: Re: How to realistically describe pain? So, I was doing a writing excersie, I came up with, to help me with sentence structuring and developing my style. One thing, I ran into, however, was that

@Megan928

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In college English class, we were assigned Write to the Point by Bill Stott. He has a chapter on this, which I'm probably badly paraphrasing: just describe what happens. Like you would anything else.

He compares two writing samples, one about waiting in a dentist office with unbearable tooth pain, and the other about a mountain man who has to pull his own painful tooth. He breaks it down, and goes over what works and what doesn't in each passage.

Support you were writing about water. Is it a frozen arctic glacier, crystal and blue? Is it a rushing torrent, churning and foaming over rocks?

Does your character have a migraine? Are they in bed, lying perfectly still, while vibrations of pain emanate from their head? Did they break their ankle on stage, collapse to the floor with a throbbing floppy mess on the end of their leg?

I think your passage is pretty good. The only thing I would change is the superlative: "... than ever before in his life." But I think you have a good start.

Edit also, I don't think many people in the world today have lived through a sword-stabbing, so nobody can really call you on your description of it ; )

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