key relationships, or they could have more time with loved ones
• Doubt: Questioning what they’ve always believed about death and the afterlife
• Spiritual Clarity: A person of faith being comforted as they recall that there’s something and someone waiting for them; a character returning to the spiritual beliefs of their childhood
• Acceptance: Gaining a sense of peace regarding the reality of their situation; embracing the inevitable

As is the case with so many aspects of storytelling, someone’s pain level and intensity during a severe or fatal injury will depend on a variety of factors relating both to the situation and the character. Deciding what the specific situation will be is your first step. The second is knowing what kind of pain is involved. And finally, you’ll need to figure out the character’s response to it. Hopefully this post has provided a basis for making those decisions.

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Writing about Pain: Describing Major & Mortal Injuries appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

We’re always looking for ways to make sure our characters struggle as they navigate new situations, uncertain environments, dangers and threats. Let’s dive into what minor injuries you might want to inflict that will also bring a dose of authenticity to your fiction.

Common Minor Injuries
& How to Describe Them

Superficial cuts and scrapes. These are surface wounds affecting the skin, causing redness, scratches, or shallow wounds. There is a flash of pain, and then blood blooms. You can focus on the redness of the scratches, any dirt or grit caught in the injury, and the searing pain a character will feel when something touches the injured site: a sleeve, branches that slap and scrape as your character navigates a narrow wooded trail, bumping against someone, or even the pain-then-relief sensation when a breeze hits the area.

Bruises. Collisions with hard surfaces or pressure injuries can lead to bruises. Maybe your character was rushing, missed a danger, was careless, or the injury happened through violence. Bruises may throb or ache, especially when the damaged muscle moves. Skin will discolor, turning reddish on a character with lighter skin, or appearing purple, brown, or even black on any with darker skin. Over time, the bruises may turn brown, yellow or even green as they heal before fading completely. With bruising, show a character’s discomfort. They may find it hard to sit or lie comfortably, and wince when the injured muscles move.

Burns and blisters. Exposure to heat or friction can result in burns and blisters, leaving the area tender to the touch. This can make everyday tasks uncomfortable, like having to walk with a blister rubbing the back of a shoe, or having to handle items with a fresh burn on one’s fingers. Blisters appear raised, containing fluid, and burns may also present as blisters or raw skin where several outer layers are removed. Small burns and blisters are easy to forget about until they are bumped or grazed, and then the pain starts anew. If a character has sunburn, their skin will be hot to the touch, red, and will feel stretched tight. The pain can be described as an uncomfortable tingling or radiating heat sensation.

Sprains and strains. Rapid or repetitive movements, twisting, overextending, and otherwise pushing ligaments or muscles too far can lead to stretching or tears that cause pain and limit a character’s range of movement. To describe this, think about the tenderness and painful twinges you feel at these types of injuries, and how your character will have to compensate by limping, hunching over, and moving gingerly. Each bump or unintentional twist can bring about deep pain, so use the character’s face as a map: wincing, drawing their eyebrows low, a pinched mouth. They may suck in a sharp breath through their teeth, or swear under their breath. To find relief, a character may observe the RICE method (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation), and use crutches to get around.

Minor fractures or breaks. Most bone breaks are not minor, but a broken toe or finger is usually something you wrap and wait for it to heal. A bone fracture is painful, but isn’t a full break, so healing comes much quicker. In both cases, the character will experience a sharp pain and may ‘feel’ the snap or crack. Anxiety and dread often follows these types of injuries because the character knows whatever they’ve done will need time to heal. These injuries are great when you want to slow your character down, add complication to their life, and limit them in what they can do. When you’re showing this type of injury, think about how your character will overcompensate (limping, shifting their weight, using their ‘good’ hand, etc.) to spare the injured bone. Show their discomfort through pinched facial expressions, a strained voice, a short tempter, or other ‘tells’ that line up with their personality.

Dislocations. When two bones pull away from their natural meeting point, the pain can be excruciating. An unnatural bulge forms where the bone is, causing swelling, intense pain, numbness and tingling. Your character may also feel a rush of fear when their limb suddenly stops working.

In movies, characters often ram the dislocated bone against something to reset it, but unless they’re skilled and experienced, this is dangerous, and causes extreme pain and further injury. So before you decide to have your character do this, ask yourself if they know how or not, or if others are able to assist.

Foreign objects. Splinters, thorns, fishhooks, and other items that pierce the skin can add a dash of authenticity and make your character more irritable, because these everyday annoyances do happen.

Nosebleeds. Maybe someone popped your character in the nose, or they have allergies, the air is dry, or it happens due to another condition or injury. Whatever caused it, nosebleeds are uncomfortable, messy, and can make the character feel embarrassed as they suddenly become the center of attention. To stop the flow, they may pinch the bridge of their nose and tip their head back, but as blood runs down their throat, they may gag in discomfort.

Contact with poison, toxins, or irritants. Some characters have allergies or sensitivities to substances, and coming in contact with these causes an adverse reaction. They may swell up, develop a rash, break out in hives, become feverish, and have trouble swallowing or breathing. This minor situation can escalate into something more dire if they don’t get help.

To describe this injury, focus on the reaction to the toxin as it contacts with the character’s skin. Does it swell up, redden in patches, or feel hot to the touch? If the irritant is something they breathe in, it can cause them to cough, spit, bend over, and wheeze. They may grow anxious if it becomes harder to see or breathe.

Bites and stings. We’ve all gotten too close to a wasp’s nest or been a victim of mosquito bites. The character will feel a small nip of pain at the point of contact, and then the area can swell, itch, and redden. If the character has a sensitivity to the venom or a bite becomes infected, the pain will grow, and the rash will spread.

Minor head or eye injuries. When a character’s head area is injured, they need to take care in case the wound is worse than it seems. Maybe your character bumped their head on a low ceiling beam, had a spark or projectile fly into their eye, became the victim of bear spray, or slipped on ice and hit their head. These injuries can leave them with a throbbing headache, swollen eyelids, blurry vision, and a good dose of panic or worry.

Think Outside the Box When It Comes to Injuries

As you can see, the ways you can injure characters is only limited by your imagination, so get creative! What might be a fresh way to injure them that makes sense for the action? How can the setting and its inherent dangers be used?

Also, consider your character’s emotional state. Are they rushing to meet a deadline, or feeling panicked because they are out of their depth? When they become injured, do they blame themselves, or feel overwhelmed by their circumstances?

Know Your Why

Hurting characters ‘just because’ will lead to flat writing, so have a reason for causing them strife. How will an injury further the story or reveal who they are to readers? Will this new challenge hobble them and force them to think strategically? Are you trying to show their humanity through a response to pain or teach them a lesson for being rash? Know your why so injuries never feel random or contrived.

Also, don’t forget to show the before-during-after awareness chain so your character’s responses are realistic and believable.

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Writing About Pain: Describing Minor Injuries appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
-The Dread Pirate Roberts

Pain is an unfortunate part of life. As our characters go about their day—working, building relationships, pursuing goals and dreams, blowing off steam—things won’t always go as planned, and they will be hurt. When it comes to how quickly and fully they heal, a lot will depend on their pain response. But first we need to know the kind of suffering they’re dealing with.

Kinds of Pain

Most of us know about physical and emotional pain, but there are more types to consider. And consider them you must if you want to know which makes the most sense for your character in a given scene and in the kind of story you’re writing. So let’s take a look at the categories of pain that are common for all people and are at your disposal for your fictional humans.

Physical

Put simply, physical pain is the neurological response to bodily harm caused by illness or injury. The severity of this and any other kind of pain will depend on its source. If you step on a LEGO, you’ll feel pain, but the quality, intensity, and length will be different than if you’re catapulted through a windshield during a car crash. The same is true of pain associated with an illness; the discomfort resulting from a sinus infection headache will vary vastly from the pain associated with shingles (as I can unfortunately attest to).

Emotional

This can be described as intense and harrowing emotions in the wake of a difficult experience. Divorce, the death of a loved one, victimization, or paralysis in the face of an agonizing decision can all trigger emotional pain in the form of sadness, heartache, grief, self-doubt, or nostalgia. Rather than feeling an ache in our physical bodies, this kind of pain is felt in our emotions. But it’s just as unpleasant as physical discomfort, prompting us to pull away from the source and make the pain stop.

Psychological

Closely related to emotional discomfort, this kind of pain goes deeper, into the realm of mental and emotional suffering. Shame, regret, depression, despair, PTSD, and anxiety are just a few examples. While emotional and psychological pain are similar, a major difference is that while the former tends to be temporary, the latter takes longer to resolve and often requires more dedicated measures, such as therapy or medication.

Social

Social pain is a form of emotional pain that results from relational conflict, bullying, social rejection, or being separated from loved ones. It can also be referred to as interpersonal pain because it’s caused by certain interactions with the people around us. This kind of pain can cause the person to feel isolated, excluded, and devalued.

Spiritual

As humans, we have physical bodies and emotions, but we’re spiritual beings as well, and negative impacts on the spirit can result in spiritual pain. Situations that threaten a person’s faith, shake their moral code and their ideas about right and wrong, or cause them to doubt their purpose in life can cause spiritual distress.

Chronic

This specific form of physical pain is often associated with a chronic illness or injury. It’s defined by its persistence as it carries on for many months or years despite treatment. As such, chronic pain can be especially detrimental, eventually leaching into other areas and spawning emotional, psychological, social, and/or spiritual distress on top of the prolonged physical pain.

Tips for Writing These Categories

Now that you’re aware of the different kinds of pain that exist, you can decide what will make the most sense for your character. But there are a few more things to keep in mind if you want to write this universal human experience authentically and believably.

Pain Types Don’t Always Happen in Isolation

Stepping on a LEGO, as physically uncomfortable as it may be, isn’t likely to result in other kinds of pain. But more serious situations can result in your character experiencing multiple types of pain at once. Take a physical assault, for example. In the moment, your character will feel pain in their body, but also in their emotions if they struggle with feelings of embarrassment, self-blame, or worthlessness. If the assault occurs in a public place—say, at school—they could experience social pain. If the abuser is a religious figure or mentor, spiritual pain may become a factor, as well.

Whatever’s happening to your character, research those events carefully to understand exactly what they’ll be going through. Then you can focus on the best details from the various categories to show their pain to readers.

Pain Categories Are Often Progressive

A car accident may start with minor physical pain. But what happens when the character discovers that their distracted driving killed someone else? What if the physical discomfort worsens into something chronic?

However the pain begins, the specifics of the root event can determine how it progresses—if it festers or causes other kinds of suffering to develop. Just as many emotions follow a natural progression (from irritation to frustration to anger to rage, for instance), one kind of pain can be followed by another, especially as time passes and the character has time to process what’s happened.

Responses Should Be Tailored to the Character

Responses to pain will vary from one character to another, depending on a number of considerations. Personality, past experiences, and the character’s current support system are just a few of the factors that will determine how they deal with their pain—if they’re facilitating healing or are responding in a way that’s making things worse. (We’ll look at this more deeply in the 6^th post of this series.) The best way to write your character’s pain responses believably is to learn as much as possible about your character so you’ll know how they’re likely to respond.

Put The Emotional Wound Thesaurus to Work

If your character’s pain is coming from a traumatic event, this database at One Stop for Writers may have already done some of the research for you. It covers a variety of wounding events that could have befallen your character, and all the pain categories are covered. (See a complete list here.) So put it to use to brainstorm possible causes for your character’s pain and how they reasonably could respond to it. And for easy reference, you can also find a new tip sheet at One Stop on the different pain categories.

Other Posts in This Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

The post Writing About Pain: Different Types to Explore appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

If there’s one thing writers like to do, it’s to make characters suffer. We are all about bringing forth pain and crises, whether it be emotional, physical, spiritual, or existential. Is it because we’re a little messed up and we enjoy torturing characters? Or do we create difficult scenarios in our stories to illustrate the fact that life is painful sometimes?

Probably both.

No matter what our reasons for holding our character’s figurative (and possibly literal) feet to the fire, we need to do a bang up job of describing it. So join us for a deep dive on all things painful, starting with…

Pain & Your Characters: The Three Stages of Awareness

Before: Anticipating Pain

Sometimes a character won’t see a threat coming, but if they do, we gain a terrific opportunity to draw readers into the moment and heighten their emotions alongside the character’s. The anticipation of pain is something we all know, and so it’s an effective way to generate empathy for characters experiencing it.

When something bad is about to happen, a character may only have a heartbeat or two to steel themselves, tensing their muscles clamping their teeth tight, flinching and squeezing their eyes shut. To try and protect themselves further, they might also try to make themselves small, a full body cringe. Or it could be a natural reaction to duck, jerk back, pull away, or attempt to flee. These are all their instinctual fight-or-flight responses kicking in, doing whatever is necessary to protect them (or those they love) in the few seconds they have.

If the threat is farther out, the character’s brain has more time to churn through what might happen. Their knowledge and experiences will conjure up mental flashes of what will happen and the likely wounds and injuries which could occur. Memories may also assault them, reminding them of painful things that have happened to them, and the inescapable weight of dread hits them.

To spur them into action, their adrenaline surges, prompting them to respond in some way – fight, or flee. But if there’s nothing they can do, they may experience a skin crawling sensation in expectation of the painful sensations to come.

Pain isn’t always physical, of course. If they see something coming that they know will hurt them emotionally, your character could become depressed, and at a loss over what to do. Or even though they know what’s coming can’t be avoided, they may stay in bed, refuse to go out, avoid people, lie, or do something else that lines up with a flight response. They could also become anxious, obsess about what’s going to happen, and force a confrontation before they’re fully prepared to deal with it (a fight response).

The source of pain could be anything – a secret about to be uncovered, a marriage nearing the point of ending, or their own child who is dying in the hospital. While we often think about how to cause characters physical pain, mental and emotional pain are just as debilitating.

TIP: Whatever type of pain your character is experiencing, think about their personality, coping methods, and personal fears. This will help you determine how they will respond to threats that bring pain.

During: Physiological and Psychological Processes

When your character feels discomfort, certain things happen. If there’s a physical component, pain receptors pick up on the type of sensory input: heat, friction, tension, cold, pressure, etc. and sends signals to the brain about the area affected, the type of pain, and intensity level. Your character’s instinctual response will be to flee pain, so unless there’s a compelling reason why they must not, you can show your character trying to pull away and escape whatever is hurting them. This is especially the case when they see indicators of damage (a gash, a broken bone, blood, etc.), because the gravity of what’s happening to them hits home.

Your character’s emotional state will also influence how much pain they feel. If the source of it is tied to a fear, emotionally wounding experience, or their anxiety is triggered, the discomfort they feel will be intensified. Pain levels can become so excruciating that a character passes out or enters a state of shock. This is where the body systems slow and they become distanced from their agony.

Another way to use emotion in these situations is to consider feelings that might help them cope with the pain better: anger, rage, determination, etc. They can also use coping mechanisms to handle discomfort, turning to meditation, breathing exercises, self-distraction, talk therapy, etc. to work through it. Some characters might try to numb it with medications, drugs, or alcohol, but if they are attempting to manage pain through mind over matter, it will only work to a certain point. If the pain is extreme, they will no longer be able to handle it, and their responses will become extreme — screaming, writhing, or even passing out.

Characters will also experience a stress reaction to pain, meaning their heart rate and blood pressure can rise, their body becomes increasingly tense, their breathing may change and tears may form.

TIP: Using POV visceral sensations to show what they’re experiencing is a great way to communicate the strain they’re under.

After: Recovery and Aftereffects

After an injury or event that causes pain, your character may have a hard time with mobility, balance, and cognitive processing, so keep this in mind when you show readers what happens next. Your character likely will try and protect the injury, meaning they may hunch over as they walk, cradle a broken arm, limp, or do everything with one hand to save more injury to the other. They might have a loss of energy or motor control, have a delayed reaction time, and seek to distance themselves from others so they can process what happened and heal in private. So think about what your character will be doing in the aftermath of a bodily injury.

Everyone copes with pain differently, especially pain that scores an emotional hit. Time will be needed to fully process what happened, and if the emotional hurt is far too painful to examine, characters try to bury it rather than work through it in a healthy way, leading to personality and behavioral shifts that change how they interact with the world and those in it. Unresolved emotional wounds are sources of ongoing pain, so a bit of research here on what this looks like for the type of wound is key.

If your character suffered a physical injury or illness, the healing process can include different types of pain – tenderness, strain, headaches, itchiness, and the like. They may need to rest or sleep more, and if this is impossible because the danger in ongoing, their energy may drain further. It could slow their healing, and open them to infections and more injuries.

After an injury heals, your character may have scars, less range of movement, or suffer debilitating migraines or other internal reactions. Depending on what they experienced, they may also carry new fears, anxieties, a decreased ability to take risks, and even PTSD or other conditions that they will carry with them. Each new encounter with pain will make your character more wary and watchful for any circumstances where it might reoccur, so remember that as they move forward in the story.

Realistic Fiction Sometimes Means Ignoring Hollywood

Because movies only have so much time to show everything they need to, the stages of pain awareness are sometimes skimmed over. Often there’s a split-second awareness of danger and then the camera focuses on the character being injured, whether it’s a gun shot wound to the thigh or a six-pack of punches to the gut. They falter briefly, then rally to win. But when we see them again after the climax, they are usually not as in bad shape as they should be, or are miraculously fine (I’m looking at you, Jack Ryan, and your ability to be perky and ready to go after several rounds of boiling water-and-salt torture!).

Movies and TV can sometimes get away with this, but books, not so much. Readers want to share the character’s experience, so this means showing things that are true-to-life. You don’t have to go overboard and show every detail, but make sure to convey enough of the before-during-after chain that readers feel the character is responding realistically to pain and injury.

Need more ideas on how to show pain? You’ll find this entry in our Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus.

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

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