words to describe pain

how does being punched in the face feel like

literally i just wanna know

It depends on where you get hit

Cheek: a round dull pain that clocks your entire head in a different direction. It’s painful and throbs but the main effect of a punch to the cheek is how jarring it is. You feel it in your mouth, your teeth. And no matter how you position that punch the knuckles will always hit the jaw and cheek bones adding a frame of sharp pain in which the redness will be painted.

Temple: getting hit on the temple pushes your head to the side rather than turning it. It’s disorienting because it leaves you very off balance. It essentially feels like a bad pressure headache, like when you have a sinus infection on a plane, but in one spot and on the outside. It’s sharp in the middle and radiates outward and even after the initial impact it pulses like an earthquake epicenter. It easily causes long lasting headaches and is the most likely of these examples to cause a concussion.

Eye: this is a weird one. The fist doesn’t fit within the eye socket so either the knuckles on the brow and cheeks bones protect the actual eye or they don’t. The former option gives a full spreading pain below the eye which results in the classic black eye look and a sharp pain on your brow similar to hitting your shin on the couch. The latter option, well bad things can happen when a hard fast object makes direct contact with your eye but for the sake of this it feels like a vacuum bc the concave shape is being covered and pressurized. The eye feels pushed back and pulled forward all at once. It doesn’t necessarily hurt that bad for that long unless the punch was meant to do damage. I’m fortunate to say I don’t know what it would feel like then.

Nose: remember that prank kids used to pull where they’d line up their hands with their nose, push them in one direction and crack a knuckle at the same time to pretend to break their nose? Yeah that’s what it looks like when someone punches you from the side in the nose, except it’s someone else’s hand and your nose makes the sound instead of their knuckle. It’s just like breaking any bone where you hear it and feel the action if it being done but that moment of shock blankets you for a split second until all the pain comes rushing back. It’s sharp and needlelike and can give you black eyes just to add insult to injury. If you get hit in the nose from the front it’s like the uncomfortableness of when you have to sneeze but can’t. Except that feeling took all the steroids and is now using your face as a punching bag to express its roid rage. It crackles outward like static electricity under your skin, your eyesight gets fuzzy and you can’t tell if it’s because you’re tearing up, it’s hard to open your eyes, or you’re momentarily stunned and blinded. Just know it’s all three. I find that this one knocks the wind out of you the most. Gotta remind yourself to breathe just don’t try to do it through your nose.

If you really want to know what this feels like I’d suggest joining a mixed martial arts because they’ll teach you correct form and power distribution and you can spar with pads and actually hit each other.

I’d also recommend learning what it feels like to punch someone in the face. It’s much more fun and pretty damn cathartic when they deserve it.

i was just being stupid but these descriptions are actually so well written i could feel them lmao bless

Well, thanks for “being stupid,” because this is a great ref for writers.

YOU KNOW WHAT BOTHERS ME

when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeople’s clothing as “homespun” or “rough homespun”

“homespun” as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME

they didn’t have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise she’s spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.

and “rough”??? lol just because it’s farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved ain’t no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth she’s gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS

come to think of it i’ve never read a fantasy novel that talks about textile production at all??? like it’s even worse than the “where are all the farms” problem like where are people getting the cloth if no one’s doing the spinning and weaving??? kmart???

THANK U

pro tip: what do you say instead? I gotcha.

 In Ye Olde Medieval Fantasy Dayes, everybody’s layer against skin (shirt tunic or shift) is gonna be linen. it’s almost never wool except stockings or hose (like pant legs). Say “undyed cloth” if you wanna make them sound simple and peasanty. Comment on how you can tell it wasn’t made for them (the fit is off) and has had probably eight owners before. 

Outer clothing is gonna be either wool, or a blend called Linsey-woolsey, and again you could say Undyed, but dyes are not only common they are CHEAP and relatively easy. (innerwear is often left undyed or bleached to white because it gets washed to heck- like beaten by a wooden stick on a stone by the river- and dye would just fade out a lot so why bother. Ths is also why innerwear has ties, rarely buttons, unless you are so rich you have people doing your washing delicately because they’re hired to do only that. Buttons would get broken in the washing)

A poorer person is often seen in “russet”, a kind of rusty orange-brown color. Purple was famously reserved for royalty in many times and places, but its  also just hard to do. We see a lot more magentas and fuschias for nobles or common middle class folks than we ever see of Purple- and not many of those. Deep blue was more likely on very rich people, but a light blue was common for even poorer folks. Yellow was popular with everyone, and so was green, and many shades of reds, including the color we now call orange (they did not- this is why redheads are called redheads and not orangeheads). Your vision of everyone in very drab brown and mud colors is from Hollywood- most medieval-ren folks have clothing with colors. Sometimes garish colors, to the modern eye. Traffic cone Orange and acid green was a popular combo in the 13th century.

Example medieval dye colors. Lots of yellows and orangey-browns. Woad gave a range of blues that are basically what we think of as “denim colors.” There were purples - royal purple was a specific color from a specific source - but if you mix wine-dye and woad-dye, you get purpleish dye. (Getting the color to stay that way may be more difficult. Everything worn by peasants fades; they couldn’t afford the really good fixatives.)

More examples and explanations here: 

Plum, dusty purple, lavender, burgundy, chestnut, blood red

Walnut, chocolate, tan, linen, pale apricot, spice, dark spice

Peasant clothes were often more colorful than the nobility. Nobles could afford bright, clear colors that peasants couldn’t - but one mark of wealth was being able to buy all 4-8 yards of fabric for an outfit at the same time. So nobles would have a full outfit, including hat, stockings, even shoes, of one type of fabric (with ornamentation of a contrasting type, and as many buttons or bits of silver as they could get away with wearing), while peasants would often have a shirt, bodice or jerkin, skirt or pants, stockings, and hat of all different colors.

Dying or re-dying any one piece of clothing was within most of their cost limits - dye itself is cheap; fixatives cost. But boiling your shirt for an hour with onion skins in a copper pot would re-color the fading fabric.

And yet more medieval dye colour samples:

While centered on medieval Europe for the finer points, this is broadly true for any clothing needs

@aceofwhump you should see this 😁🖤

OMG Thank you for tagging in this!! YES!! THIS!! THIS IS A GOOD POST!!! That drives me nuts too and there’s some damn good information here about dye colors and fabric types. Your gonna have linen and wool mostly for cloth types and there’s a lot of good info above on colors. I love it. Perfect for any fic set in the medieval era like say a certain Cursed fanfic ;)

The Weeping Monk’s attire- a summary

Okay so I may have just spent two days studiously researching medieval clothing and comparing it to images of the Weeping Monk (thanks to farfarawaysite and danielsharmanews.com for those great hd images!!), trying to figure what exactly he’s wearing so I can accurately describe it in this very small scene in my Cursed wip in which Gawain has to take off some of his clothes in order to assess the man’s injuries after he passed out from pain. #noregrets

I found out some interesting things (at least this history nerd found it interesting) so here it all is under the cut. (It’s more interesting than it sounds, bare with me. This got looooong.)

I apologize that this is not at all remotely whump related but I’ve been talking about him a lot on this blog and it’s related to the whump fic I’m writing so…. yeah.

Under a cut for the length

Note: I am by no means an expert so I apologize if anything is incorrect

Keep reading

@brooklymw Ahh I'm so glad to hear that!! I'd hoped it might be helpful :D

As for Gawain you can totally do your own research of course but I can help with that a little! So Gawain is gonna be wearing some similar items as Lancelot so in researching Lancelot I learned a lot about Gawain as well.

Putting under a cut because I don’t know how to be concise apparently

Hey um, does anyone know what kinds of plants one could use in medicinal healing. Specifically ones to slow bleeding and prevent an infection.

Ya know for....reasons....

@greenfirefly7 😃😃 omg this is PERFECT!!! Exactly what I need! Thank you!!

Man you guys are all awesome. I'm learning all kinds of cool stuff! Thanks!

Hey um, does anyone know what kinds of plants one could use in medicinal healing. Specifically ones to slow bleeding and prevent an infection.

Ya know for....reasons....

Shepherd’s Purse - slows bleeding because of high vitamin K content, and you use it in a poultice. 

Marsh Fivefinger - also used as a poultice/salve

Nettle, once dried and powdered - you can use the whole plant to help stop the bleeding, including internal bleeding. 

Wintergreen/Pyrola -  fresh as a spit poultice, since the juice has the properties to stop bleeding. The juice can also be drunk for internal bleeding

Add a bit more. Honey is kinda like a natural antibiotic, and was used to dress wounds in Roman times. And Willow bark can be used as a tea to lower fever and inflammation.

I had no idea honey could be used as an antibiotic! That's so cool! And willow bark sounds familiar but I definitely didn't know what it could used for. Ahh this is awesome! Thank you!

I suggest looking up the warrior cats medicine lists, it has some good lore on various, although I can't vouch for the medical authenticity of it, but then again we are writing whump so a lot gets thrown out the window

Oh damn that's a great idea @sad-boys-anonymous! I loved those books growing up and they definitely used a lot of medicinal plants. That's such a great idea. I'm totally gonna look at those books again! Thanks!

Edit: oh my god there is so many plants listed on the wiki 😀😀😀

(https://warriors.fandom.com/wiki/Medicine)

Hey um, does anyone know what kinds of plants one could use in medicinal healing. Specifically ones to slow bleeding and prevent an infection.

Ya know for....reasons....

Shepherd’s Purse - slows bleeding because of high vitamin K content, and you use it in a poultice. 

Marsh Fivefinger - also used as a poultice/salve

Nettle, once dried and powdered - you can use the whole plant to help stop the bleeding, including internal bleeding. 

Wintergreen/Pyrola -  fresh as a spit poultice, since the juice has the properties to stop bleeding. The juice can also be drunk for internal bleeding

Add a bit more. Honey is kinda like a natural antibiotic, and was used to dress wounds in Roman times. And Willow bark can be used as a tea to lower fever and inflammation.

I had no idea honey could be used as an antibiotic! That's so cool! And willow bark sounds familiar but I definitely didn't know what it could used for. Ahh this is awesome! Thank you!

Natural Pain Killers (dystopian/post-apocalyptic alternatives)

Clove (apply extract directly or mixed with carrier oil): Tooth aches. Muscle strain and ache.

Tobacco (just wet the leaves- even the end of a cigarette if it’s on hand): Insect bites & stings. 

Cocaine (poultices/alcoholic drinks/inhaled/injected): Strong but unpredictable drug used by all sorts of doctors in the 1800s- everything from dentistry to spinal surgery. Most people might think of Freud, but he was far from alone when swearing by its use. ‘Better than nothing’ is kind of the theme of this list; between the successful stories there’s tales of procedures that went half as well at best. The other celebrated uses are hilarious at the very least 

Wild Lettuce (steeped in tea, sometimes the seeds are eaten): Called Opium lettuce, it was- and sometimes still is- used as an alternative to opiods. It is not as effective, and medical science argues that it can be toxic. Used for anxiety, sexual dysfunction, chronic pain, hyperactivity, a cough suppressant, and more. Officially, not a great beat. Theoretically, ‘better than nothing’ if we’re talking post-apocalyptic scenarios.

Peppermint (essential oils): Getting an honorable mention because I know for absolute certain that dabbing a little bit of this stuff under your nose will help alleviate a migraine. I’m not saying I’d throw out the aspirin, but using peppermint oil is definitely ‘better than nothing’. (Without power, or running water, goods- and people- are going to get rank real quick- so why not dab this under a rag tied around your mouth and nose?). 

This is awesome!! Thanks for sending me the link!!

The amount of whump potential this has 😍

Q&A: Gunshot Pain

Mercifully, I can’t speak from personal experience. I’ve had guns pointed at me, but I’ve never been shot.

Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to vary much based on caliber. The body doesn’t know what to do with a bullet wound, so the victim will feel the impact, they know they’ve been hit by something, but may not realize they’ve been shot.

Adrenaline does mute the experience of pain, I can speak from personal experience there. However, with gunshots this seems to reduce the burning sensation. So, a bullet in flight is going to be quite hot. This is also true with spent shell casings. Again, I’ve never felt a bullet in flight, but fresh shell casings are unpleasant. If you’re putting a lot of rounds down range, it’s possible to burn yourself on the weapon. (We could do an entire discussion on the engineering to managing heat in firearms. It’s a real challenge in firearms design.)

The testimony I’m looking at, frequently equates the injury with either being struck by a large blunt object (baseball bat, hammer, ect.), a sharp jabbing pain, comparable to a bee or wasp sting, a burning sensation or some combination of the three. This appears to be (at least partially) agnostic of whether they were experiencing an adrenaline rush at the time. (This is a little tricky to quantify, because I’m having to make educated guesses.) My suspicion is that the exact point of contact determines which you’ll experience, but I do not know.

So, the short answer to, “how much does it hurt?” seems to be, “not much,” with a lot of caveats.

If a bullet hits a nerve, things can go really wrong. This can result in paralysis, numbness, or constant pain (ranging from a mild annoyance, to perpetual agony.) This damage can be persistent and the victim will continue to experience it for the rest of their life. Nerve hits can also result in an electrical (or tingling) sensation from the wound. (Though, I haven’t seen one of these as a persistent wound, it’s probably possible.)

Shrapnel is worse. If the bullet ricochets and carves up the skin, it will hurt quite a bit. (Incidentally, this also applies to explosives.) The testimonial I’m seeing meshes with my experience from knife wounds. There’s little to no pain in the moment, but it’s starts seriously hurting shortly afterwards. (Again, this is not the result of adrenaline muting the sensation. It simply takes a little while for the body to catch up and start yelling at you.)

Shrapnel can also present a long-term complication. It is possible to end up with shrapnel that cannot be safely extracted. This can result in a persistent pain from the embedded chunk of metal.

Ironically, in some cases, the stippling hurts more than the gunshot itself. This is the unburned powder ejected from the muzzle when firing. Gunpowder burns at around 2700 Fahrenheit. I don’t know the exact temperature of the stippling after it leaves the barrel, but it’s going to cause burns at close range. (Postmortem, this can be useful to estimate the distance between the shooter and victim.) These won’t cause serious injuries in most cases. You’re dealing with flaming particles. However, it will hurt. Heavy clothing can soak that, though it will be damaged.

There’s a related situation. I don’t have any victim testimony on this one, but I’ve seen it enough times in autopsy photos and medical reference. When the muzzle of a firearm is pressed into the victim, the burning gasses are forced into the wound. This will form a bubble just under the skin, tearing in a star shaped pattern. Again, I can’t find anyone explaining what this feels like, but, I’m willing to bet it’s singularly unpleasant.

Long term, any lasting damage is something the victim will have to live with. Damage to bones or nerves can result in lifelong impairment and pain. Even in the short term, gunshot wounds need to be carefully managed to heal properly.

Every gunshot wound, and victim, is unique. I’m also fully willing to admit, the number of reports I could find is limited. (I’m also rather annoyed because one collection I read was a shameless repost from an r/AskReddit thread.) This isn’t a topic people like to talk about openly, so when I’m talking about, “why,” that’s semi-educated guesses.

I hope this helps, and if anyone has some personal experiences they’d like to share, I’ll collect those in a follow-up.

-Starke

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Q&A: Gunshot Pain was originally published on How to Fight Write.

Tat - writing about pain

On the subject of pain, reading a description of pain can bring you in to the story on a deeper level or completely pull you out of the moment.

I’ve had one or two experiences in my life with various types of pain. Here’s some real happenings/differences between various types of wounds.

Scratches- a tear in the skin is usually at the surface level. Bleeding is minimal, A few minutes at worst. Is usually a sharp stinging sensation. If the scratch is made by a dirty object (barbwire or metal covered in mud) it may burn for a short time. When it heals the skin puckers with scabbing and tends to leave tiny, fine scars. These scars tend to fade in a few weeks to few months.

Stab/puncture- depending on how it happens most any type of puncture is a deeper wound, going past the first layer of skin into fats/muscle/possibly bone depending the depth . If it happens with force it will almost always bruise under the actual opening and aches around the wound. If it’s a quick in and out motion perhaps it won’t bruise but it will burn. These wounds bleed freely and require pressure/sutures/medical care to stop. Depending the severity/damage done to surrounding tissue, this will take a week-2 weeks to knit skin together however the tissue inside may continue to ache for weeks because muscle injuries don’t repair easily with/ without medical intervention.

Broken bones- when a bone breaks there’s usually a pop that’s felt and/or possibly a cracking sound. If there isn’t a sound, that doesn’t mean it’s not broken. A break is a severe pain, sharp, tingling, a hot/cold flush from the area. And I hate to break it to my friends in the writing field, when an arm or leg is truly broken (not a splinter/sprain) , people don’t continue to use it afterward, fighting the pain. It’s broken, it literally doesn’t work. Adrenaline might delay the sensory overload of intial pain but usual it’s pretty clear by lumping/swelling/weird angle/lack of support to attached limbs that it’s the real deal. The first outset of pain is intense, the most striking, deepest pain imagaineable. Some people say it burns like an iron. Others have said it feels cold, like a numbing ice that’s burns. Healing from a break itches! Like tear skin off to reach it itchy. Breaks take 2 months to heal, and that’s only if the person doesn’t have any outlying issues like infections / muscle damage etc. physical recovery takes a while after as you teach the muscles around the break to be effective again, muscle atrophy after a break is a real thing.

Shock - going into shock is a serious ordeal for the body that of course depends on the seriousness of the injury that caused it. People say they remember feeling cold afterward usually. Mostly during shock a person is disconnected from what’s happened, borderline catatonic in some cases. They may not be aware of their injuries or seem to care about them. Some cases people faint because they overwhelmed and their brain just shuts down for a time. The time frame is different for everyone. An active warrior type who might be used to blood/gore/pain might shake off shock quickly, a few minutes or so. A regular person not used to pain or intense danger might be in shock for 20 minutes plus or even go into latent shock later after the danger has passed when their brain catches them up to what they survived. Usually this is accompanied by being a little emotional /hysterical , shivering, hyperventilating and not being able to hear/understand other because the part of them used to process new information is preoccupied by this survival instinct.

Happy tat to all. Hope this helps my writer community.

This is amazing! Thank you for putting this together for us!

Writing Traumatic Injuries References

So, pretty frequently writers screw up when they write about injuries. People are clonked over the head, pass out for hours, and wake up with just a headache… Eragon breaks his wrist and it’s just fine within days… Wounds heal with nary a scar, ever…

I’m aiming to fix that.

Here are over 100 links covering just about every facet of traumatic injuries (physical, psychological, long-term), focusing mainly on burns, concussions, fractures, and lacerations. Now you can beat up your characters properly!

General resources

WebMD

Mayo Clinic first aid

Mayo Clinic diseases

First Aid

PubMed: The source for biomedical literature

Diagrams: Veins (towards heart), arteries (away from heart) bones, nervous system, brain

Burns

General overview: Includes degrees

Burn severity: Including how to estimate body area affected

Burn treatment: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degrees

Smoke inhalation

Smoke inhalation treatment

Chemical burns

Hot tar burns

Sunburns

Incisions and Lacerations

Essentials of skin laceration repair (including stitching techniques)

When to stitch (Journal article—Doctors apparently usually go by experience on this)

More about when to stitch (Simple guide for moms)

Basic wound treatment

Incision vs. laceration: Most of the time (including in medical literature) they’re used synonymously, but eh.

Types of lacerations: Page has links to some particularly graphic images—beware!

How to stop bleeding: 1, 2, 3

Puncture wounds: Including a bit about what sort of wounds are most likely to become infected

More about puncture wounds

Wound assessment: A huge amount of information, including what the color of the flesh indicates, different kinds of things that ooze from a wound, and so much more.

Home treatment of gunshot wound, also basics More about gunshot wounds, including medical procedures

Tourniquet use: Controversy around it, latest research

Location pain chart: Originally intended for tattoo pain, but pretty accurate for cuts

General note: Deeper=more serious. Elevate wounded limb so that gravity draws blood towards heart. Scalp wounds also bleed a lot but tend to be superficial. If it’s dirty, risk infection. If it hits the digestive system and you don’t die immediately, infection’ll probably kill you. Don’t forget the possibility of tetanus! If a wound is positioned such that movement would cause the wound to gape open (i.e. horizontally across the knee) it’s harder to keep it closed and may take longer for it to heal.

Broken bones

Types of fractures

Setting a broken bone when no doctor is available

Healing time of common fractures

Broken wrists

Broken ankles/feet

Fractured vertebrae: Neck (1, 2), back

Types of casts

Splints

Fracture complications

Broken noses

Broken digits: Fingers and toes

General notes: If it’s a compound fracture (bone poking through) good luck fixing it on your own. If the bone is in multiple pieces, surgery is necessary to fix it—probably can’t reduce (“set”) it from the outside. Older people heal more slowly. It’s possible for bones to “heal” crooked and cause long-term problems and joint pain. Consider damage to nearby nerves, muscle, and blood vessels.

Concussions

General overview

Types of concussions 1, 2

Concussion complications

Mild Brain Injuries: The next step up from most severe type of concussion, Grade 3

Post-concussion syndrome

Second impact syndrome: When a second blow delivered before recovering from the initial concussion has catastrophic effects. Apparently rare.

Recovering from a concussion

Symptoms: Scroll about halfway down the page for the most severe symptoms

Whiplash

General notes: If you pass out, even for a few seconds, it’s serious. If you have multiple concussions over a lifetime, they will be progressively more serious. Symptoms can linger for a long time.

Character reaction:

Shock (general)

Physical shock: 1, 2

Fight-or-flight response: 1, 2

Long-term emotional trauma: 1 (Includes symptoms), 2

First aid for emotional trauma

Treatment (drugs)

WebMD painkiller guide

Treatment (herbs)

1, 2, 3, 4

Miscellany

Snake bites: No, you don’t suck the venom out or apply tourniquettes

Frostbite

Frostbite treatment

Severe frostbite treatment

When frostbite sets in: A handy chart for how long your characters have outside at various temperatures and wind speeds before they get frostbitten

First aid myths: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Includes the ones about buttering burns and putting snow on frostbite.

Poisons: Why inducing vomiting is a bad idea

Poisonous plants

Dislocations: Symptoms 1, 2; treatment. General notes: Repeated dislocations of same joint may lead to permanent tissue damage and may cause or be symptomatic of weakened ligaments. Docs recommend against trying to reduce (put back) dislocated joint on your own, though information about how to do it is easily found online.

Muscular strains

Joint sprain

Resuscitation after near-drowning: 1, 2

Current CPR practices: We don’t do mouth-to-mouth anymore.

The DSM IV, for all your mental illness needs.

Electrical shock

Human response to electrical shock: Includes handy-dandy voltage chart

Length of contact needed at different voltages to cause injury

Evaluation protocol for electric shock injury

Neurological complications

Electrical and lightning injury

Cardiac complications

Delayed effects and a good general summary

Acquired savant syndrome: Brain injuries (including a lightning strike) triggering development of amazing artistic and other abilities

Please don’t repost! You can find the original document (also created by me) here.

Here’s something I remember seeing ages ago, and it’s proven to be useful to me and I’m glad I’ve found it again to share on here.

(Credit of course goes to who posted this initially.)

Yesss, I love this. Super helpful!

me, to my housemates, one of whom is a thermal engineer: if someone had hypothermia, is the best way to warm them up ‘spoon them’, or ‘cuddle chest to chest’? I feel like it could be either – spooning is the classic warming position, and you warm up the colder part, but spoon the front and you insulate the skin with the largest temperature delta

housemates: [fervent, serious debate]

me, after a couple of minutes: to be clear, this is for a final fantasy 7 fanfiction scene where my character got really cold, the stakes aren’t high in getting this completely right.

housemate: does the hypothermia exist sheerly as an excuse for the cuddling?

me: that is the only reason hypothermia exists in fanfiction.

so i asked my mom’s boyfriend, who is a paramedic, and he recommended that for hypothermia, you cuddle chest-to-chest, BUT if you are digging in to survive a blizzard, spooning is preferable

And there is a reason for this! 

Ventral-ventral (chest to chest) contact takes the part of the person-doing-the-warming (hereafter A) that radiates the most heat and delivers the heat to the part of person-who-needs-warming (hereafter B) that it is most crucial to warm up - in both cases that being the front of the torso because that’s where all the squishiest most vulnerable organs are least protected by other parts of body, and thus the most blood (carrier of heat) pumping closest to the surface.

HOWEVER, any position that you can maintain for any length of time that best allows B’s body to ABSORB heat is going to make A vulnerable to heat-loss beyond just what B is absorbing. 

Pause to picture: the only way to get straight skin-to-skin contact that doesn’t allow any of A’s body to waste heat to the general air is straight up groin-to-shoulder face-to-face. And while this is very suggestive for your cuddle-fic, it’s REALLY NOT COMFORTABLE TO STAY THAT WAY VERY LONG. 

Any other position starts opening A (or rather, one side) up to slightly more heat-loss than is Best Efficiency. 

So if A and B are both at Non-Hypothermic-Crisis body-heat levels, spooning becomes better for heat maintenance because it’s basically a double-foetal position. The little spoon will curl up and their knees and arms will function to avoid bulk heat-loss from their own ventral surfaces. Meanwhile the big spoon’s ventral surface is safely pressed against the little spoon’s back. 

Both parties will experience some heat-loss, but as it will either be through the limbs or through the back it will be less than either would lose if their ventral surfaces were exposed. 

Thus, better for digging in. 

Of course a much better idea for both of them is to get to an enclosed sheltered space with an external heat-source like a fire, and if they have other animals with them they should be arranged as possible to further centralize heat and avoid heat-loss, but yes. 

My constant struggle in writing is basically having to study the vast swaths of human knowledge to write a plausible scenario, and the trouble is deciding what information is important to the story and what can be tossed aside as ‘meh, it’s fiction’.

But the fun part is that conversations like this come out of it. Fuck yeah I wanna calculate the energy in joules of my wizard’s lightning spell! Fuck yeah I wanna know the probable genetic ethnicity of my Norse elf boy and their hereditary predispositions toward tropical diseases! Fuck yeah I wanna calculate how long it would take my heroes’ spacecraft to travel from Earth to Mars on a gravity assist with a phase angle of 32.3deg!

Get technical af with your writing, at least you can amuse yourself with how much effort you’re putting into an argument you’ll probably never have with a reader of your novel and how Fucking Right you’ll be about mass, velocity, air resistance, and distance of the ejaculatory fluid in your retro-future dystopian renegade couple erotica scene.