10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing

New Part: 10 Lethal Injury Ideas

If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain, here are some ideas: 

1. Sprained Ankle

A common injury that can severely limit mobility. This is useful because your characters will have to experience a mild struggle and adapt their plans to their new lack of mobiliy. Perfect to add tension to a chase scene.

2. Rib Contusion

A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult, helping you sneak in those ragged wheezes during a fight scene. Could also be used for something sport-related! It's impactful enough to leave a lingering pain but not enough to hinder their overall movement.

3. Concussions

This common brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a character’s judgment heavily. It can also cause mild amnesia.

I enjoy using concussions when you need another character to subtly take over the fight/scene, it's an easy way to switch POVs. You could also use it if you need a 'cute' recovery moment with A and B.

4. Fractured Finger

A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills. This would be perfect for characters like artists, writers, etc. Or, a fighter who brushes it off as nothing till they try to throw a punch and are hit with pain.

5. Road Rash

Road rash is an abrasion caused by friction. Aka scraping skin. The raw, painful sting resulting from a fall can be a quick but effective way to add pain to your writing. Tip: it's great if you need a mild injury for a child.

6. Shoulder Dislocation

This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation. Good for torture scenes.

7. Deep Laceration

A deep laceration is a cut that requires stitches. As someone who got stitches as a kid, they really aren't that bad! A 2-3 inch wound (in length) provides just enough pain and blood to add that dramatic flair to your writing while not severely deterring your character.

This is also a great wound to look back on since it often scars. Note: the deeper and wider the cut the worse your character's condition. Don't give them a 5 inch deep gash and call that mild.

8. Burns

Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma. Like the previous injury, the lasting physical and emotional trauma of a burn is a great wound for characters to look back on.

If you want to explore writing burns, read here.

9. Pulled Muscle

This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, offering a window to force your character to lean on another. Note: I personally use muscle related injuries when I want to focus more on the pain and sprains to focus on a lack of mobility.

10. Tendonitis

Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted. When exploring tendonitis make sure you research well as this can easily turn into a more severe injury.

Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks? 

Check out the rest of Quillology with Haya; a blog dedicated to writing and publishing tips for authors!

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just overheard my wife spelling something on the phone and i shit you not saying the words “E as in Eeyore” i am on my hands and knees wailing screaming crying pleading and begging people to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet

like the reason this exists is because none of the words sound like each other, which means that even with a terrible signal both parties should be able to clearly understand the words being spelled

i am dead serious that i believe this should be taught in school

Please, if you are a self-publishing author an indie author, learn the basics of book formatting.

Please.

The standards are in place for a reason. Margins are the size they are so that your thumb can rest comfortably on the sides of the book without blocking any text, and so you can read the text along the middle without tilting the book back and forth to see around the bend. Bleeds are so your margins don't get cut down too much when the text block is trimmed, you need them even if you don't have images in your book. Spaces between paragraphs are an internet convention and do not belong in books unless you are indicating a scene break.

Please. These rules aren't there to be mean. They are there for FUNCTIONALITY.

Like so many areas of life, you could break the norms. But you'd better have a pretty strong grasp of why they exist first. Maybe you won't want to.

Exactly.

okay I can already see where this is going so let’s try again

i love writing siblings more than anything else. especially when they're part of a magical crime family

collection of posts for a very specific dynamic

one-sided platonic feelings always hit me so hard. like. i want you to love me like a son, but to you i’m not much more than a servant. i swore our oath of brotherhood out of real devotion, and you swore it out of convenience. i want to go to the ends of the earth and the depths of hell for you and follow you until the end of time, and in your mind that’s no more than what i owe you

not doomed by the narrative but saved by the narrative. yeah i know you'd rather die than keep suffering but the story doesn't actually care what you want. you have to keep going, even when it hurts. even being erased from existence won't stop you from being salvaged from the wreckage of un-being. get up. keep pushing. keep bleeding. keep living.

I went looking for more info on this school, and found it's part of a larger! effort in educating women both in modern skills and in traditional local arts. (Educating girls is a proven way to improve health and fight poverty for the whole community).

Great quick read if you need a break from doomscrolling :

An Array of Colors at First Landing State Park Images by Katherine Scott

Official nature post

one of my favorite things to do in limited perspective is write sentences about the things someone doesn't do. he doesn't open his eyes. he doesn't reach out. i LOVE sentences like that. if it's describing the narrator, it's a reflection of their desires, something they're holding themselves back from. there's a tension between urge and action. it makes you ask why they wanted or felt compelled to do that, and also why they ultimately didn't. and if it's describing someone else, it tells you about the narrator's expectations. how they perceive that other person or their relationship. what they thought the other person was going to do, or thought the other person should have done, but failed to. negative action sentences are everything.

Nonhuman expressions of affection are great. Purring. Exposing weak points as a show of trust. Head bonks. Preening and chewing. Nuzzling. Biting. Intertwining tails. Feeding each other. Little chuffs, chatters, beeps and squeaks. Fluffing up of feathers, fur or other things. Dancing to impress. Cleaning their fur, scales, feathers or skin. Sharing body heat. Ears pointing toward those you care about to show your full attention is on them. Slow blinking.

The excerpt paragraph made me look up and stare at my wife for three solid minutes waiting for them to return to the couch. I couldn’t move on with my life. I had to read it aloud to them to their audible disgust and then they read all the comments with unbridled delight.

Now we keep repeating “Like Zorro.”

Every generation needs its own 'oh john ringo no!'

When I finally write the scene but it's an absolute garbage fire