So, I Don't Know How To Write Pain Like! What Words Do I Use? How Do I Describe It! I Really Need Some

So, I don't know how to write pain like! What words do I use? how do I describe it! I really need some help here!

No problem! And sorry about not answering sooner, I was on vacation. To make it up to you, I’ve made one of my trademark Long Posts about it.

TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE PAIN (FOR BOTH ORIGINAL CONTENT WRITERS AND FANFICTION WRITERS)

When I first started writing, about eight years ago, I had the same issue as @imjustafuckinggirl.

How are you supposed to write about pain you’ve never experienced before???

The characters in my book suffer through all sorts of terrible shit, and in no way am I writing from experience, which is marginally easier to do than write about something that has never happened to you.

However, with time, I managed to gather up a few strategies on how to write pain.

1. Don’t Write Paragraphs About It

I know, it’s tempting. You want to convey to the reader just how much pain the character is in, and you think that the pain will be emphasized the more you write about it.

This, however, is a lie.

As a reader, when I’m reading a book or fanfiction where, whenever the writer uses agonizingly long paragraphs to describe when a character is hurt, I skip it.

Entirely.

It’s boring and, quite frankly, unnecessary, especially during a fight or huge battle, which are supposed to be fast-paced.

When it comes to writing about pain, it really is about quality and not quantity.

In my own writing, I stick to short, quick paragraphs, some of them which are barely a line long. This gives it a faster pace and sort of parallels with the scattered, spread out thoughts of the character as they suffer.

2. Describe it Right

Many times, usually in fanfiction, writers over-exaggerate certain injuries.

This partially has to do with the fact that they’ve never experienced that injury before and are just thinking about what it might feel like.

As a girl with two brothers and who often participated in rough play-fights, I can assure you that getting punched is not as painful as you think it is.

(However, it does depend on the area, as well as how hard the punch is, on top of the fact that you have to take into account whether or not the punch broke bones)

I’m reading a high school AU where a character gets punched by a bully (Idk where they got punched it wasn’t stated) and the author is describing it like they’d been shot.

It was to the point where I was like Did the bully have brass knuckles or something????

It was very clear that this author had never been punched before.

When describing the pain of an injury or the injury itself, you have to take into account:

- What object was used to harm the character

- Where the injury is

- How long the character has had the injury

- (For blades) How deep the cut is

- (For blunt force trauma) How hard the hit was

- Whether or not the wound triggers other things (Ex: Concussion, vomiting, dizziness, infection, internal/external bleeding).

There’s also the fact that when some authors described wounds caused by blades such as knives, daggers, and swords, they never take into account the anatomy of a person and which places cause the most blood flow.

Obviously, a cut on your cheek will have less of a blood flow than a cut on your wrist, depending on what the blade hits, and I hope that everyone consults a diagram of veins, capillaries, arteries, etc. when they’re describing blood flow from a certain place.

There’s also the fact that you have to take into account where the blood is coming from. Veins? Arteries?

The blood from arteries will be a brighter red, like vermilion, than the blood from veins, which is the dark crimson everyone likes to talk about.

Not all places gush bright red blood, people!

3. DIFFERENT INJURIES HAVE DIFFERENT KINDS OF PAIN

Here, let me explain.

A punch feels different from a slap.

A broken arm feels different from getting stabbed.

A fall feels different from a dog bite.

I’ll give you a list of all the kinds of things that can be described for the three most common kinds of injuries that happen in stories:

Punch/Blunt Force Trauma

How it feels:

- Aching

- Numbness (In the later stages)

- A single spike of pain before it fades into an ache

- Throbbing

Effects:

- Vomiting (If the character is punched in the gut)

- Swelling

- Bruising

- Broken bones

- Unconsciousness (Blow to the head)

- Dizziness (Blow to the head)

- Concussion (Also a blow to the head)

- Internal bleeding

- Death (In the case of concussions and internal bleeding and broken bones- ribs can pierce lungs)

Stab Wound/Cut

How it feels:

- Stinging (only shallow wounds have just stinging)

- Burning

- With stab wounds, I feel like describing the effects of it make it more powerfully felt by the reader

Effects:

- Bleeding (Consult chart of the circulatory system beforehand for the amount of blood flow that should be described and what color the blood should be)

- Dizziness (Heavy blood loss)

- Unconsciousness

- Infection (if left unattended)

- Death

Gunshot

How it feels:

- Depends on the caliber bullet, from how far away they were shot (point-blank range is nothing like being shot from a distance), and in what place. Do careful research and then make your decision.

Effects:

- Bleeding(Consult chart of the circulatory system beforehand for the amount of blood flow that should be described and what color the blood should be. Also take into effect the above variables for blood flow as well.)

- Dizziness (Heavy blood loss)

- Infection (if left unattended)

- Death

Some things that a character may do while they’re injured:

- Heavy/Harsh/Ragged breathing

- Panting

- Making noises of pain

gasping

grunting

hissing

groaning

whimpering

yelping (when the injury is inflicted)

screaming

shrieking

wailing

- Crying/ Weeping/Sobbing/Etc.

- Clenching their teeth

- Unable to speak

- Pressing their hands against a stab wound/cut to try and stem the bleeding

- Eyesight going out of whack (vision blurring and tilting, the room spinning, black spots consuming sight)

- Eyes rolling up into their head

- Trembling/shaking

- Ears riniging (from gunshot)

HOPE THIS HELPED!

i just saw a massive tutorial for formatting your writing for the web that involved pasting your text into ao3 first to generate html and it was really long and caused me physical pain to witness it so i’m just gonna remind you about

editors:

dillinger is a browser-based markdown editor that syncs with most cloud services, including google drive and dropbox. it has a text-focused mode and exports directly to html. you don’t have to make an account.

stackedit is a browser-based markdown editor that is basically identical but you can save files in your browser if that’s a thing you want to do for some reason. they like it when you sign in with google if you want to sync things.

ghostwriter is a markdown application for linux. they say it’s also for windows but that’s only barely technically true. if you find an old version it might work.

typora is a markdown editor that works for me in windows. i haven’t tried the linux or osx versions but they exist.

i use jotterpad to write in markdown on android and i sync it to my dropbox so i can switch between my phone and my computers.

markdown:

you probably already use it in apps like discord and don’t know it. do *this* to italicize. do **this** for bold. hit enter twice to make a new paragraph. do this *** or this — to make a horizontal rule. here’s a cheatsheet if you want to do other stuff like make a list.

when i am writing in typora, it looks like this:

if i want to post it on tumblr, i can just… activate markdown mode

i go into source code mode (because typora defaults to hiding the asterisks and letting you copy/paste rich text, which is also a thing you can do). i copy. i paste. i post. if i want to add more stuff i switch to rich text mode and add it. if i want to post it on ao3?

i export as unstyled html and open it in a text editor

ta-da

and ghostwriter makes it even easier because you can literally just copy your text as html. typora is supposed to have ‘copy as html’ but if it does i can’t find it. i think markdownpad has a similar feature but it’s ugly so i don’t care about it. in dillinger if you toggle the html preview it shows the code so you can just copy it. basically typora is the only one where you actually have to do this whole export thing.

you can even open and edit your markdown files in anything that can be used to edit a txt file, it just won’t show you the formatting or let you do any fancy html conversions. sometimes i edit my markdown files in focuswriter just because i can.

i don’t want to be patronizing and i know everyone has their workflow, but, like… using ao3 to convert your rich text to html is like five more steps than should ever be necessary to post on tumblr with your italics intact when you could just be doing *this*

Tips for learning Japanese

I’ve gotten quite a few questions about how I learnt Japanese or whether I have any tips to share. Every time I reply to an ask I type up a new answer, but when I do I tend to forget certain things here and there. So I thought it best to just do up a comprehensive post. I will also add to this post as I discover new ways to learn and practice Japanese.

Learning a new language isn’t easy so the best way to learn Japanese is of course to go for proper lessons if you’re able to afford it or if it’s available(as in there’s a school module for it or something). Having a teacher and classmates to practice with will help a lot. If that’s not an option due to time/cost then purchase some Japanese textbooks and self-study.

This post will be the most helpful for beginners who are unsure how to start or practice. It’s mainly for those who want to self study, and especially so if the end goal is, like me, to play Japanese games or listen to drama CDs lol. 

It’s by no means a professional approach and everything I share is just from my own personal experience. 

How fluent is my Japanese?

Not completely. Japanese is my 3rd language. I self studied all the way and have never taken JLPT so I don’t know what level I am at. It’s at a level where I’m able to play games in Japanese, read novels, listen to drama CDs, and have no issues in my day to day life (am living in Japan atm). My comprehension and listening are a lot better than my speaking.

If you are still interested, read on.

Keep reading

Foam to Leather (Tutorial)

Things you’ll need:

Brown craft foam

Aluminum foil

Clothes iron

Ironing board

Black paint

Brown paint (lighter than your foam)

Paint brush

Paper towel

Grab some aluminum foil and crumble it into a ball. Not too tight of a ball though! The next step is almost impossible if you do. 

Next, un-crumple the ball. Flatten it out into one layer. It’s fine if there are a few holes.

Place it on top of your foam.

Take your iron and firmly press it on the foam and aluminum. My iron was set to 3 (polyester) but the correct temperature may be different for other irons. Just remember not to use steam! Before doing this on a large piece, be sure to experiment and figure out what the best temperature and what the best pressure is. On larger pieces, you’ll have to move the aluminum around a lot. It’s not a quick process.

Now you’ve got this crinkly affect on the foam. Next is painting!

Grab you’re brush, black paint, and a dish with some water. The idea is to dilute the black paint enough so that when you apply it the paint will seep into the divets the aluminum created. 

Once the watery paint is applied, wipe it off with a paper towel. Continue to do this for your whole piece of foam.

Now here’s an optional step (of which I haven’t done myself but I’ve known others who have):

Grab the light brown paint and, without diluting it, paint it on. It’s best to use a coarse brush in this case and to try to keep it out of the divets. Wipe some of the paint off. 

Remember, imperfections are always good! Uneven paint isn’t necessarily bad so just experiment with it. 

Here’s an example of a bracer I did with this method. The first two pictures are an example of the foam I began with and the rest show the end result. I hope this helps you guys out!

There’s always space for yet another armor tutorial, right? (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Note that the armor I drew would be worn around 15th century, the more into the future the less and less components knight’s armor had (i. e. in early 14th century instead of greaves a knight would wear long boots only; in 12th century knights didn’t wear plate breastplates and instead a chain mail only). Also the design of armor pattern changed by year and was different in every country (i.e. in eastern Europe armors, while still looking European, were heavily influenced by Turkey). so just make sure you always do research whenever drawing an armor. And one more thing to keep in mind is that armors were expensive, knights wearing a full plate armor weren’t an often sight.

Some links that may be useful:

Armour Archive (I strongly suggest to browse its forum, there is no country or period of which armor wouldn’t be discussed)

Therion Arms (armorer’s page; each accessory is photographed in big resolution and several time so it’s a nice page to use as reference for drawing)

Revival Clothing (another store, but both with medieval clothing and armors; I suggest to read the articles, they’re often supported with pictures)

Basic Armouring:A Practical Introduction to Armour Making (pdf)

Educational Charts (pdf, shows how armors and weapons changed over the years)

Medieval & Renaissance Material Culture (actual medieval resources, mostly paintings. And my favourite subpage - women in armor)

Dressing in Steel (youtube; a demonstration how to dress in armor)

How shall a man be armed? (youtube; another demonstration but with 4 different knights from different periods)

Some notes I put together for my CDA Class. Just stuff that I use. Take with grain of salt.